tearsheet

     In one of those weird synchronicities  some call coincidence, I photographed Ran Vann, a refugee from Pol Pot's Cambodia, on Holocaust Remembrance Day in May, for Miller-McCune.  The violent lime green of early spring in Connecticut was stark contrast to Ran. She's delicate; a sad petite woman living in a small basement apartment. She speaks of the ghosts who live with her.  Her loneliness is a presence in the room.

     While we talked and I tried to figure out where to make her portrait, I couldn't put aside memories of the Holocaust survivors I knew growing up. In my suburb in western upstate New York, everyone working at the bakery had tattoos from Hitler on their forearms. Each July my grandmother visited from Brooklyn with her 3rd husband, Harry. He'd had a horrific childhood in the concentration camps of Europe, surviving as a teen by feigning death in a mass grave while camp guards shot down into his pile of bodies, as the liberators approached.  Harry felt it his personal responsibility to retell this, in a chilling heavily accented narrative,  once every summer.  I'd spend his visit avoiding eye contact but knowing at some point he'd corner me, and I'd hear it again. Bearing witness, I guess, but I was too young to get the importance to him.

a wall in Ran Vann's apartment

With all that in my upbringing, it bothers me that while Pol Pot was destroying Cambodian culture and lives, I was oblivious. Roughly 2 million people died, and many more, like Ran Vann, are suffering in the shadow of his reign, still. It was in the newspapers but I was busy being a teenager not noticing the details, hearing about Kampuchea but not understanding that a genocide was going on. Didn't really get it until the movie The Killing Fields came out. (It's worth a watch, still, if you haven't seen it).

There's not much we can do about history but try not to repeat the parts that went horribly wrong, and to acknowledge the needs of the Ran Vann's and their ghosts, in our midst. That's what the Miller McCune article does. (You can read it, from the link.)

 So very glad and honored to have had the opportunity to meet her.

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You can see more of my portraits of people with stories to tell on my website and over at my Dripbook.

editing when you're very happy

is actually harder than when things are just plain old good. Because, it is SO hard to edit out the ones you don't like as much when you  remember how much fun you had with the subjects, and are very very pleased with the whole take.*

These are some fresh portraits for a private girl's school, from a location photo shoot of some students,  teachers and trustees. And to say I overshot is...um..yeah. Gotta go. Several hundred images to narrow down and a very patient designer waiting.

* for those of you also waiting patiently for the Rhinebeck Project, this is precisely the problem, minus the designer drumming his fingers with a deadline. (And, more volume.)

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see what I've edited into my portfolio at Gale Zucker Photography &  more from this shoot over on Dripbook

clearing your vision

Why is it so hard to see our own vision?

Last week I had the honor of judging for the Rhode island State Council on the Arts Photography Fellowships in Providence. Me? Invited to be judgemental ?

I was psyched, but wondered how I'd know which portfolios to select in, and which out.

Turns out it was manifest. A portfolio with a consistent vision, and  a commitment plus passion for the subject was obvious. As opposed to those with a grouping of strong images, with good technique; a portfolio anyone would respond to as "really nice work".

Even more damning: the weak photo(s) in a strong portfolio, images the photographer threw in ... why? to fill out the fully allowed 10 ? because they weren't sure?  How quickly the weak ones brought down the excellent work in the same portfolio, no matter how we judges tried to put it aside mentally, or talk it through.

Did I learn something there? oh yeah. But it's not a new challenge for me. Or, I guess, for any of us in this world:

He who knows others is wise;
He who know himself is enlightened.

Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC) 

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The two RISCA fellows we selected won't be announced & awarded till the end of the month so I'm not blabbing, I still only know the work, not the names of those we judged.  We narrowed it down to six, then three, then debated for a long time for the final two.  It was not easy but it was very, very, cool.

want to see if I've attained any self knowledge from this ? click on over  Gale Zucker Photography

sweeeeet

 

Deep in the heart of New Jersey (Ok, in Princeton) is an ace baker with a handcrafted cookie business. She's switching her etsy shop, and her corporate gifts business onto a beautiful new fancypants website at www.ImperialCookies.com .  So I headed down to the Garden State to do some photography for it. These are peanut butter chocolate chunk and they.taste.amazing. FYI, so do her biscotti and her ginger cookies, and let's not forget oatmeal raisin and chocolate chunk..... the website is live now, if you're inspired  to sample luscious old fashioned cookies & biscotti, and dense rich cakes.

I was thrilled that the creative direction included a portrait of the baker, Arline Conigliaro, as well as "real life" product shots. (What , you weren't aware of my sub-motto: "real victuals in real places" ? )

We wanted something fun, but not fake-jokey: no clouds of flour all over her face and hands, or cookie ingredients run amok, or Lucille Ball-in-the-factory. You just don't see things like that in a professional kitchen. But with Arline as the subject, there's no shortage of enthusiasm, so we ran with that.

ps. She sent me on my way home with a care package.  One sweeeeet client.

pps also, full disclosure, her hubby makes the best pizza in New Jersey at his  place in the center of Princeton, Iano's Rosticerria. Not exaggerating. Try it if you're by there.

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altho I most often shoot real people in real places, 

you can see more real food photography at my website Gale Zucker Photography

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