Some recent editorial work

I've had an opportunity to shoot Dan Choi, one of ex military personnel who is fighting for equal rights for lesbians, bisexuals and gays in the United States military.

Series of my photos ran in this magazine and also the Advocate Magazine. I brought my battery pack for the studio lighting for this shot. I chose to shoot without a softbox or umbrellas since I wanted to get the hard lighting effect. Some light from the studio light spilled onto the marble background probably around 2-3 stops lower than the subject so that allowed the subjects to stand out from the background.

Here he is sharing his support for family members and friends who were discriminated by the military for their sexual orientation. There were a lot of emotion that day in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington VA.

I grabbed this shot very quickly, as Dan and his partner was walking toward the area where I wanted to shoot the portrait. There were a lot of people walking about the area, so I had to move around to isolate their hands on something contrasty and clean.

Comments

Large Format ...Slight Return

Took out my Linhof 4x5 field camera out for a spin. Tripod, cable release, focusing cloth, loupe, lightmeter, and film holders! The gang's all here. Linhof Technica III, (circa 1940's) with Fujinon 150mm 5.6 a modern lens design. Bull Run Park near Manassas VA.The camera is wonderfully made with machined aluminum with German engineering. Like Butter. Working with a 4x5 is a whole different world. It takes long to set up and there are so many things that you can screw up. "Did I cock the shutter? check focus?, meter reading, dark slide out? lock the movements?... There are like 13 different steps that you have to make to take a picture. So why do it when I can just point my 5d and shoot in easy one two steps? Reasons may vary, but I do it because of the camera movements. The tilts, swings, shifts. These cameras were made so you can technically control how the image hits the film plane. You can achieve "technically perfect" images, whatever that means.

Polaroid Negative?

I've been wanting to do color large format for awhile. When there were photo labs around the corner, it wasn't hard to do a E-6 process in a day or two. Now that process has gotten expensive and if you're doing sheet film, its even more pain. So my solution... Polaroid! well technically, it should be called "instant film" since Polaroid is trademarked term. I'm using Fuji FP 100c45. But here's the twist. I wanted a different look. If I want true colors, I wouldn't bother with the cost of 2 bucks per shot. I also was fascinated with some surface texture that I saw on polaroids. I recently came across some sites that talks about turning a polaroid into negatives. Its true that Polariod years ago did have those positive/negative film, but they've discontinued all instant film a couple of years ago. The process is simple. you take bleach and take off the black stuff on the part that you throw away. Once the black part is off, you have a negati

Boston: B&W Architecture with Leica Q2M: From a Purist Perspective.

I swear I was going to switch out my black and white ONLY Leica Q2M to a regular Q2 color camera before going to this trip. I"m glad I didn't. Oh, before I forget, take a look at my icandy slide shows . I will be making slideshows that is designed for big screen TV's. Take a look at this one: Ok, back to the topic on hand. So one of the most asked question about the Leica Q2M is, 'why limit yourself to just black and white when you can easily convert color photos to BW?' Very good question. My answer is, if you know with certainty you want the best quality BW image possible, you want the dedicated monochrome camera. Am I being a staunch purist? or is there a practical argument for it? Let's talk about it. Beacon Street Boston, MA One of many beautiful architecture on that hill. First, this camera doesn't have any moire filter on the sensor. Moire filters are on most color camera sensors to get rid of those annoying repeating patterns that loo

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