Portrait
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Through The Lockdown Glass
As a portrait photographer, my business has pretty much stalled. As has my social life.
Being locked down due to COVID-19 is taking a toll on all of us in pretty much every way imaginable. I miss work. I miss my friends. I miss being alone because I choose to be alone. I miss being stuck in my house with my family because I choose to be stuck in my house with my family. I think I even miss traffic.
This whole crazy situation has really made me appreciate how important routine casual interactions are. On the flip side, I’ve also realized how foreign isolation feels — especially from those you’re used to seeing often.
I love random encounters with random people. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a simple smile from a passerby or sympathizing with the dude behind me at the grocery store who’s pissed off because someone’s slow at self checkout. Being around people keeps me going. It fuels me. And now, it seems even making eye contact is off limits.
So, back to my friends. What were they all doing? How were they all handling this order to shelter in place? We had some group Zoom “happy hours,” which was honestly something I really looked forward to, but I wanted to see them in person.
I decided I would visit them while engaging in proper social distancing. I started driving by their houses and texted them to come to their windows or doors when I showed up. Some got fair warning, others not so much.
When they appeared, I popped out of my car door (or sunroof) and snapped a few shots.
There wasn’t much conversation but just seeing familiar faces in person and shooting their portraits seems enough to keep me sane for just a little bit longer.
Check out this project in the media
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Portraits of Anna
Anna, a brilliant mathematician and alluring model came in for some portraits earlier this month. We shot in three locations within my studio’s building, a balcony, stairwell and hallway. I kept it simple with a single light/ beauty dish supported on a large rolling boom stand.
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fast faces.
these portraits are from a headshot booth i set up and ran during a biomedical convention a few years back. about a thousand people stopped by over three days for a quick and easy portrait. I was recently scrolling through the folder containing all the images and was mesmerized by how each face shape morphed into the next. You don’t realize how bizarrely different yet the same we all appear until you see something like this.
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Sofia
I was driving around North Philly last fall and caught a glimpse of this striking spot. The contrast of the colorful decaying leaves against the rusted metal and industrial facade was the perfect setting for some moody fashion oriented portraits. I sent my model, Sofia, a snapshot of the location and she told me had the perfect dress to match the tone. The building is owned by Verizon and I had a feeling that putting in a request to shoot on their property would be either ignored or denied. So Instead of asking for permission upfront, I figured we’d ask for forgiveness later. I set up two lights on rolling boom stands, one equipped with a beauty dish and the other I honestly can’t remember ( i really need to start documenting my behind the scenes setup) There was no opening in the fence so we had to lift everything and everyone over. I figured we’d have a few minutes to work before someone came out to yell at us and at most i’d get to fire off a few test shots. After and hour and a half of shooting various set-ups in different spots we wrapped without incident. I love discovering random locations to shoot. If and when I come across some place interesting I generally take a picture, write down where it is and upload it to a folder on my computer. I’ve got about fifty places I still haven’t gotten to yet. Any volunteers wanna step in?
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this is halloween.
I took Juniper to the palmer cemetery in Fishtown, which dates back to the early 18th century for a spooky halloween portrait. Perfect setting. plus she had a ball running around the rows of graves.
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Julia Cherniavskaya
A few weeks back winter stepped aside and for a short moment, we had a glimpse of summer. I seized the opportunity to step out of the studio for some warm weather portraits.
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Tatiana From Armenia
earlier today i took my students the self dubbed “village photo crew” on a photo walk to the open kitchen sculpture garden in kensington. when we arrived at the intersection of lehigh avenue and american street i noticed a woman wearing a brightly colored overgarment. she clashed with her surroundings and caught my eye not because of what she was wearing but because she was clipping plants from the landscaping outside of a rite aid. i’m a strong proponent of guerrilla gardening and the re-allocation/ propagation of city plants but rarely do i see others participating in this exercise. i walked over and asked if i could take a few pictures of her. she gracefully took my hand and introduced herself as tatiana from armenia. when i asked why she was taking the cuttings she peacefully said she was going to place them on her altar to allah. she then said she would be happy to pose as she’s often asked which she attributed to her “historic look”
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Brian Mueller Reccomends A Carrot A Day
I recently shot some portraits of screenwriter turned developer Brian Mueller for Apple’s Developer Insight series. Brian’s a cool dude with an awesome story. He’s the guy behind Carrot. Check it out.
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Muscles
This was my second photoshoot with fitness buff James Baik. Our first shoot took place last Spring and focused more on fashion. This time he wanted to take a less modest approach as he’d spent pretty much all summer/fall in the gym. I could probably follow his same regiment and still gain no muscle. We decided on a darker more dramatic tone for the images and ended up with this.
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Snowday Cinemagraph
I’ve been wanting to play around with making a cinemagraph for a while and was looking into picking up Flixel but decided to experiment in photoshop. luckily we had a giant snowstorm pass through which provided the perfect opportunity. I dusted off the ol’ 7D for the job as it was wet as hell outside and didn’t want to compromise the primary gear. I don’t shoot much video so after a quick refresher I convinced the inimitable Fabricio Rodriguez to take center stage in the middle of clearfield street under a well placed street light. Looked purdy and we shot about ten seconds of footage which was all we needed to complete the process. Took one pass at this PHLEARN tutorial and produced this result. Thanks Mr. Nace.
