Some of the regular highlights of my New York existence are the amateur soccer games I play in Chinatown. Some fellow kickers and I started to get together quite a long time ago for a midweek pick-up game on a 7 a side pitch at the edge of Barrio Chino. The game proved to be very robust and survived the cold winters, hot summers, stretches of low popularity, stretches of too much popularity, and many personnel changes for over a decade now. Even though soccer has its fair share of whiners, complainers, braggers, spoiled brats, bullies, people teetering dangerously close to sanity, as well as people that are all of the above, we managed to keep the game clean, competitive, friendly and fair.

Out of this pick-up game a weekend league named Groupstage evolved thanks to the efforts of Matt

and Tomas.

Matt and I have been bouncing the idea of a photo shoot around for quite a while, partly to promote his league, partly to promote my business, but also to do something creative with people we like to hang around with. As a matter of fact we’ve been talking about it for so long that it got kind of embarrassing. So this November I finally got my derriere in gear and picked a date for the shoot. Production becomes much easier with a deadline.

I started off with a location scout. The shoot had to be on a weekend or an evening when people would have a bit more time, and I don’t really like working in the evening, since then’s when I do my deep thinking. Field time on weekends is at a premium with tons of leagues competing for space. We decided on a field in Brooklyn that had good turf and was big enough to claim a corner for the shoot even while people were playing. Since the budget was midgety and since I’m still a bit confused about the (not so)new NYC permit process I decided to chance it and shoot permission free.

Since I was going to take action shots, flash sync speed became an issue. I normally shoot with a RZ67 with a 1/400 sync speed. I usually like to get a little blur, since I’m kind of bored with all the full freeze shots out there (if you can’t do something, it’s usually best to pretend that you wouldn’t want to do it anyway), but at that speed (1/400th that is) it’s sometimes hard to get just the right amount of movement. My pal and fellow photographer Juergen Frank was nice enough to loan me his Phase One 645 body and I rented a new Schneider lens with a sync speed of 1/1600. Beside the lens I rented a Profoto 7b with 2 heads (in addition to the 2 packs and 4 heads that I have), and a ton of sandbags. The rentals this time came from Nucleus in Red Hook.

The right amount of blur.

I worked with Chris as my one and only assistant and we set up a grey muslin backdrop that I had stuck in the dryer twice and ironed (!) the night before just to decide that we didn’t really like the grey for this set-up. Emotionally it was hard for me to let go, since I really don’t like ironing, but eventually I agreed with Chris and we put up a black cloth.

The next problem was surprisingly sync speed. Even though the lens can handle 1/1600, we could only get it to work properly at 1/800th. I’m still not sure why. One theory is that the radio slaves wouldn’t work that fast, but if anybody can think of another explanation, let me know. Luckily 1/800th gave me just the bit of blur I was looking for, so whew.

Bad backdrop, bad sync, good assistant.

Shooting action with an unfamiliar camera proved also to be not so easy. The shutter release point was way further back than in the RZ and the ball was often already in the fence when I took the shot. There was definitely a larger than usual blooper reel:

For lighting we set up 2 7B packs with 4 heads with regular reflectors from the front and the sides. We had another 7B with 2 heads coming from behind the models from each side and there was also a bit of sunshine from high and right.

The postproduction was minimal except for darkening the backdrop, and dealing with a bit of glare we sometimes got from the backlights, because the players didn’t always end up in the same place, and removing the shadow of a light or two on the floor, and cropping, and sexyfying the color, contrast and saturation a bit.

au naturel

a la vogue

If you’re thinking about joining a league in New York and playing against some of these handsome devils here, you might want to check out Groupstage.

If you want to read a roaming, eclectic, soccer-inspired blog, with league news thrown in for good measure, check out the Groupstage Blog.

If you want to read ( and I mean read) a roaming, eclectic, mildly melancholic, soccer-inspired blog, without league news but in German ( I know you Germans are out there), check out Freitagsspiel.

If you want to see the entire Chinatown Ballers series, click here.

Hope you all have a high scoring 2012.

There’s a new gallery on my website with portraits and action shots of some of my NYC soccer colleagues. A more in depth post will follow shortly. In the meantime a big “thumbs up” to Matt Penrose at Groupstage who helped organize the shoot, posted it on his blog, and runs a terrific league, in case you’re looking for a game.

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, the Missus and I recently made a trip to the left coast of Amurrrica so I could finally relax from my mediterranean lifestyle. As usual I decided to bring the shabang (2 7bs, 4 heads, and the Mamiya RZ) on our road trip from San Francisco to LA and back.

The project I had in mind originally was to find and photograph motocross riders in the hilly desert of Southern California. It would have worked out great, if only they were there. Even though I found plenty of tracks, I could not rustle up one single rider in the time we were there. Maybe they needed a vacation, too.

So faced with the depressing possibility of schlepping (and paying extra luggage charges for) all my gear without getting anything noteworthy out of it, I sent an SOS call to my good friends Jerry and Laurel in SF. J & L worked already on several other bay area shoots of mine, one of them detailed in great detail in an earlier post here.

Laurel told me about her friend Isabella, who is a passionate mountain biker, though injured at the moment, who could hook me up with other riders. It was very short notice, unpaid, and the shoot was happening on Monday afternoon. Somewhat close to ideal conditions.

After a location scout in different parts of the city, the tourist in me won, and I decided to shoot on the Marin side of the Golden Gate. Obviously it’s one of the mostest oftenest photographed locations ever, but the beauty of the span is just too damn hard to resist. During the scout, we went to some of the military installations in that area and the one closest to the bridge had some interesting structures that provided for good riding and angles without tourists in the background. I tried out different lenses and liked the slightly abstract (safari) look I got from the 250mm tele.

On Monday we started setting up for a one o’clock shoot. We didn’t know how many models would come, but we knew that they wouldn’t have a lot of time. When three riders finally arrived an hour late, the fog rolled in. Initially I was ready to kick something small and innocent, but the fog turned out to be not really solid. Every so often the veil would lift and the bridge would appear in highly attractive half-visibility. Laurel was standing on a little hill, telling us to get ready when a hole in the mist would blow our way. When we got the timing right it looked like this:

…and when we got the timing wrong it looked like that:

The rider in this picture is Remy, who is not just an all around good guy and very skilled rider, but also the owner of the tip-top Mojo Bicycle Cafe in San Francisco. A very nice combo of bike shop and cafe.

We did a quick group portrait (Ralph, Remy, and Isabella),…

…and moved up the hill for a second location. This is how our first spot looked from above:

The second location was on the other side of the hill and had a little patch of spectacular trees. We placed two lights amongst the trees behind the rider, one head pretty much from the front and left of camera and one head from the sharp right aimed at the rider but skimming the gnarly tree next to her. The rider had to start in the background, get some speed, duck under that big branch, get photographed, and roll down a sharp little hill while avoiding the camera. The two guys went first, but then Isabella’s competitive side kicked in and she went for it, too, freshly surgically repaired knee or not, giving me the best image in this spot (and possibly the day).

It was a short little shoot, but more than justified the schlepp.

If you’re into bikes or coffee or both I highly recommend to check out Mojo if you should find yourself (or lose yourself) in San Francisco (with flowers in your hair).

Here’s a little reminder that the American Photography party will be happening tomorrow night. Since I was lucky enough to get four of my images in the book I will, of course, be there. The price of admission is 50 recession ignoring bucks (unless you’re a very important VIP) but for that kind of money I promise to dress nicely, behave well, and make you feel special (within reason).

November 10, 2011
Angel Orensanz Foundation
172 Norfolk St (off E Houston)
Lower East Side
7-11PM
Open Bar and Food

RSVP here

Yours truly (which is Moi) got invited by an illustrious group of fellow photographers, called (simply enough) the Photogroup to do a little Show-and-Tell at the Soho Photo Gallery on Wednesday evening. I’ll be showing about 40 images, alongside Howard Schatz, Michael Morrison, Harvey Stein, and Tomaas.

The Photogroup includes (watch out: more name dropping) Jay Maisel, Bill Westheimer, Rich Pomerantz, Emmanuel Faure, Jack Reznicki, David Hodgson,and Howard Schatz, fine shooters one and all. Except for Howard they won’t be showing work that evening, but I’m excited to meet them nontheless.

Hope you can swing by and have a look.

Wednesday October 19th, 2011 at 6:30 pm
at
SoHo Photo Gallery
15 White Street
New York, NY 10013
(The gallery is 3 blocks south of Canal Street between Avenue of the Americas and West Broadway, across from the Tribeca Grand Hotel.
By subway: A, C, or E train to Canal Street; #1 train to Franklin Street.)
There is a $5 cover charge to pay the rent

My good pal and office mate Myriam Babin is an interior and travel photographer, who branched out a year and a half ago into the blogging business. Her blog New York Kitchen shows her photographs depicting the hustle-bustle and set-up of New York City’s restaurant kitchens. Addressing the inherent frustration that comes from seeing delicious food on a computer screen while sitting in an apartment with a fridge that has nothing but expired condiments, Myriam decided to stage an art event called “On The Line” where you can see her photography as well as taste the food from some of the restaurants shown in the images. So what better time to have a little interview with the New York Kitchenette herself.

Dirk Anschütz: First things first: How did you get started in photography?

Myriam Babin: Originally I thought I wanted to be a painter, but after taking a few classes I came to the realization that it was not meant to be. I hated waiting for the paint to dry. So I started taking photography classes during my second year in art school and was instantly hooked.

DA: How did you get into the profession?

MB: After college I did several cross country road trips and did a photographic series of motel rooms as an art project. That’s when I got really interested in interior photography. I had a solo show of the motel images in Tucson, AZ, where I was living at the time, and an editor for German GQ happened to come to the show. He hired me to shoot some fashion spreads in upscale hotels. Then I started showing my book around and somebody from French Vogue assigned me to shoot hotels, boutiques, and restaurants in New York where I’d moved to in the meantime. I got into travel photography when the NY correspondent of French Vogue became the editor in chief of Air France Madame and brought me along. At Air France Madame I got the chance to shoot travel and interiors all over the world.

DA: What made you start your blog New York Kitchen.

MB: I live in New York and I wanted to have a project that would have me shoot interiors locally on a regular basis while giving me a visibility in this town, that I just didn’t get from my work published in Europe. The reason that I picked restaurant kitchens is that they’re utilitarian spaces that nontheless display a vibrant culture, especially in a food crazy town like New York. And of course it’s nice to get to see behind the scenes.

DA: What equipment do you use?

MB: I shoot with a Canon 5D with a 24-105 lens. I shoot the establishing shots on a tripod and the details and action shots handheld, using available light for everything.

DA: So tell me about the upcoming event.

MB: The idea is to bring the blog to life, to bring it from virtual to actual. George Uneishi from Digital Plus (a fine printing and mounting place in Gowanus, that did the mounting for The Sultans exhibit I had earlier this year. DA) asked me if I wanted to create a show for the 411 gallery, an exhibition space that’s adjacent and connected to the Digital Plus workshop. I started thinking how to create something more than just showing pictures and liked the idea of giving the viewers a chance to not just see images of the food, but also taste it. A lot of times a gallery space can be austere, or cold, or almost sacred. For this event I want to turn it into something more lively. So I asked restaurants that I’ve photographed if they would be interested in providing food for the event and quite a few were really into the idea. So during the show opening there will be food from Market Table, El Quinto Pino, Txikito, Gramercy Tavern, and Chef Gregory Torrech (formerly of Brown and Sixth Street Kitchen). Some of the food will be cooked on the premises.
There will also be a silent auction where people can bid on prints from the show or dinners at participating restaurants. All the proceeds will be donated to “Share Our Strength” a non-profit dedicated to ending childhood hunger in America.

DA: How has the blog affected you business so far?

MB: I’ve met lots of new people including my fiance, I’ve gotten several new clients who have hired me to shoot their restaurants and menu updates, and I’m in the process of launching a restaurant consulting company named Supper’d with Chef Gregory Torrech (the aforementioned fiance).

DA: Thanks a lot for the interview and good luck with “On The Line”.

411 Gallery @ Digital Plus

411 Third Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215

To RSVP for the event Click here: www.eventbrite.com/event/2275959456

While I usually get mild to severe anxiety attacks when the name Getty is mentioned these days, it is important to point out that there is a whole other Getty that also has nice images but isn’t trying to sell them for a buck fifty. I’m talking about the Getty Museum in the fair city of Los Angeles.

The Getty Center was made possible by the incredible riches accumulated by this guy:

J. Paul Getty (painted by Gerald L. Brockhurst).

J. Paul figured out a way to sell a gallon of gas for roughly three times the price of a well produced stock image and found himself almost immediately in a fancy villa in Malibu, from which he collected an amazing amount of sweet, sweet artwork. (That’s the short version of the Getty success story).

In any case, the Misses and I went on a little CA road trip recently and one of the stops was LA. I wanted to see the Getty for quite a while now and we made a bee line for it the first chance we got. It sits on a great hilltop overlooking the metropolis that has more smog than a German bar in 1985. The buildings are marvelous designs by Richard Meyer and, together with the campus, the gardens, the sculptures and the view, form a near perfect setting to view art.

There were so many great paintings that I’ve decided to focus on the portraits for this here blog post and so now, without any further ado, some personal favorites from the other Getty:

Isabella of Portugal, Workshop of Rogier van der Weyden Flemish, Flanders, about 1450, later additions about 1500

Portrait Study, Théodore Géricault, French, about 1818 - 1819

St. Bartholomew, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn Dutch, 1661

Portrait of a Bearded Man, Jacopo Bassano, Italian, about 1550

Portrait of Barbara Kressin, Unknown, Netherlandish, 1544

An Old Man in Military Costume, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, Dutch, about 1630 - 1631

Pope Clement VII, Sebastiano del Piombo, Italian, about 1531

Portrait of Alfonso d'Avalos, Marquis of Vasto, in Armor with a Page, Titian, Italian, Bologna, probably January-February 1533

Head of a Woman, Michael Sweerts, Flemish, about 1654

Portrait of the Marquesa de Santiago, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Spanish, 1804

Portrait of Anthony Valabrègue, Paul Cézanne, French, about 1869 - 1871

Euclid, Jusepe de Ribera, Spanish, Naples, Italy, about 1630 - 1635

Four Studies of a Male Head, Workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, Flemish, about 1617 - 1620

Self-Portrait, Yawning, Joseph Ducreux, French, before 1783

J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049-1687

Phone: +1 (310) 440-7330
Fax: +1 (310) 440-7751
E-mail: (for general Museum inquiries) gettymuseum@getty.edu

http://www.getty.edu

Like most photographers I’m one of the reasons for Apple’s ability to buy the entire US and still have enough money left over for a sandwich and three other countries. So it’s only natural to have a thought or two about the man who brought us all the shiny appliances some of them seemingly more central to my job now than my camera.

As probably everybody outside of Underrock City knows by now, Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple recently. There were a lot of articles written afterwards (most of them having a bit of an obituary feel) describing him usually as an innovator, risk taker, taste maker, tyrant, paranoid, micro manager, and most of all genius. I’m sure that’s all more or less true.

The one thing about Jobs though that was never really mentioned (at least to my knowledge) was the sheer fact, that he (and Apple) actually kept trying to make great products. That is that even though Apple became a massive, publicly traded company, Steve Jobs kept Apple a product-centric organization.

Most companies obviously start out product-centric. Somebody starts a business because they have something they care about, they want to built it, impress with it, and sell it. They try to create the best product they can, and find a market for it, but as a company reaches a certain size this approach becomes more and more unusual. Just about all huge companies and many medium and small sized ones are strictly finance-centric. A Detroit car company for instance is not about making cars, it about making money and cars just happen to be their products. The development of a new car means usually creating a sales item with a minimum of effort and risk that will achieve an acceptable financial return. In other words they try to figure out with how shitty they can get away with. Sometime despite a company’s best efforts a good product might come out of that approach, but for the most part you will feel the half-assedness of the product quite clearly. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, enjoy your next car rental.

Apple went through a phase like that, too. When Steve Jobs was in corporate Siberia and a finance-centric CEO was in charge (and when I bought my first Mac desktop) their company motto was: “Just as beige, but more expensive”.

What Steve Jobs did when he returned, was change the fundamental way of doing business at Apple: Don’t service the market with the least amount of effort, but try to make great products and then find the market for them. Part of making a good product is seeing the importance of good design. I still remember the many times I stared at the ugly beige boxes in my living room in non-technical frustration. I mean really, if you have to look at something all day long shouldn’t it look good?
Another thing I really appreciate about Apple these days is their customer service. Again it’s not cheap, but on the (rare) occasion that there is something wrong with a product, I can talk to knowledgable people on the phone or the genius bar (bad name, very bad name) instead of entering the idiot’s zoo that is the standard customer service at most companies. Again, they tried to make it good, which for some reason is unusual.

The different corporate approaches are also starting to become apparent at Pixar . Pixar was a Steve Jobs company that made movies and was bought by Disney a company that makes money. Pixar had a good long run of churning out creative masterpieces, because they actually wanted to make great movies. But it seems under Disney this will slowly change. There will be more sequels (less effort, less risk) and judging from the last Cars movie (a sequel), the creative decisions are made to build business synergy (that’s a fancy word for saying “Does it look good with a Happy Meal?!”).

Obviously I’m not trying to say here that Jobs didn’t care about business, because that wouldn’t be true. And also I’m not trying to glorify him and Apple because there is still plenty left that stinks with them, but the simple fact that they actually struck it insanely rich with good, well designed products, in which you can see the work of designers and engineers much more than the work of accountants, just gives me (some) hope, that more companies will become about their products again. We all know that you can mess up a company if you’re not good at doing business, but you can also mess it up if all you care about is money.

So the good news is that that image above from my Dead Indian Pass series received an honorable mention at the International Photo Awards (the Lucies), but the bad news is that nobody mentioned it to me. I had to find that out all by my poor pitiful self. The same thing happened already last year. My Giddy Up series placed second and I was definitely told about that. I even received an official certificate that I could frame or fold up and keep in my wallet in case I’d ever run into an art director. So last year I was checking out the winners’ gallery and, still basking in my own glory (even though my old coach said placing second only makes you the first loser), moved on to the honorable mentions gallery just to stumble upon The Sultans there.

I didn’t make much of it. I figured it was an honest mistake or maybe they didn’t think I could handle two successes at the same contest without my head swelling up to a grotesque size and exploding and soiling that nicely framed certificate on my wall.

But this year they did it again, not mentioning my honorable mention that is, and now I think they might be doing it on purpose.

I know, it’s not exactly earth shattering news (to be the 7th loser in the 32nd category) and they would have to send out a lot of emails (my picture is about # 1487 from the top) but still, every little bit counts and that’s why we enter contests:  To brag about winning (or being mentioned, honorably at that), to go to an editor or art buyer and proudly proclaim: I’m not just something the cat dragged in, no sir, I’m an award winner, you can trust me with your multi-dollar shoot.

For every photo contest already out there, there are 3 new ones springing up, blunting the effect of all of them.  Generally they charge quite a bit of money and it’s becoming very questionable if entering (and winning in some fashion) any of these is actually worth it, but what’s not questionable to me is this:  If you decide to have honorable mentions in your contest than you should put in the effort to let the mentionees know.  You’re welcome, don’t mention it.

You can check out the winners and honorable mentions here.

While putzing around on the Internet (which seems to be my day job) and keeping a semi-interested eye on this year’s Tour de France, I came across some old images of Eddy Merckx. Like many of you will know, Eddy Merckx isn’t just the owner of the coolest name ever, he was also the most dominant bicyclist of his generation. So dominant was he that his nickname was “The Cannibal”.

He also had a way of looking larger than life in pictures. His suffering was of religious proportions…

…his crying on the bed put every teenager to shame…

…and when he got his white socks dirty he didn’t stop at light grey.

I also think that the old guard knew the limits of effective advertising…

…while this picture above makes me want to write with a Bic pen, drive a Peugeot on Michelin tires to a BP station and drink an ice-cold Salvarani (or whatever that is), this picture of the poor (modern day) Schleck brothers only gives me a headache.

There are 28 logos between them just above the belly buttons. Imagine the horror if they were triplets! I mean, is anybody buying a Skoda because it’s the seventh company from Andy Schleck’s left nipple? I don’t think so either.

In any case let’s finish the post with a great picture by Stephan Vanfleteren of the older Merckx and let’s all have a Molteni in his honor.