the B side shot

When I shot the Kenney sisters in March for USA Weekend magazine, as part of the Make A Difference issue, the art direction was a specific set up, perfect for the article. (You can see it if you scroll down from the issue link.)

But I always do at least 2, usually 3, set ups on a photo shoot. Choices are good, right?  Call it giving editors something to edit, call it my pants-and-suspenders personality making sure my clients are covered, call it an excuse to indulge my curiousity  and poke all around a location.....OK, call it neurotic. But it's what I do.

So in nosing around, I found this divine divan in the sisters' bedroom. Then their mom let loose the Buggs from their basement canine hideaway and I'm calling it a B side hit.

If you're wondering what I am talking about, as 17 year old just said to me "oh, it's a seventies thing. " Yup. Its all about the vinyl. 

Examples (gee thanks Wikipedia, you always have the answers):

 "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor (originally the B-side of "Substitute"), "I'll Be Around" by The Spinners (originally the B-side of "How Could I Let You Get Away"), "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart (originally the B-side of "Reason To Believe"), and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" by Beyoncé (originally the B-side of "If I Were a Boy"). More rarely, both sides of the single would become hits, such as Queen's "We Are the Champions" and "We Will Rock You".

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want to see more of my B sides? they're in the portfolios at Gale Zucker Photography

bright ideas

It's taken me a month--a month!- to digest the brain-filling weekend I spent in Chicago at the ASMP SB3 photographers' conference. S for Strictly B for Business. There was none of that silly what-lens-didja-use photo talk. Instead, much vision, humor, creativity, mutual respect, talent, a little supercool futurist stuff, some local 312 beer, friends, SEO talk... ideas and more ideas.

Maybe what I liked best was the tone set by keynote speaker Colleen Wainwright. You read her, right? (I mean you read her, Wainwright?) She's online as the Communacatrix.

Her mantra for us, to be successful in marketing ourselves by being true to our passions and vision is a simple list:

• be useful

• be specific

• be nice

A good recipe for being successful as a human as well as a photographer, yes?

If you're wondering about the lamp posts, they're an art installation outside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Driving by last year after a long day of shooting, I wasn't sure what to do with it. But couldn't not stop, get out and make some photos. You know how that is.

ps  This link to the museum takes you to their online archive of public domain artworks, available for your personal non-commercial use. Go forth and artify your blog!

see more of my photos  from here , there and everywhere
at my website Gale Zucker Photography

pecha kucha night New Haven

Above is the first  of  20 slides  I'll be showing at Pecha Kucha  Night New Haven, Thursday April 27th at 7:30 pm.  Curious?  Come by.

Each presenter shows twenty slides for twenty seconds each, while talking about their passion, in a night of multi-topic show & tell.

In my case, the subject is  "In Search of Craft Activists" , telling the story of the book I photographed last year, visiting crafters, makers, artists and DIYers all over the country.

As for the book itself, it's (fingers crossed, knock on wood) in its very final design review before we send it off to press, for publication by Random House/PotterCraft in late September.

(Immodestly speaking, it's looking pretty fabulous. I can't wait to have the whole thing to show in the fall).

see more of my work at GALE ZUCKER PHOTOGRAPHY

last frame, Port Jeff shoot

Stuck on our magazine shoot set after school,  watching their mom (our subject) at the end of a long grey day. As avid Top Model fans, they knew how to take over art direction ! Smize, everyone.

contrast

Gotta say this about Bobo, he exposes well.

Our old dog has so much long black hair, he sucks in all the light. No shadow detail at all. Photographer's nightmare.

everything auld is new again

This image so says 1970's to me.  Tri-X push processed to 1600, with corners burnt in.  While opening the enlarger Fstop all the way. I can practically smell the fixer.
If it wasn't for the laptop, which wasn't even invented then.
Gotta love post-processing.

Happy 2011! Here's to a year full of new, old, pushed and pulled, reprocessed, rediscovered and newly adventured.

in which she really does shoot sheep

 

If you've poked through my She Shots Sheep Shots portfolio, or seen my book Shear Spirit, you know I am smitten with the woolly. So you know I was happy last week in upstate NY for a personal project, where I bartered bed &  breakfast for photographing on Gansvoort Farm, a grass fed sheep & cattle farm.

Two days later, in Athol Massachusetts on a magazine assignment to The Farm School. Sheep, locavore food, communal harvest. Farming's a lot of work, but shooting it? That's my kind of labor.