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