Friday January 27th, 2012
Why wedding photographer prices are “Wack.”
Pale face premiere: A celebration of terrible 1990s red carpet photography.
Process your own negatives…with your brain!
Taking shadow puppets to a whole new level.
Failed attempts at sexy in photos.
A last-minute stand-in for Justin Timberlake took the "sexy" out of "SexyBack." photo by Jodi Jones/New York
Facebook threatens to sue…Mark Zuckerberg?
Star Wars Uncut.
Luckily, someone had a spare Landspeeder available for the project. photo by Douglas Sonders/Washington DC
Copywriting tip from David Ogilvy.
One small step for sushi; one giant leap for sushikind.
A day at the zoo.
The camera adds ten pounds; so keep your models fit with exercise. photo by Adam Voorhes/Austin
The $42 logo.
Behind the photographs.
Photographers Update:
- Maria Luci
Thursday January 26th, 2012
When the CEO of Seattle-based gift company Compendium booked his trip to Italy, he had no idea he would return with the idea for their latest children’s book, ABC Menagerie.
While in Italy, Compendium’s CEO stumbled upon artist Elena Targioni. Taken with her beautiful, soft and whimsical sculptures, he bought one and brought it back to Seattle for inspiration. According to the Compendium team, the sculptures, “awakened a child’s sense of wonder and delight” and they knew they had to find some way to use them. So, some brainstorming later, Compendium had their latest book idea down—an ABC children’s book based around Elena’s sculptures. Once the stories were down and the animals created, there was just one thing left to do: find the right photographer to bring these creatures to life.
Right away, the Compendium team hit the internet and scoured websites for the perfect still life photographer. Eventually, they came across Hank Drew, a talented Seattle-based product shooter. After contacting him about the project, Hank was happy to jump on board and soon began the four day stuffed animal shoot.
This was the first book Hank had ever been involved shooting, but the shots themselves were fairly typical for him, “as far as making something look beautiful on white.” However, the subject matter was unique for Hank, as he usually photographs cosmetics, jewelry, food or shoes.
To get the look, Hank and his team put together a simple table top set and began shooting,
It started off pretty loose. They knew they wanted it to be really clean and simple to let the sculptures speak for themselves. I worked with the designer, Heidi Rodriguez, on how we were going to shoot them. We decided all white was the best approach. I did some testing with different types of white backgrounds and came up with this soft frosted plexi. I had lots of creative freedom and it was very much a collaborative effort.
The challenge was in styling the animals. They were very organic and needed some extra help bringing their “personality” out. There was a fair amount of rigging involved with each animal.
Behind the scenes photos by Heidi Rodriguez
The shoot atmosphere was fun and laid back. According to Hank, the crew made sure to read the “back stories” on each animal before photographing them: “we all had fun referring to them by name and not just this one or that one.”
Compendium was “super happy” with the final photos; as is Hank. The result of everyone’s hard work is a beautiful children’s book that can be enjoyed for years to come. But the best part for Hank is that he gets to share his photography with his 2-year-old. “Whenever she sees it, she says, ‘That’s Daddy’s book.’ ”
View more of Hank’s work on his website, hankdrew.com. ABC Menagerie is available here.
- Maria Luci
Wednesday January 25th, 2012
By Peter Clark
For the month of January, we created a variety of ads for the Creative Review website. Using six intriguing shots by Wonderful Machine photographers we put together some eye catching ads sure to capture clicks (see ad one, ad two, and ad three). Each of the photographers featured was nice enough to share some behind-the-scenes info on their image. Enjoy!
Eli Maier / New York
This picture is from a series I created for my portfolio. I choose milk because I’d already worked with water, coffee, beer and other liquids and never had a chance to work with milk, in spite of liking it very much (as both a substance and a product). The idea was to shoot Milk in an unusual way, hopefully showing its naturalness, energy and lightness.
Bryan Regan / Raleigh
I was on family vacation at Tweetsie Railroad in Blowing Rock, NC. They had a Ferris wheel on top of the mountain that overlooked part of the amusement park, with a graveyard in the background. This was not your normal Ferris wheel, this was the fastest one I’ve ever been on! The lines were short that day, so the kids and I rode it about five times. I must of snapped 600 images as we went around until I got the people in the tilt-A-whirl in the shot as well.
Matthew Coughlin / Pensacola
This image is part of my on going personal series of “Odd Balls” I am creating. I named this character Billy Baller. The concept for the shot was some lanky/weird looking guy that you’d have a hard time taking seriously if he were to walk onto a basketball court—and to make him look larger than life. Part of the inspiration was the character Jim Carrey played in Cable Guy from the pick up basketball scene.
Jon-Paul Mountford / England
I’m a huge fan of commercial imagery (and influenced by it as well). In this particular picture I’m directly attempting to engage the viewer by way of something they can relate to. Most of all it has to be credible, believable and at the same time fantastic (but not fantasy). I shoot everything bespoke for every picture and most of the time I’m attempting to include a small narrative. In this case, I wanted to do something that felt like the end of a journey—a sort of destination reached picture.
Sam Faulkner / England
This was part of a behind the scenes assignment for Dolce & Gabbana, that I shot in Paris. My background is reportage, not fashion, so stepping into this super glamorous world is as different to me as shooting gangs in LA, guerrillas in Colombia or narcos in Mexico. In the last couple of years I have started shooting behind the scenes films for fashion clients as well.
Ciril Jazbec / England & Slovenia
This shot was taken during a personal photo shoot with dancer Aleksandra Mokic, who lives in New York. I’m always very inspired by passionate artists. Aleksandra is one of them, and I wanted to produce a series of photographs while she is practicing her performance in the woods. I scouted this location before and came back after sunset to get the best atmosphere. My assistant also held a reflector which filled her with more light.
