Rachel Hulin, the “Blog Stewardess,” joins Wonderful Machine

Friday March 26th, 2010

We’re excited to have Rachel Hulin join on as one of our New York photographers. If you’re not familiar, she’s also a popular, witty photography blogger and editor (A Photography Blog and The Photography Post). Her work has appeared in The Bronx Museum of the Arts, the International Center of Photography, the New York Photo Festival (which she also curated last year), and she’s also been a staffer at several magazines.

I asked Rachel a little more about her background:

NEIL BINKLEY: Reading your bio info has made me realize what a love affair you’ve had with photography, considering how many different areas you’ve been involved!

My impression is that you enjoy capturing the quiet and whimsical moments (skinny-dipping and water seem to be themes). And often from the perspective of a fly on the wall, as if the subject matter wasn’t quite aware of your lens. These seem like real moments in the otherwise unobserved life. Are these people from your personal life? And most importantly: where can I get a cool globe like that?

RACHEL HULIN: You’re right that I like to photograph moments from my own life; I generally have a camera with me whenever I’m at a family function or away for a weekend with friends, and sort of lie in wait for a moment to capture. There are beautiful and unexpected things happening all the time and I like to try to record some of them. It’s funny how these have sort of created a diary for me now; there’s my roommate in my very first apartment in New York, there’s my mom in the hot tub when she was just getting hair back after chemo.

And YES, I love water! So there’s always lots of that.

The Globe is a favorite of mine; it sits in my old bedroom at my parents house, and I can see it when I come up the driveway. I have no idea where it came from. It was recently featured in Jen Bekman’s 20×200.

NB: What kind of clients are you most interested in working for? What have been your most memorable clients, so far?

RH: I’m interested in doing editorial work and commercial work that approximates my own style, essentially snippets of every day life. Environmental portraits, lifestyle and travel imagery…. pictures of people enjoying themselves, having meaningful moments. I recently shot a portrait of an indie actress for Exit Zero Magazine, and they ended up choosing an outtake that I loved for the index image [editor's note: still waiting to be published, so we can't show it yet]. Things like that are often gratifying– when you shoot very much in your own style and the client likes the result. I really don’t believe in a major style divide between my personal and commercial work: I shoot how I shoot.

NB: What was your experience as a photo editor for Rolling Stone online, Nerve.com, Radar, and in production at Conde Nast? Did you learn anything about the business that has helped you on the other side of the contact sheet, now that you’re a photographer in your own right? Did any of those connections help, work-wise, now that you’re shooting?

RH: Oh, I think it’s made a big, big difference. It’s funny, I started out editing after working for several years at the International Center of Photography, so I had so many great, talented, fresh-off-the-photo-boat students I could hire who were eager to build their books out. Now those folks have been working for a long time, and they’re all very supportive and give me great advice. There’s a big circle of us who will assist each other and throw each other jobs. I think like any business, if you treat people well, you’ll be treated well in return.

I’m also still active on many photo editor and art buying message boards, so I know what that perspective is. And the number one thing buyers ask each other when they’re booking someone for a job is “is this photographer a nice person? are they easy to work with?”… That’s almost always the very first consideration. And I am nice! I don’t think there’s any need to put bad energy out into the world; there’s a lot of competition in this business, and it’s important not to get sucked into any negativity.

Also, I have a lot of experience as an online photo editor, and many people are still trying to figure out that landscape. The rules are a little different there, and things are faster and looser. I’m comfortable working within that structure as a photographer…

NB: How much time do you spend blogging each week, on average? Has blogging helped promote your photography? Any specific jobs that came about from that exposure?

RH: Between my two sites- A Photography Blog, and The Photography Post, I’m pretty much blogging or tweeting, or doing something every day. I think that exposure has opened a lot of doors in terms of getting meetings and being active in the community, though thus far I haven’t done a ton of self-promotion on the blogs- TPP is certainly not meant for that purpose at all.

They’ve really been to stay connected and to see what other people are up to and to have a place to chat. I do post new images once in a while on APB and the feedback is really fantastic. It’s like a little critique or salon space, which is very important to my work. It’s easy to just be a little hobbit in your living room, without any wider perspective on what you’re doing. Once in a while I think an image is FABULOUS and I post it and realize… yeah, not so much. And it also works the other way around.

[note: Rachel talks more about her blogging on Glasshouse's informative Stone Thrower blog]

NB: What did curating the New York Photo Festival entail? That seems like a lot of work! Has it led to any fine art or book projects, or opened up any doors?

RH: That was a HUGE opportunity and a HUGE amount of work! Here is the link to the show: www.mzhphoto.com/luci. I’m really glad I got a crack at curating; it was incredible to conceive of all these images together in concept, but to have them hung on the wall together and have the artists come and meet each other was pretty thrilling. It pretty much ate up three months of our lives. The women I worked on it with, Meagan Ziegler-Hanes, Willy Somma and Marla Caplan are all very active in the industry, and maybe we’ll do another show soon. We are still getting feedback; the press was fantastic.

All that said, I don’t think I’m a natural born curator, there was soooo much production involved, so I think I’m happier with online curation.

NB: Are you still interested in writing? I know that you’ve written for The Daily Beast, Photoshelter’s blog, and elsewhere.

RH: Yes! Very much so. I love writing as much as I love photography. I’m secretly working on a novel about a photographer. Though I guess it’s not so secret now that I’ve told you.

NB: Anything else we should discuss?

RH: I don’t think so- I suppose you could mention my lobster blog:  www.yourocklobster.com. So many blogs, so little time!

NB: Indeed.

Don’t forget to check out her website, too: www.rachelhulin.com

-Neil Binkley

Homemade Lenses, Anyone?

Wednesday March 3rd, 2010

Fred Licht makes his own lenses (a lot of work!) , and some of his images appear in an LA show opening tomorrow at Affinity Galleries, running through April.

Licht discusses why he decided to take on this technical endeavor in the first place :

At my website, you will notice a portfolio entitled “Proprietary Optics”. These are images created with lenses that I have designed and built myself. Some of these images are from assignments where I have been hired specifically because of these lenses. Other images are personal work or personal exploration with these lenses.

My desire to explore optics as a creative tool began with my longstanding interest in 19th century photography. Many of the images from that period have a distinct “look” (as well as other sensibilities) and I began by purchasing lenses from that period of time. I quickly realized that this was not giving me the look that I wanted and I began to research the field of photographic optics. It turns out that nearly all of the lenses that we use today (with the exception of zoom lenses and a few other formulas) were designed in the 19th century and have not really changed. I came to understand that the optical designers of the 19th century, the leading physicists of their time, had been given the task to create lenses that were, technically speaking, as perfect as possible.

Interestingly, many of the leading photographers of the 19th and early 20th Centuries then sought to counteract this “perfection” and devised techniques to make their images less technically accurate and more emotionally grounded. They did this, primarily, through printing techniques, breaking down the image after it was created in the camera, though some did this through optical means as well. I decided to take a more radical approach and alter the optics themselves. I decided to start from scratch, did a great deal of research, and began to create optics that had a more emotional appeal without concern for technical “perfection”.

I have since built four optics, all designed to work on a 4X5 camera, where each has a particular signature. The image is created in the camera, and none of the “effects” are done in postproduction. If I had more time to work with this, I would build more lenses (and use the ones that I have already made!), but this remains an ongoing interest for me.

Here’s one of his lenses:

Fred also shoots with “normal” lenses to capture his architectural and travel subjects:

You can see more on his website.

-Neil Binkley

In Hanoi This Friday?

Wednesday February 24th, 2010

If so you should drop by The Bui Gallery for their opening from 6-9pm featuring photographer Aaron Joel Santos‘ work. In preparation for the show, Aaron visited the gallery’s printer in Singapore to check up on the printing details, and in the process took some colorful and artful photos of the city:

Betty Bui’s gallery came to Vietnam, where Santos is based, a year ago after the success of her Parisian shop. She plans to open another venue in Singapore in the near future. Aaron’s work appears in the show “Days and Nights” alongside several other photographers, and the presentation sounds pretty unorthodox:

In this exhibition, the whole gallery goes black and the four photographers are each curating their own black box with their photographs. The visitor is not in an open space where he can freely circulate between the images. Here he must make his way through the four boxes, that are totally dark: dark walls, dark floors and black velvet curtains. There is nothing that can distract one from the artist’s works.

I’d also be curious to see what the photo below looks like SIX FEET WIDE, which is how it appears in Aaron’s show on Feb. 26th (also my birthday – so it’s an auspicious date). Santos discusses the printing process a little on his blog, too.

Aaron’s work on his website reflects a similar sensibility as the images above, which I find a dreamy blend of fine art, travel and photojournalism. A few from his site:

If you make it to the show, please make sure to say hi to Aaron for us in the eternally-snowbound Northeast USA.

-Neil Binkley