Nordstrom’s shoot

Thursday May 11th

 

 I had to get up early for this one, 6:00 AM, but it was worth the effort.

 

On an assignment for WWD Women’s Wear Daily, a  Fairchild-Conde Nast publication, I spent the day at the downtown Nordstrom’s store.

 

 I met the Senior Editor, David Moin of WWD, at the front entrance at 7:30 AM sharp. After some brief intros where I met the Nordstrom’s Marketing and PR people. My 1st assignment was to photograph senior executives in the Nordstrom’s family that were working for the company.

 

   To break the ice I explained who I was, and that my photos had been displayed in their front window a few years back. It was a whole window collage of large prints, carefully crafted before, and after shots, done with Gene Juarez hair salon.  The Nordstrom’s cousins were very gracious and friendly. We took some pictures in the Womens shoe department and went up to the women’s designer clothing area.

 

Chanel dresses, Yves Saint Laurent, Hugo Boss, and the whole gambit of the worlds greatest designers were my backdrop! I was in heaven.  I also photographed several employees in their respective departments. They were Beautiful women, must have been models in another time.

 

  Peter Nordstrom arrived and we went to the Armani suit department and took some more shots.

 

  I loved this store and not just to review it. The lighting was warm and accented the clothing perfectly.

 

  After that I spent four hours being guided by a nice young man that worked in the marketing department.And In in classic Nordstrom’s service, he even helped carry my equipment out to my car!  Nordstrom’s service is lengendary.The Nordstrom’s have perfected the world of retail clothing sales. But I am biased as a photographer that loves fashion. 

 

I spent all the next day, Friday editing the images. I loved the warm available light in the store.

 

  When you work for Fairchild Publications they make you sign a wavier regarding  personal useage, so I can’t display the images yet, but will put some up when the story gets published, or provide a link to the story at least.

 

   I knew David was leaving on Sunday, so we met up and I walked with him down to the Pike Place Market. We had lunch with the spectacular Elliot bay as our vista.  David was a New Yorker on his 1st visit to Seattle, so I gave him the whole tour along the water front, and down to Pioneer Square. It was a beautiful sunny day and he wants to return later.

30 Years of Photography

 

   The sun is streaming trough my window, and it is a beautiful February morning. In a state of contented bliss, drinking morning coffee, I realized that a milestone in time has passed.  It was 1976, with a new Nikon camera system, when I set out on my own, and began a journey that has now lasted 30 years.  I now look back on those early days of excitement and wonder, with lots of nostalgia. Building my 1^st darkroom, buying a studio strobe, looking through a 4*5 inch view camera, with the dark cloth draped around my neck, a focusing loupe in hand.

 

  Like so many others before me I began an adventure that was to consume my whole life. Each photographer needs to find his niche, and mine was 1^st in commercial advertising photography and fashion. Beautiful models, and bright art directors, and so much style…time has a way of diminishing the struggle and all the effort. But when I look back I realize that is what it was all about “the struggle”.  Most people concentrate on the rewards of their labor, material things, a new house, a fancy car, and forget about earning meaningful things in life, is ‘in the living’. The lessons I have learned are simple.  The greatest gift an artist can have is to live ‘the struggle’, I have never learned as much as when I tried a little harder to get the lighting just right, and the true feeling to show though.  

 

 Every time I thought, “It doesn’t get any better than this,” something new came along that was more exciting, a new challenge. Last year Pro Lab closed and I was confronted with no lab for my professional film processing. I had been easing into digital via high resolution scans, and suddenly I was now with out a lab that was less than a mile from my front door.  I jumped into digital photography, read everything I could find, and just like in high school where I built a telescope as a physics assistant, I overcame my fear by mastering the technology.  It has been a lot of fun too! Oh well I am off to do a shoot…

connecting my blog to my web site

I was on a photography web site called photo.net and realized that a bunch of the photographers there added their blogs to their wedding web sites.

 

  So I thought I wanted to do the same. There are so many personal projects I would like to post on the web, but would like to keep seperate from my business web site, and this is a great way to be able to to that.

 

In Seattle it has rained over 11 inches in January! I can’t wait for Spring Time..hmmm

Sunset Sail boats

I recently purchased a 70 – 200 mm  F4 L lens for my Canon 20 D.  It was such a beautiful evening I decided to go to GoldenGardens and test it.  I was very pleased at just how sharp and clear the photos were. The only difficulty I had was that in order for an autofocus lens to work clear contrasts need to be in the scene. This was not possible with a sunset I found out.  No problem, I switched to manual focus and had a great time!

Green Lake Sailors

One of my favorite waliking places in Seattle is Green Lake, which is located in the North center of the city. It is one of the city’s most popular parks, with a path around the lake.

 

While I was there yesterday I noticed these kids taking sailing lessons, supervised by adults in small power boats. When I arrived the class was ending, and they were trying to return the boats to storage. Imagine kids running all over the place in pure mayhem, add uncontrollable factors as wind power, are their source of energy.

 

It was hillarious!!

 

Boats almost colliding, like hearding cats.. combined with blue sky and bright red sails…you never know when something beautiful is going to happen.

Sail boats at Golden Gardens

Imagine being the only photographer at a national championship sailboat race.

 

Well this acutually happen to me, and I showed up by accident myself. I was a beautiful day, and I decided to go to the beach to test out my new camera, and saw in the distance over a hundred small sailboats. They were pretty far away at the time, but I knew they were likely going to return, because I noticed about a hundred trailers waiting on the beach. Patience is a virtue in photography and sometimes is pays to wait for the picture to happen. Which it did as the returned to the beach.  I was frantic and caiotic but made for some amazing pictures!

 

 

 I had fun and didn’t even get wet…

Photos at Rose Garden

 I have been working with digital photos in the RAW format, which enables the most information to be recorded. The detail is amazing, but it is a little unsettleing to work with photos that are not sharp right out of the camera.

 

 I have been using the Unsharp mask filter in Photoshop CS2 to sharpen the images and after that process the images are unbelievable.

 

I posted some test images from the Rose Garden at the zoo I shot on Sunday using a 17-85mm USM Canon Lens and the Canon 20D.  The lens has macro capabilities and I was also testing it’s ability to AF at close distances. I had read that AF problems had occuring with some users. I suspect the focus points were reading other areas out of the center of interest.