Heads Up.

This is a very utilitarian post. Every now and then, I a client asks me for a sampling of the headshots I’ve done and I never have anything easily set up to show.

To that end, here are a few.

A financial guy. A “suit” in the common vernacular.

An aspiring actress. This wasn’t one she wanted, but I liked it a lot.

A local university professor and author. There was actually a post about this here.

From a fashion shoot, but hey, it’s her head.

An actor/activist I used to work with.

Another “suit” but you may remember her from here. She has a lighter side.

And finally:

Another local model.

Makin’ My Mark.

Joe over at Brainchild Collective is a swell guy. He just does stuff for me from time to time.

“Punch,” he said, a couple of weeks ago – he calls me Punch – “You need a logo.”
“Uh, okay.” I said, not knowing what it should look like. “What should it look like?”
“Leave it to me,” he said.

So I did. He came up with this and I’d been trying to figure out the best way to use it that didn’t involve buying a lot of stationery and custom-printed stuff. I decided a rubber stamp was as simple as I could get. I can cut paper for cd inserts and I can stamp it on the back of prints and I can augment it with my own handwriting with whatever information I want. This was the best use.

Sweet, huh?

The Weather Down There.

Some shots (plus post!) from a recent kids’ fashion shoot.

With No Interruption of Service.

The more astute of you may have noticed that the blog has a new URL.

For those of you who didn’t, here’s a link to start using: blog.punchphoto.com.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Feelin’ Filmy.

In keeping with a trend I hope to maintain, I’m gonna show you another person whose work I like and I’ve “spoken” with via a few messages on flickr.
This time it’s Luciano Noble, but he’s better known as Lou O’Bedlam. Mister O’Bedlam started off working with Polaroids but has come over to the Dark Side of film given the ultimate demise of that medium. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t ever use a digital camera. I’m jealous that his kung-fu is that good.

His stuff (he told me himself, so I know it’s true) is almost always shot with natural light. In itself, that’s a feat. In fact, that’s the main reason I toyed with digital in the first place: to be able to light places that would otherwise be dark is a lot harder than one might hope. Lou (I suppose I can call him that) says he does it with reflectors and a lot of patience.

It’s because of his work and that of Alicia J. Rose that I’ve been working so much with Polaroids myself recently.

His blog is here. I’d suggest giving it a go because he links to a lot of other people whose work he digs and tends toward the very cool. I added several folks as contacts on flickr after going all the way through his archives. And if anyone wants to buy me that book up there for Christmas, I’m an equal opportunity receiver of gifts. (grin)

Random… For Some Strange Reason.

I was giving my students grief about saying that things were “random” and for describing (all too often, I might add) things as happening “for some strange reason.”

I have stuff set up to shoot soon, but for the moment I have to pull out some old stuff.

For some strange reason, these random shots are all I could come up with.

Go figure.

a new president.

Clearly every blog in the country will be saying this, so here’s the short version:
America’s next president will be Barack Obama.

Flat Out Jealous.

Witness the coolness that is Alicia J. Rose:

This is probably my fave of all of her stuff.

In the current issue of Rangefinder magazine, there’s a cool interview with her that details how she makes some of the magic you can find if you wander over to her website. If you’re interested, they send the magazine to folks for free, just for asking.

I originally “met” her (in the way that you can meet people over the internets without ever touching skin) when I discovered that she was one of the principal photographers for a band I really like, The Decemberists. What’s amazing about the pictures she crafts is that they’re all done on film. Have a look at her flickr stream. Who on earth is that prolific using a plain old Hasselblad anymore?

I’m over the moon about her work and catching her in a publication that I read was an added bonus.

Hence my jealousy. (grin)

Disappointment.

There’s a song by the Cranberries that I think of from time to time. And before you start in on me, know that one of my colleagues came into my office once and, upon hearing Delores O’Riordan’s voice warbling from my speakers, asked if there was a 16 year-old white girl trapped inside of me. That is to say, I’ve heard it all before. I know what kind of music I listen to and I’m comfortable (mostly) with who I am. So there.

That’s all beside the point though.

I went today to see a lecture sponsored by the Department of Photo and Film by a Swedish gentleman named Simen Johan. Although I’m no longer a student in the department, they still send me invitations to hear guest lecturers when the come to campus. Often, the lectures conflict with my class times or feature people whose work doesn’t appeal to me so I don’t make it. Johan’s work was, at least on the surface, really very intriguing. I was convinced he’d have some interesting reasoning behind his images.

His presentation was simple and to the point. He didn’t have any sense of narrative to go along with the images he showed and didn’t elaborate much on what his process was like other than to say that he “used computers” and “a lot of Photoshop was involved.” It seemed as if he hadn’t really prepared to actually talk about his work and that he might have even been surprised he had such an audience.

I can say resolutely that I’m a bigger fan of his digital manipulations than I am of his sculpture. I would truly have liked to hear more about the process for his later work — the bears, the bison, and even the sheep and the stag — regarding the image capture and the slow process of crafting the almost otherworldly images. He almost got there after a couple of questions but didn’t quite finish.

Overall, I liked what I saw, I just wish I’d heard more.

It’s Like Knowing a Secret.

In an effort to show my students what a blog is / oughtta be like / acts like, I offered up this one. It’s the closest to a long term assignment that I’ve ever come.

I explained that mostly there are pictures but from time to time, I actually craft words (given that I am kinda good at it) and put them here for everyone to see.

I’ll be curious how many of them are paying attention. It makes me grin, just a little — like the little girl in this photo. She was standing around being a precocious 5 year old while I was trying to shoot her mom. I figured it was easier to incorporate her than to tell her to get lost. She stood there for the first shot and it looked almost right. I pulled the bear out of one of the suitcases (You never know when a ratty old teddy bear like FooFee here is gonna be a good prop.) and handed it to her. Still not right. I got her to smile and put her hand over her mouth and this little bit of stolen goodness came out. It looks completely random but is painfully posed. Go figure.

The door to that house isn’t yellow anymore either.