Peep Show - Art Auction for Breast Cancer Research

I had the pleasure and opportunity to work with the Soffer Collective, Artists and Creatives, and IV Represents in their charity auction for Breast Cancer Research.

Two of my works of art were chosen for the show. Both prints sold and the auction in total made $11,000 for charity. Woo Hoo!! :)

Above, top left, one of my Evolution Series prints was chosen. Below that, one from my smoking series was also chosen.

Me with some of the other artists and organizers.

Much love to Japonais, the restaurant that held the event. If you get a chance, please go. The food is amazing and the service impeccable.

Water Sets...small and large.

"WATER SETS, LARGE AND SMALL"
(You can click any image below to see a larger version)

I thought I'd pass along a little of how I arrive at deciding to build certain sets. I'm a firm believer that if you think it(and it's reasonable), anything is possible. The building blocks of this are material cost, space, time, and man(or woman) power. If you have all four, you can create anything your heart desires. Sometimes we have the space and time, people to create, but money becomes an issue. This should never stop creation, it should spur invention... This first set is born of a collaboration between myself and Jersey(stylist/set designer). Jersey and I have always worked well together in creative collaborations. We were given 2 six page spreads and told we had to have certain items in the shoot, but we could shoot it however we liked. I had wanted to do a water/nature shoot for a while, so we sat down and figured out the "how" of it. We had all of the required elements: Space(my studio), $$(relatively inexpensive), time and manpower were at hand as well. So the river/lake edge set was born.
This Project was built in a waterproof 4'x4' enclosure that I made out of plywood and 2"x4"s. 1/2 of an old aerobed made the waterproofing for this one. It was sacrificed for the good of the project. :)Being on 28th St. between 7th and 8th avenue in Manhattan is a HUGE benefit to shooting Still Life. The Flower District is only one street over between 6th and 7th. If there's a rock, tree, stump, or exotic flower that I need, it's in one of the shops down the street. We went shopping for 4 different kinds of rocks/shale and a variety of vegetation that would give our set the look of a beautiful water paradise. We shot this over 2 VERY long days. Going from set to set took a while to break down and build up, but we both enjoy the building/creative process, so it was more fun that work. Especially when we saw the results of the work, we were very pleased. This was the one and only "dry" set shot. The look of the Sun in the background, for those interested in technical details were 2 bare bulb Profoto heads firing at full power on their own packs. I used this a few times during the shoot to simulate daylight shining through the vegetation. There were some outtakes and things we tried, but ultimately got left on the cutting room floor. I had this idea that dry ice would make for a bog-like place(think Empire Strikes Back with Yoda). Unfortunately, the dry ice just didn't work in well with the other sets to make the story Gel together. Trust me...I'll find a use for the dry ice yet. :) Sooo...it got cut. But dry ice IS fun. :)

That's me having fun with the dry ice. Very Yoda in Empire Strikes Back, No? Jersey working on jewelry placement.
The final result...with raindrops added by spashing from the sides and a high shutter speed to capture the "stop action".

So I was thinking about what we accomplished with a 4'x4' water set in studio... What if I could create a larger set with more water? Could I do a fashion shoot with men or women? The answer is an unequivocal YES. :)

For the next set...

Zink Magazine was doing their first Men's Issue scheduled for publication in April of 2009(shot in Dec 2008). I thought this was the PERFECT time to try out my "human" water set theory. The product set above got me to thinking that it was possible to do this larger set in studio. It was December and really cold, so doing anything outside on the roof was completely out of the question. In Studio was the only way...I went to the hardware store and bought enough 2"x6" boards to creat a 12'x12' enclosure. I made sure that they had enough screws in them during construction that they would not break under the pressure of about 400 gallons of water that would eventually be in the enclosure. Then Costco comes into play with the 2 - 20'x20' waterproof tarps that I used to waterproof the enclosure. I really had NO idea prior to doing this shoot whether the tarps would be completely waterproof. The box said water resistant. wow...this could be REALLY BAD. I was fairly sure that it was, but only found out after the fact that it worked perfectly...lol. No worries...everything was fine. :) I have to say that Jonathan, our model, was a trooper throughout the whole thing. Even with keeping the studio very warm in the air, it's impossible to make 400 gallons of water warm. The first 30 or so was hot, and then it was just a losing battle. So Jonathan had to get brave the cold every outfit. It didn't help that everyone was spashing cold water on him to give the shot movement. Other artists on set:
Kim Baker: Grooming
Roy Fire: Wardrobe Stylist
Vincent: Splasher, Art Direction.

Back to the set for a minute...here's a shot of the set once I put up the background for the left photo(above). We could get most of the clothes wet, but there were some that we couldn't, thus, I shot it within the set below. So that was the Zink shoot... The last water set is Very Small. I was shooting Diamond earbud covers for the classic white IPOD headphones. These were made out of pink diamonds and retailed for around $50,000. What celebrity wouldn't want them?? ;) This was shot in a little bowl, maybe 1/2 inch of water. I used some wax to keep them upright(standard for jewelry shoots). To get the movement of the water, I used a fan blowing softly. That's all for now....

I have some more projects in the works that I'll share when completed. You can see more of my work at: www.jamesweberstudio.com

Meeting of the Minds II - Financial Times

I thought I'd start off this Meeting with something that I've been putting some time into recently....financial and investing sites.

I don't know how everyone is dealing with the new economic realities, but I think we could all be more cognizant of the financial markets and what it means for us individually. As of last year, I didn't have a 401k or any savings plan that would grow over time. I started researching the stock market and individual stocks, just familiarizing myself with what makes the stock market tick.

Like it or not, many of us are freelancers and will not participate in any plan given to us by an employer because we're self-employed. So...that leaves it up to us to go out and see how we can grow our money for the long term. I've come across and will share below, some of the resources I use to gather information and manage my money.

The combination of all of these tools can be very important to making something of what money you do have to invest. Even if it's $50/month, that can be a good start to your retirement savings.

Sharebuilder.com
Sharebuilder.com is a resource that will allow you to buy stocks or part of stocks for your portfolio. I say part of stocks because you can by a little or a lot. For Example, say google is at $400/share and you'd love to get into google, but you can't afford even one share. You can set up your account to buy a monthly amount of the stock and it will slowly build a position in the stock without having to buy it one share at a time.

You can buy shares for $9.95 a trade, which is fairly standard. Note: Always buy using Limit orders. NEVER buy using Market orders. You'll get screwed...bottom line.

But what do you buy? How do you know what stocks to get into? The next six sites get into doing the research that is needed to make an educated buy.

TheStreet.com
TheStreet.com is one of the many news sites that I check into from time to time. There's this great technical analyst, Dan Fitzpatrick that does a daily chart analysis on three stocks every day. The segment is called, Three Stocks I saw on TV. It goes over a few stocks that were reported on Fast Money and Mad Money by Jim Cramer. If you ever want to find out what is in a chart and how to buy on technical analysis, Dan is your guy.

He also has a weekly newsletter and a frequent contributor on TheStreet.com's "Real Story" with Frank Curzio...
It's a daily podcast that I listen to frequently that has great guests and dissects the market's movements of that day. It's a great way to learn while retouching. I'll work on a project and learn about the market at the same time. :) You just go into itunes, click on podcast, and search for "Real Story". It'll come up. It's free and on every day. They start the podcast around 3, and you can download it around 5:30 or 6pm.

Morningstar.com
MorningStar.com is THE research tool to sign up for if you really want to get great information and analysis on any company that is publicly traded. They give some information for free, but they charge a yearly fee for their indepth analysis. I would highly recommend this site if you get into researching and buying stocks yourself.

www.stockpickr.com
Stockpickr.com is a great site that many individual investors use to get great information on buying stocks...which stocks are good, which aren't, and why.

TheMotleyFool.com
Another great research website...good articles and timely information
.
So how do you track the stocks that you own? How do you get the real-time stock prices?

Yahoo! Finance
Yahoo Finance is the tool I use to track my portfolio. For $12/month you can sign up for "Real-Time" Stock ticker. This gives you the price by the second during the trading day, which is 9:30 am to 4pm. This is important because the stock prices available on most sites give you the information for free, but with a 20 minute lag. A lot can happen in 20 minutes. If you're buying stocks yourself, you need a site that gives you real time stock prices so you're buying with current information.

The portfolio manager is free. You just put in your stocks, price you bought, # of shares, and it will track your portfolio. It's also a great way to, "play" in the beginning. Try this exercise...

Give yourself $50,000 to split up into 5 stocks(a good number of stocks to own and helps to remain diverse). Do some research into companies that you have an interest in. Go onto Morningstar, read about the companies, and then follow them. When you put them in your portfolio, you can click on them and see their charts, news, and much more info. You'll see every day how your purchases did. If you like it, then maybe you can start putting real money into use.

So...that's a little synopsis of what I use to invest for the future. It does take some time to do this right, though. Experts say if you're going to manage your own money, you should spend an hour a week/stock to stay informed. That's why investing in more stocks than 5 can be tough to keep up on.

Chicken Wing Break!!

Ok, we're back...nuf about money, since not many of us have enough of it right now...lol.

One more that's a little about money...invoicing software. Now this particular one is designed for Photographers, but they also make one for designers/graphic artists as well.

www.blinkbid.com
What I like about Blinkbid is it has a built in usage creator so it makes the legal part of our estimating process nice and easy. 30 day free download if you'd like to give it a whirl.

www.audible.com
I mention Audible.com because I think of it as two things. One, it's nice when I'm in an especially heinous retouching project to listen to a good fiction story to get me through it. Two, it's like continuing education. When I started researching stocks and the stock market, I downloaded many good titles to give me an introduction to investing. Some of the titles I recommend are below:

Rule #1 : A great book that shows you the rule #1 investing strategy. What is rule #1? Don't lose money. :)

Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World

Jim Cramer's Stay Mad for Life: Get Rich, Stay Rich (Make Your Kids Even Richer)

Warren Buffett Speaks: Wit and Wisdom from the World's Greatest Investor

I'll post up the rest of the evenings topics later on as I gather the information put out by the other guests. I'll be posting it here, so just check back in a few days for the rest of the evenings news.

James

This is the 1st quarterly Creative E-Marketing/Advertising/PR Meeting of the minds.

This is the 1st quarterly Creative E-Marketing/Advertising/PR Meeting of the minds. No animals were harmed in the execution of this meeting.

Welcome to the 1st Meeting of the Minds. I love services like Linkedin, facebook, etc....but those are only online. Everyone types their answers. I've wanted to create a community of creatives that would like to share information about how to best use this vast space we call the internet. It's funny, but I sometimes only look at sites that I've bookmarked. I fall into a pattern of looking to the same sites, the same information all the time. The truth of the matter, is that there are sites going up every day that are putting up new information and new technologies. In my own bubble, it's really a lot of work to keep up with all of these very informative and cutting edge sites/applications. So, that's why I decided to start a quarterly Physical meeting(SHOCKING!!!) of creatives to share what we've all learned collectively. I think I keep pretty good tabs on what is going on, but there is SOOOO much out there. I feel I can educate others on what I know, but I would love to BE educated on what others in my and related fields know...

SOOO...myself, my friends, and creatives came out tonight to put out some helpful information on what programs/services/websites/tips/tricks, etc...we can all use to better get ourselves and our work out there.

You can click any of the images below to see the full size screen capture.

I've listed below some of the things that I started off the evening with. These are some websites, tips and applications that I use and think that most people would find helpful.

www.linkedin.com

Linkedin is of course, a great resource that most of us know about, but the tools within the site that have just come online recently can make it a better resource for you.

New application using Google Docs for linkedin. http://docs.google.com/
-Google Docs, (add .pdfs and other files from google docs...great for showing your portfolio). The only issue with this one is that you can only show one presentation at a time. You have to sign in to google docs, create a presentation, and then publish it. Once this is done, it will show up in your linkedin profile. In my example below, I exported a .pdf I had made of my work.


www.slideshare.com
- Slideshare is another .pdf application program for Linkedin, but what's nice about this one is that you can have many .pdfs loaded and shown all within Linkedin. You have to sign up with slideshare.com to use this service. There's really a lot to this service beyond it's linkedin partnership, you should check it out...

- Blog Link: If you have a blog, you can now link it to your profile so it shows the three most recent blog posts. Just another way of adding to your profile and adding to your audience so more people view your blog.

- Also, for Linkedin, join groups and answer questions. It leaves your profile at many places where relevant people can randomly find it if they are browsing the groups. It's important to really get into linkedin and find relevant groups where you may be able to network with the kind of people you want your profile to be seen by.

Just from my experience, linkedin referrals to my website tend to view more pages than the average viewer. I think this is because linkedin viewers are more likely to be business minded and interested in researching you or your company, so it's a website you should try to explore and get the most out of.

-

Google Analytics: ( www.google.com/analytics/ )

Speaking of Visitors/page...how did I know that my linkedin viewers viewed more pages and spent more time on my site? Google Analytics. It's a wonderful free service that tracks all kinds of information. Where people come from when they view your site, time on your site, which pages they viewed, what city/state/country your visitors came from...the list goes on. Suffice it to say that if you have a website, you should be tracking your traffic somehow. This is a great tool to better understand where your traffic is coming from and which websites are giving you the best visitors. If you have e-commerce(which I don't), that's a whole separate tracking issue that Google Analytics tracks that I'm sure would be invaluable to your business.

www.swiftpage.com

Swiftpage.com is a service I use for tracking the effectiveness of my email campaigns. Used correctly, you can really glean a lot of information from your email campaigns from when the user opened it to whether or not they clicked on your links(and how many times they clicked on your links).

ACT! by Sage (Contact Management Software): www.act.com

ACT! is a very good contact management program that, when used right, is an amazing tool. It takes a little while to get used to, but is another tool that I think is needed for anyone trying to keep track of hundreds, even thousands of contacts.

Swiftpage.com has a plugin that works with ACT! that makes sending mass emails out a breeze. You must have an account with swiftpage before doing this. Using both of these programs together has been very important for me to keep up with my data. It's not a program for the feint of heart though. Prepare to spend some time with it, as it is a VERY robust program. Like most tools of it's nature, the more you put into ACT!, the more you get out of it.


http://www.vimeo.com

Vimeo is a service I found recently through Rob Haggart's blog, www.aphotoeditor.com (a must read!). I checked it out...added one of my videos and it looks to be a great service if you're a videographer, or have videos that you'd like to get out there. You can also create video groups(communities). I found one that was interesting. It's a collection of videos made on the Canon 5d Mark II. http://www.vimeo.com/groups/5DMarkII/videos. I'm personally looking to get the camera, so it's nice to see the capabilities and what others are doing with it.


http://www.facebook.com
.I'm not going to go into this one too much except to say that if you're not on here, get a profile, invite your friends. It's strangely addicting and an excellent tool to keep in touch with friends. Just don't accept everybody that adds you...becomes a mess after a while of people you don't care about. I give people I don't know my myspace.com address, which I don't really use that much...lol. ;)

http://artefactstudio.com/
The vertict is not out on this service yet. I just signed up...looks to be one of the better self-publishing book services out there. I'm going to do a book with them and test out their services. I'll post more after I've done my book.
http://knol.google.com/k
It's a new service by google where people write about and publish whatever they like. A quick search here on how to make a photography book produced this article by Kent Ninomiya.

http://knol.google.com/k/ehowknol/how-to-get-a-photography-book-published/3a9e8hggiw4cz/259#

http://www.stumbleupon.com
Ok, this is just a kind of fun site that you can check out from time to time. You pick a category, say, "photography", click "Stumbleupon", and it takes you to one of the sites randomly. You can upload your own site to be in their listings as well. Effective, I don't know, but it's one of those things that once you do it, it doesn't take any upkeep. Sometimes a fun site to visit and be surprised at what's out there...

Ok, so that's what I wanted to put out...below is what some of the group came up with.

Chris Miggles, a great photo assistant, if anyone is looking for one(http://www.chrismiggelsphotography.com) added these nice websites:

http://www.borrowlenses.com
A great resourse if you want to rent/lease lenses for long term use and don't want to buy them...check it out. Sounds like a great service.

http://www.dripbook.com

Dripbook offers its worldwide community of professional visual artists the easiest, most stylish way to display, promote and distribute their portfolios online. It is also a very powerful networking site for many different types of creatives and resources in various industries. With the option of a premium account it allows you to have various ways of sharing your work by exporting beautiful flash websites, slide shows for HTML inserts, and export individual books as widgets you can place in blogs, and other Web sites. When you change your books on Dripbook, all your widgets, website etc. will change, too. It's an easy way of managing your website fast and efficiently, without the headache. For an example of dripbooks final product check here www.chrismiggelsphotography.com

James thanks for the last night again man it was a lot of fun, and a good learing experience. So good to have so many creative people in the same room at the same time.


We discussed a few other portfolio sites....

http://www.aphotofolio.com, This is the service I use. You can see an example at my site, http://www.jamesweberstudio.com. I Love the site for it's ease of use and large imagery. Administration is very well designed and intuitive. It has thumbs that come in from the side if you like browsing images like that. The entire left of the image when clicked will take you back, and clicking the right side of the image takes you to the next one. Very simple navigation. I hate those sites that make you click in the bottom right hand corner(some magazine sites). Customer service is quick and very accessible. I'd highly recommend it...also, they just added video capability to the sites. Look in the behind the scenes section of my site to see it(also can go full screen).

www.viewbook.com

www.foliolink.com, looks interesting...


I'll be updating the blog later with comments from James Sullivan on:

- http://www.1prophoto.com : A great resource for Photo Assistants and Digital Techs

- http://www.trucemag.com : An online magazine for photographer's personal projects...let the art flow...

- Search Engine Spider techniques on how to utilize keywording better in your html files so that your ranking goes up faster in google and other seach engines.

Robin Zachary of www.robinzachary.com
brought to us, www.delicious.com, a social bookmarking site.

Hey James-
Thanks for all the great info Tues. nite.

So Delicious....www.delicious.com....

It's a great way of collecting your favorite blogs and websites in one place and also sharing with others who have similar interests.

You can bookmark sites you like, categorize them by keyword and then through the delicious network others can see what you have bookmarked and check them out. You can search on a keyword through the entire delicious network too. It picks up a lot of blogs in addition to websites. It can suck hours of my time when I get going! But it's been a lot of fun traipsing through cyberspace with it.

I have my bookmarkes organized according to type of stylist resources for my blog www.propcloset.com.

My account is under Robinbeth so you can look up me or any other user if you have their username.

I enclosed an image of my page. I'm sure you can do so much more with it than I even know. You can have your bookmarks visible on your blog and visitors to your blog can click on a delicous icon to bookmark it that way too.

You can write comments in your bookmark to so others can see.

That's all for now!

Robin


Charles Flores, Creative Director at Jordache Jeans will be adding some great insight to what he sees from the client side...and in some cases, what he would like to see.

So that concludes the first, "Meeting of the Minds". Look back later to see the last few presentations as James and Charles add in their Articles. I'll be gearing up to do another one in two months. If you'd like to be on my list to be invited to the next one, email me at james@jamesweberstudio.com and I'll put you on the list. The more the merrier. I'd love to get more people out that want to share their thoughts on our industry and things that can make the journey a little easier.

James Weber
http://www.jamesweberstudio.com
917-882-3724

Dark City, Top of the Rock - Christmas night 2008

My girlfriend, Maria and I decided to take in the sights of the city Christmas night in search of some new material for Dark City. We started out going uptown to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. We got off the bus one stop later than we had planned and ran into the two scenes below, including Radio City Music Hall. It's such a NYC landmark that I had to shoot it.


Right after this shot, we saw the sign for the "Top of the Rock", 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Maria and I have never been, so we decided to up. My big tripod created quite the scene there as they have this tripod rule where you can't extend it outward(like normal) to use it for time exposures. It would have to be used only like a monopod(or just extending the legs downward). This makes sense in a way as when it is busy, you don't want a bunch of photographers to be hogging the space up on the top...but that made it harder for me to get these shots that would normally be so easy to set up.

This shot, below was on the 68th floor. You can see the viewers on the 67th floor viewing area below and the wonderful expanse of city beyond.

If you're wondering what that blurry part is on the right hand side, it's the gap between the glass(2" thick). The glass has about a 2.5" gap in 4' sections, so you can actually stick your camera lens out of it, but for this shot, I liked the composition of it even with the glass distortion.

This is shot through the glass showing the city below and the reflection of the people behind us, which happens to be this dancing light show(which is multi-color and feeds off of people moving near to it).

This is truly one of the best places to view Manhattan if you're visiting New York. I've been up the Empire State Building so many times with other friends and family, but I've never seen such an amazing view of New York. Unlike the Empire State Building, which has these nasty metal grates that separate you from the incredible view...the Top of the Rock has completely unobstructed views of NYC. Floors 67 and 68 have glass between you and the view, and 69 has nothing, only air and the view of the city. It's truly amazing. Even though there was that nasty tripod rule in effect, once we were on the 69th floor, there was this older security guard that saw I was trying to shoot some of the scenes with my tripod and said, "It's Christmas, go ahead and use it". I thought that was so nice(and needed).

So we were fairly frozen, especially my fingers, being out using the camera and tripod, so we had enough and went back down to the bottom. Maria and I had thoroughly enjoyed our experience at the Rock. So it was off to see the tree and the Saks 5th Ave windows...

Finally, what we had gone to see that night...with a little interlude...

Trying to get an interesting shot of the tree, I didn't shoot it with the building behind it...I wanted a more raw aproach with some atomosphere behind it. So, here you have it. The tree did seem smaller this year. I don't know if it's the economy or not, but the trees of past years have been much taller. Swarofski Crystal is responsible for the star and led lights on the tree.

So we moved onto Saks Fifth Avenue, which is a stone's throw from the tree. Beautiful as always, it has a wonderful snowflake light display.

Maria wanted to see the displays at Saks 5th Avenue, so this was just a nice scene I captured when she was looking at the windows...

Lastly, this is an interesting scene that I saw when we were waiting for the bus to head back home. There is this old woman in her fur coat with a pile of garbage next to her. It just seemed interesting that here is this old woman, here with her fur coat, alone on Christmas trying to catch a cab home. Sad in a way...but a New York story none the less...

Dark City continues...

"Dark City" continues with a few new additions due to my friend and frequent stylist, David Widjaja. These were shot from his rooftop. It's quite an amazing scene, as there are not any buildings right next to his so it gives a nice panoramic view of the city from within the city. I plan on doing more of the building, "looking down" images in the future(like shot 2). My hope is to get a shot of the empire state building(sticking the tripod/camera out of the grate and looking down the building). It's a scene not easy to get...we'll see if I can pull it off without the guards at the top giving me trouble...

Thank you again, David for showing me your wonderful rooftop. :)