Old School Photography

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Perhaps the most meaningful personal shoot of the year comes every December. We sit down and talk about what the year meant and how to capture that in a photograph. How to express where we were at that time. I shoot the annual Ann Street Studio holiday card photograph in the same format each year, on a 4×5 film camera with black and white Ilford film.

This year’s image crossed continents twice from start to finish. It begins in France, taken in the afternoon light of Provence with flowers I bought at my little town’s Saturday farmer’s market. After I framed the flowers just so, I used two magazines to manipulate and block the natural light of part of the background and on some of the arrangement while the shutter stayed opened for 30seconds. I shot somewhere around 15 plates with variations on lighting and exposures then packed them up and brought the sheets of film back to New York with me to be hand processed at LTI.

As always, I took the processed film and contact sheets to my favorite darkroom lab in Boston which I pilgrimage to every winter and spent two days hand printing the set of 200 on Ilford warm tone fiber base paper.

I brought the final 200 back to France with me and spent days by the window light addressing each one, some with added personal notes, to be mailed out all over the world. It is a long process but one that brings me great joy in a digital age. To give someone a physical object you made with your heart, soul and abilities is like having a small piece of me in your home. The sense of pride I feel when people send me photos of the image framed in their home makes me feel grateful that I am a photographer. However, for the most part I don’t know what people do with them. I like to imagine someone using one as a bookmark to later discover again years from now. I like to fantasize a child or grandchild will come across one decades from now in an old box and feel a connection to me or at least to who I once was. They don’t have to know me personally but I hope they know my work.

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Behind the Scenes: Amazon Fashion Cinemagraphs

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A behind the scenes look at the Cinemagraph campaign we created for Amazon Fashion’s partnership with the CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund designers to make their designs available to consumers like never before.

The Fashion Fund was created as an initiative to support emerging American fashion talent where one winner is awarded a cash prize to continue to grow as the future of fashion. Created in the fall of 2004, this annual competition supports the most promising talent which has been proven with previous winners including Alexander Wang and Proenza Schouler and launched the careers of designers like Prabal Gurung, Marchesa, Rag & Bone and Rodarte.

The competition between the final 10 fashion fund finalists is all documented in a series on Amazon called “The Fashion Fund” and now Amazon is extending their support to these designers by making their pieces immediately shoppable through social media and on Amazon.com.

The 10 designers:

Baja East || Baldwin || Brother Vellies || Cadet || Chromat || David Hart || CG || Gypsy Sport || Jonathan Simkhai || Thaddeus O’Neil 

They asked us to create 10 Cinemagraphs, the most we have ever set out to achieve in a series, one per each finalist. The inspiration for the set was a designer atelier but tweaked with specific details to become tailored to each of the designer’s personalities which we gathered in interviews before the shoot. Below is a behind the scenes look at a few of the designer’s sets and cinemagraphs from the series as part of a 2 day shoot at Hudson Studios shot by our friend, photographer Scott Brasher.

Follow along on Amazon Fashion’s Instagram to see all 10 unfold and be the first to instantly shop the looks of these great new designers! 

Amazon_Fashion_03 Amazon_Fashion_04af04Above Cinemagraph with Patricia in an open-back evening dress and Stina in a polo top and flounce skirt by womenswear designer Chris Gelinas. Continue reading “Behind the Scenes: Amazon Fashion Cinemagraphs”

Behind The Scenes

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For the past couple of months Kevin and I have been working on the video for the Tiffany CT60 launch that took place last Thursday at the Tiffany 5th ave. flagship store. The concept to the video was to shoot four dynamic and influential New Yorkers and take a glimpse inside their New York Minute.

I love authenticity. It’s very important to me to have everything mean something especially when it comes to shooting real people and talking about New York City. We started the process by extensively researching each of the four guys and making a list of specific questions to ask them about their history with the city, their approach to personal style and how they spend their time in New York. We interviewed each of the guys for about 45mins, taking notes on their favorite places to eat, shop, walk, live, and why, then wrote outlines for the videos based on their answers. We shot them at their favorite time of day in NYC which serendipitously built out a perfect day from morning to night. We had them move through the city the way they do on their own, and had them style themselves how they wanted. This was their story, after all. How we choose to spend our time, much like style, is a very personal thing.

We shot everything on the RED Epic with Canon’s new CN-E 35mm T1.5 lens,  used a Cinevate Atlas slider for moving shots, Gitzo tripod for stationary shots, and then hand held in between. When shooting Marcus Samuelson at his Harlem restaurant Red Rooster we used a Litepanels Astra light for illumination in the kitchen shots and a California Sunbounce reflector at all other times. The best new addition to our workflow was using a 7″ SmallHD field monitor. Unlike a large monitor which we use in studio, this allowed me to be close to both Kevin and the subject and made directing while being on the move so much easier.

Here a a few behind the scenes shots taken over the course of our 4 day shoot by our studio assistant Diana and some of the stories that come with shooting such dynamic personalities on the streets of New York…

Below, shooting Alexander Gilkes at one of his favorite restaurants Sant Ambroeus in Soho. For one of Alexander’s “in my New York” shots, we wanted to show him at work as an auctioneer. I have  never been to an art auction before and this one at Phillips was particularly exciting as he was auctioning photography. Everyone from Avedon to Penn and more contemporary photographers like Hiroshi Sugimoto. A high part of the evening was this Helmut Newton selling for just shy of a million dollars. Also, Alexander is married to fashion designer Misha Nonoo, a friend, CFDA incubator designer, and creative collaborator

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Behind the Scenes at SAB

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Last week was a really exciting one for us both creatively and culturally. The past month we have been working feverishly on a series of cinemagraphs we made with the School of American Ballet we shot back in February. It’s always been a dream of mine to shoot ballerinas as I so admire their lines, pose, discipline and beauty of dance. As you saw, the cinemagraphs were displayed in the David H. Koch theater of Lincoln Center’s Metropolitan Opera House. These cinemagraph portraits showed the art of ballet caught at it’s best eternally. The perfect pose, spin, point, there to study and be inspired by its beauty. In addition to the cinemagraphs, on this day we also shot the staged dance sequences for the video.

Just to give you some behind the scenes at SAB’s shoot, we kept the setup pretty simple. The inspiration was based on Eadweard Muybridge’s studies in motion from the history of photography. We wanted to study the ballerina, the form, the movement and motion. We decided to put them on two 12×12 Solid black backdrops and asked the dancers to wear all white. With two large Arri M18 HMI lights we pointed up bouncing the light off the white ceiling illuminating the dancers from above going for an effect of a large skylight for a classic and natural feeling. After tapping down a black rubber floor, the stage was set.

We shot six of SAB’s students in one of their dance studios at Lincoln Center. One of the great things about SAB is how they use live piano players, which we had for our shoot, and hire the most passionate teachers. On this day we worked closely with Suki Schorer who directed the dancers throughout the shoot and tweaked their hands or feet positions with every shot.

It was such a joy to create around a thing of incredible beauty like in ballet. After every dance sequence I would applaud and smile from sheer joy… until Suki told me to stop clapping because that tells the piano player to stop playing and nobody wants that.

Here is a peek behind the scenes shot by our assistant Diana Ola~

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Behind the Scenes

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This past spring we finished a project two years in the making, a Cinemagraph series with the luxury jeweler Chopard. We shot at Old Westbury Gardens on Long Island about 45mins outside Manhattan on a late spring day with an amazing team of people: Kelly Framel styling, Ashlee Glazer for makeup, Justin Woods for hair, and Anthony D’Argenzio with props. Here is a glimpse behind the scenes with some snapshots of the day our assistant captured as we put together my favorite series of Cinemagraphs yet, a concept of six characters’ lives all playing out in that calm moment before the storm…

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From the in-depth interview about the making of House of Secrets Cinemagraphs:

Cinemagraphs: what do they mean to you personally?

Jamie: Cinemagraphs to me are living photographs, a moment in time that can actually breathe, allowing your senses to experience and delight in the small instances that make up our lives.

Kevin: A Cinemagraph is a challenge to create something that is visually striking with the added depth of time. It’s seeing life in a way you can’t see through other mediums.

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From our Chopard Collaboration interview:

The House of Secrets is such a singular endeavor that one can hardly keep from wondering how it was born, what came in its inceptors’ heads and sparked this delightful fantasy.

Jamie remembers: “Kevin had this moment of inspiration where he thought: what if we made a mini-movie based on these six characters, all coming together at an estate for an event, but it’s the moment before the party, the seconds before all their worlds become entangled into a ‘House of Secrets.’ House of Secrets to me is a vignette of this singular moment in time, shared between these six characters whose lives are complex, intertwined and destined for each other. It is about the complexities of our lives and relationships. It is also about how defined we are visually by what we choose to wear: this alone tells the story of where we are at this particular time in the character’s lives, what their emotions are.”

“I was immediately influenced by Chopard’s involvement with and love of the film industry,” Kevin relates. “I remember sitting in their suite in Cannes, looking around at stills from movies framed on the wall, and thinking how perfect it would be to tell a very cinematic story. To get to that point I developed a story, characters and even an opening scene for the unfinished movie that is Chopard Secrets. Each character carries their own secrets, and some of these are shared secrets. The love between two characters might be completely hidden from another, and that secret will have a tremendous impact on their lives. The scenes in House of Secrets show only that moment when individuals are carrying their own secrets, before their storylines intersect and drama unfolds.”

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Chapter 3: GHANA

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What an experience Ghana was. Waiting for the clouds to part outside the airplane window for my first look at this new land, I was filled with so much anticipation and, to be honest, a bit of anxiety for the unknown. Though I have been to North Africa and South Africa, they are quite Westernized, so I didn’t know what to expect from the Gold Coast.

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What we found was a truly eye opening experience: a different way of life, a different-looking way of life. The locals were quite beautiful. Void of many Western fashions, it was so refreshing and inspiring to see many of the men,  women and children wearing homemade African garb in bright colors and beautiful silhouettes. In the city of Accra where we landed, many of the day-to-day items were sold via an army of human concession stands walking up and down the lanes of traffic: water, socks, fruit, gum, bleach, nuts, towels – you name it, they sold it. The women would carry these large metal bowls on their head with the supplies stacked in giant pyramids, it was truly an amazing sight. Beautiful.

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DAY 1: We drove out of Accra along the coast to discover this region of Ghana and take in some of the cultural history that has affected humanity so greatly at such sites as Elimna Castle. I felt very fortunate as I hunched through the “door of no return” looking out on the aggressive ocean waves and the horrific fate of that horizon line for so many. To be able to tie together the motherland to the ancestors that I met only a few months earlier in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, the largest import city of slaves in the West, was very humbling and culturally fascinating.

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Chapter 2: AUSTRALIA

the wonderful world of Oz

When people who follow our Instagram met up with me upon our arrival back to the States the first thing they asked was, how long was the longest leg of the trip?… let me tell you:  thanks to an unexpected train strike, it started with a 7 hour car drive from the French coast, 3 hours at the airport, 8 hour flight to Dubai, 3 hour layover, then a 14 hour flight to Sydney. Somewhere over the Indian Ocean I woke up and had absolutely zero knowledge if it was day or night, yesterday or tomorrow. So I did what I had to do – had a glass of champagne at 32,000 feet.

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Day 1: There are perks to jetlag- we found ourselves wide awake so early in the land down under we were able to enjoy the sunrise over Sydney Harbor. One of the motion cameras Kevin packed was his RED Epic which he brought along for a beautiful time-lapse, a continuation for the video from France. Choosing the equipment to bring for a project like this took a lot of thought and planning. What is mobile and light enough to carry for hours? What will give us the ‘power of nature’ beauty shots? How much can we bring before we start getting weighed down since most days are travel days? I ended up choosing to bring the Canon 5DMark III for stills at ingredient moments and most of the behind the scenes images you see here. I also brought along my Leica M which I used in “off” times just hanging around my neck ready to capture candid moments along the way. I love the Leica for this because it’s small and lightweight and unobtrusive. I choose, however, to shoot the main ingredients and stories with the Mark III because it can shoot, focus and process images much faster.

We chose a Canon C300 as our primary camera and also used it to capture audio from our lavalier mics. The C300 turned out to be a perfect companion to the Epic, especially for it’s light weight and low profile and, with Canon mounts on both, the ability to swap lenses between the two.

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After Sydney woke up before our eyes we got busy with the girls on the hunt for two more natural Origins ingredients: Peas & Bamboo. Australia provides a perfect climate for growing these two edible plants, which makes sense feeling how incredibly mild and warm it was for what would be their “winter”.

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Chapter 1: FRANCE

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I remember my first experience with Origins, the natural skincare brand, as a kid back home in Texas. It came to our local mall and I used to go in at least once a week to try all their products. I found that being in the store made me feel like I was already the world traveler I dreamed of being…from there I carried with me an understanding of the earth and how to naturally take care of your skin like a true sophisticated woman. Fast forward 15 years and here I am, sitting high up in the Manhattan sky with the team from Origins talking about doing just that- making a video discovering some of the origins of their natural ingredients for their new Plantscription Anti-Aging Power Serum all around the globe. It was a dream project!

Origins found two talented and knowledgable co-hosts for us to film on this journey together – Kim Mance , a travel writer, and Candice Kumai, a three-time cook book author, health journalist and TV personality.DiscoverOrigins_France_02

The first leg of the trip would take us to France with an always welcome overnight stay in Paris (obviously). We headed up to the Brittany coast to the Côtes-d’Armor, an area along the northwestern edge of France famous for its pink granite islands and rocky shores, where we found our first ingredient: Crithmum. I’ll let our two co-hosts Candice and Kim tell you more about that special ingredient here.

At times, filming in this charming area of France, I felt like I was living in a movie. Every window had the perfect explosion of flowers, all the locals were smiling as they walked home with their daily baguette, and the shops carried only the best local cheeses and produce…and a few other treats. It was a simple way of life where everything was just in its place. Taking photographs and making videos has led our lives to really amazing places and experiences. Here are a few behind the scenes images of our journey to France and the discovery of Crithmum ~

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Day 1: Getting to know the girls and their beauty routine.

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Backstage at Ralph Lauren

RalphLauren_Backstage_02Shooting backstage is quite the interesting experience. I mostly try to stay out of the way of the photographers with their large flashes, cords and assistants who are always reaching for the models, calling them by name, fighting other photographers over space. Instead I look for quiet moments, beautiful moments, something in-between. I try to see what is intimate… a thought, a glance, a gaze. I always hope to see the beauty not only in the clothing, especially when you are talking about Ralph Lauren, but also the beauty in the person I’m photographing. This collection in its simplicity and understated color palette was a true look at luxury textiles and in confidence, which made it wonderfully amazing to study the collection up close and with more ease than in the brief shining moment we get on the runway.  RalphLauren_Backstage_03 RalphLauren_Backstage_04 RalphLauren_Backstage_05 RalphLauren_Backstage_06 RalphLauren_Backstage_07 RalphLauren_Backstage_08

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Behind the Scenes

Telling the story of telling a story…

When we started brainstorming a new Lincoln Motor Co. project, we wanted to challenge ourselves in a new way and explore storytelling through video. It’s important as a creative to always be moving forward, pushing yourself and your abilities. Unlike past videos which have been more free form organic vignettes or allowing the subject to narrate the story themselves, this one was totally new for us (PS – This is what Kevin was talking about in Question #20!). We wanted to create a micro film, a little story and a fun way to unveil a new car as it was being unveiled for the whole world.

We started with just that thought – unveiling. So how can you uncover or discover a car creatively? …why though fun trickery, of course! How cute would it be to create a fantasy where the designer of this new car was a young, handsome creative living in New York and his date stole the plans to his work with the coordinates of the car’s secret location so that she could steal it as her own?! A calculated date, a thief, a chase through Manhattan, she’s got it!… but wait! a twist! He had her all along…

We had never gone to this place before but we had to try… we had to know if we could make our dreams a reality. Here is how it played out and all the funny tidbits you did not see in “The Lincoln Job“…

Fittings ~ The day before the shoot the stylist tried on the clothing options with our two stars. In our pre-production meetings Kelly thought based on the storyboards it would be cool to style them inspired by “The Thomas Crown Affair“, which we all loved.

Above: Kelly plays around with the idea of suspenders for the “at home scenes” before he throws on his suit jacket on the way out the door in the chase.

Below: The creative director Maury Postal and I watch on as we go through all the styling options.

Finishing touches… above Kelly thinks about that last something to complete the look and asks our creative director to borrow his Warby Parkers which got instant cheers once Amadeo put them on and it was done!

All in agreement on the final looks.

He wears:

Club Monaco suitNordstrom white shirtWarby Parker glassesFlorsheim shoes, Kevin’s suspenders from our wedding 

She wears:

Robert Rodriguez dressOrla Kiely coatChristian Louboutin heelsKaren Walker sunglassesPlukka Earrings, Plukka + Phillips House Rings

Setting the game plan ~ Kevin began to explain to our two models Amadeo & Michelle the storyboards for what we would be filming the next two days. We are all laughing in this photograph because Kevin, being distracted by our starlet’s dress, said “So it starts in the bedroom”, when he meant to say it starts in the living room!

~ The apartment scenes ~

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Storyboarding Lincoln

Here at the studio, there’s a lot more that goes on than just the magic of capturing life through camera lenses. The meetings, creative brainstorming, contracts, preproduction, shooting, social media, and post production are stages we are constantly rotating through. This past weekend, we have been preparing for part one of a two day shoot with the latest model from The Lincoln Motor Company, being shown to the press for the first time today. I can’t say exactly what we are up to just yet, and since we usually tell the story of behind the scenes, I thought it would be cool to give you a little glimpse into the details that goes into the PRE-production, before the cameras begin to roll.

Typically on projects where we need to communicate visuals with a client, to tell them  how we see the images and story flowing in our heads, Kevin sketches out our ideas scene by scene, in this case, for storyboarding Lincoln. This allows for every moment to be accounted for, every scene to be looked at and studied for prop needs, lighting diagrams, and lens choice in order to achieve the desired effect. These storyboards also provide an organized shot list for the day because when you get going with a million moving pieces and crew it’s easy to forget some of the details you had previously envisioned.

Last year we told the story of Lincoln throughout time and this year we fast forward to modern day… and a whole new world.

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Notes from the Photographer

We shoot a lot of beautiful women here at the studio. The funny thing is…as I get older they seem to always stay the same age. What is it about youth we are so attracted to? When Kelly texted me images of these three incredibly beautiful, real women, women with businesses, with a history of past love affairs, and with a real friendship out in Montauk as a casting option for our Beauty + Truth story, I was in love.

Their grace, their confidence that only women who have lived a little can possess, their intelligence and peace were so inspiring I could have shot them for days. I could do a photographic study around the lines on their faces…the lines of life are signs of living, and isn’t life a beautiful thing?

As a photographer you have all the control. Whoever is put in front of your lens has to put complete trust in you: how you light them, how you make them feel when you’re shooting them; the crop, what you show and what you leave out; the direction, mood and feeling you set.

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The Making of

We first started the conversation with Saks Fifth Avenue’s team that curates and runs their social channels including 10022-shoe, their NY-centric shoe-focused Tumblr. You never know with new clients how much control they are going to want or how far they are willing to go. Kevin and I are always looking to do new things, always trying to expand our work and continue to evolve Cinemagraphs, the new medium of photography we pioneered over two years ago.

So let’s talk about the creative process. Their team was completely open to our ideas, whatever we could dream up. When everything is a possibility, it can be hard to find a jumping off point, so our first action was to spend sometime at the SAKS shoe department. We walked in circles, letting various shoes spark our imagination. Oh! Look at this Louis Vuitton heel, can’t you see a girl at a train station surrounded by LV luggage and steam from the engine rising in these?! LOVE. We did this for a couple of hours. We never limited ourselves to what was physically and financially possible, we kept our minds free to form the visions and worry about the rest later. I always take iPhone pics of everything throughout this process so we can reference them later when we come back to the studio.

Next step: finalizing ideas. We ended up with about 11 strong concepts once we had brainstormed back at the studio, looking at iPhone photos and sketching out ideas, talking them through and pushing them further. Our studio assistant then began researching, pulling reference imagery and text relating to our themes. These ultimately go into the client presentation so that they may have a clear visual of what we are dreaming up, and get an idea of the color, mood, emotion, and story of the final image.

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