about time

in which I talk about me talking about myself. So meta. So narcissist. Be warned.
It is astounding how one can miss the forest for the trees. Especially on one's own website. For years, there's been no live link on my home page.

Somewhere along the way I lost sight of that fact that,  you know, the most important function of the website is for people to contact me for work. All the while fiddling with little details within the portfolios. This is why working for yourself can be such a humbling experience, you can not blame the Media Relations department or the head of Communications for this kind of stupidity.

As of today, I am live linked to my email and to my Flovors.me page, which takes you to me all over the intertubes. Go ahead, look & click.

 ps. Here's my new book, out Sept 27. I'd like to own it even if I didn't spend a year working on it. Pre-order now, in stores Tuesday, book signings and talks coming soon. I'll list them here next week.

northward bonus

This is my favorite place to eat in Montpelier Vermont. It's  tiny and delicious, with cooking as artisanal as food can get.  If a client hadn't taken me here earlier this year, I'd never have found it.  So if you're up that way--don't overlook the little side street storefront.  Thrilled to have a shoot in Montpelier as an excuse to see what''s on their menu. Extra thrilled to do so more than once this month, as I'm back north for a corporate portrait / annual report client.  I  heart location photography.

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see more of my signs, storefronts & Hipstamatic images on my here, there & everywhere portfolio

what it takes

 

An awesome crew to make a woman's mag shoot day with sucky weather in Darien CT turn out  fine.

(L to R: Laren Clark for hair/ makeup, Susan Falzone photo asst, our good sport subject, and stylist April Spicer)

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and lots of encouraging words....ok 90% are them are "good" and 8 % are "gooooooood!"   (thanks Susan Falzone for grabbing the video)

A porch with a chair or two at the end of the day. Maybe with some wine. Just saying. (later in the week, in Montpelier VT)

and a wonderful client to test stand in for the CEO. Jazz hands, optional.

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see more location photography, indoor & out, at my website and Dripbooks

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