I told you, I have been very fortunate lately.  My infant portrait sessions have been wonderful, all of the kids have been very calm and cooperative.  This one was kind of a reunion, I shot child life portraits of big brother a few years back, so it was fun to see him again.  He has grown so much and of course, I am sure he didn’t remember me, but we told him he did, and he at least pretended to remember me, so I felt good about that.

Here is the slideshow and a few examples of my favorite images from the infant portrait session.

I love watching the relationships between an infant and their older siblings.

Dad’s initials are the same as the infant’s initials.  This is dad’s cuff link.  It was a spur of the moment idea on dad’s part.  I liked the way it turned out.

This was a cute little blanket with a teddy bear head at the top.  A great photo to start a baby book, I thought.

Great-grandpa made the rocking-horse in the background.  This is the reason I advocate going into the baby’s space rather than going into a studio to photograph an infant portrait.  There are so many very important things that are missed.  I am always going to take important historical significance over cute portraits any day.

As I was photographing the baby on the floor, I noticed that dad was looking in with interest.  So I changed my angle and asked mom to join.  This to me is the perfect little story.

Here is great-grandpa with the boys and their respective rocking horses, both made by his hands.  I can’t think of a more important photo that I took that day.

This one speaks for itself.

Big brother was getting a bit bored of the photoshoot, so I took a few minutes to goof around with him and do something he thought was super fun.  When I suggested he climb into a pile of his stuffed animals, his eyes lit up.  I don’t think his parents knew about this photo at the time, I think it is a surprise for them.  I think they will like it.

Random hats came out.  I though this one was a winner.

There is always the photos of the small little hands contrasted with the parent’s hands, but I like to push the limits of that photo and get something a little different with some unique framing and compositions.  This requires a lot of attempts with a large number of failures because the baby is often moving a lightning speeds, but there are always some successes.

I had to wait for the crying with this little guy as well.  He was such a pleasant little baby.  But I think I got a good one.

As we wrapped up the evening portrait session, the family started winding down and turned on the FOX News Network.  Big brother (only 4 or 5) was completely engrossed in whatever Bill O’Reilly was saying.  There’s a future politician for you.

And I couldn’t have asked for a better wrap up photo than this one.  Great-grandpa and great-grandma relaxing with the baby.  You couldn’t get this photo in a studio, no matter how much planning you did.   Studios are great for formulaic portraits and perfect lighting, but they don’t lend themselves to capturing life.  And as Henri Cartier-Bresson said, ”photography is nothing, it’s life that interests me.”

I have an iPhone.  Have had one for many years.  I was an early adopter and have suffered at the hand of the contraption for the entire time.  It is a great little device, but it is a terrible phone.  If you call and catch me on my iPhone and I am out on the road or even in my office, you will most likely get dropped.  I am told by AT&T that it is due to the fact that too many people are on the 3G network so it gets overloaded and apparently randomly chooses who get’s thrown off the network.  But anymore, I am certain that it is not random.  It drops me first, then my brother Rex, and then everyone else gets in line for the privilege of being the next dropped call.

But I must admit, the iPhone (which should be called the iGadget) is amazing at everything else it does.  And one of those things is a cool little phone with all sorts of cool photo applications.  My hats off to all the programers of the applications.  I bring this up because I went to lunch with some photographer friends (Melissa Jill, Rebecca Bouck, Isaac Bailey and Kimberly Jarman) a while ago and was introduced to an photo app called ShakeitPhoto, which takes a photo in the form of a Polaroid.  It is a fun little app and even makes you wait for the photo to develop.  How fun is that?

Anyway, here is a photo taken with that app on the iGadget.

It really is quite true that the best camera is the one in your hands.

Living in the desert is a unique experience.  Forget about the 120 degree summer days and the horribly unfriendly plant life.  To me, the weather is quite fascinating.  I love the monsoon rainstorms and the lightning is fantastic.  Other places in the world have their own challenging weather situations, many much more dangerous.  There are tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, etc…  and none of these options are very appealing to me, which is why I prefer my native state of Arizona.  But we do have our own unique weather effect: the dust storm.

I was traveling back from a job in Tucson and took a back road route home (rather than the freeway).  I enjoy doing this because everything goes by so quickly on the freeway and there is no inclination to stop and look at anything (and of course, it would be illegal to do so).  So the back roads are much more enjoyable as road trips go.  On my way home, I saw an approaching dust storm and immediately pulled off the road and pulled out the camera and went hiking.  The Arizona dust storm has a beautiful effect on our world.  It creates a ghost of anything in the distance if not, it completely obscures it.  Like a blizzard, it creates a thin sketch of the landscape with little to no contrast.  I am generally haunted by vacancy in an image.  I am not sure why, but of all the photographs I would select to hang in my home, it is those filled with quiet and solitude that appeal most to me.  That doesn’t mean that I choose to photograph this way all the time, but it has the deepest emotional affect on my soul.  I think it is because that is who I am at my core.

If you are drawn to a particular style of photography, or art, and looking at that work brings you home, you can be sure that that attraction says a lot about you as a person.  In fact, weather you like a photograph or don’t, says less about the photographer or the photograph and more about you as a person.  Which is why, I think, that I get along so well with my clients.  They have selected me as their photographer based on their emotional and intellectual response to my work.  Which means that they, in some way, deep down at some root level, are like me.  We agree on what gives us peace and brings us home.

When I got home and started working with this image, I asked my wife about this image.  ”Am I off base, or is this image extremely haunting and beautiful?”

“I can see what you are attracted to in the image,” she replied, “but it’s not all that great!”

No, I wasn’t devastated by her comment.  I just decided she was wrong.  It is great, but perhaps only to me and people like me.  Remember, her reaction to the photograph says more about her, than it does about the photo.  In contrast, I think my friend Isaac Bailey would like it.  But I think we share a common love for solitude (or perhaps it is a sullen longing for sleep).  My wife grew up in the city with all of its distractions and noise, I grew up on the prairies of Northern Arizona where the only noise is the constant wind.  So, my wife’s take on this photo was an instructive reminder to me.  My wife is a good judge of a photograph, which tells me that this image is different, my attraction to it isn’t just about some other brilliantly employed compositional strategy, I didn’t make this picture to sell something or even to make a statement.  I made it because something inside me wanted to go home for a little while and relax there in the shadow of the Zuni Mountains and look over the endless flat land, smell the dust, swap stories with my brothers and wait until dark for a ride back into town.  This was a free ticket back to Bitter Springs after the long climb through The Gap to witness the brilliant view from the tops of the Vermilion Cliffs.  Sometimes photography isn’t about the subject in front of us at all.  The subject is just a catalyst for memory, a sort of psychiatrist’s couch for introspection and self discovery.  And sometimes, a photography session reminds you of who you are.

These introspective moments almost never happen while the camera is in your hands.  They come in the quiet times in the darkroom, or the Lightroom as you study the results.  And while my mantra is always about efficiency in post production. When I feel that prompting, I do my best to slow down, and examine my work closely without distractions or deadlines and find out what it is, I have been trying to say to myself.

A few more images from the series that I think you might enjoy.

Tech Talk: All of the images in this post were completely processed in Lightroom.  They were never opened in Photoshop.  Tones, grain and vignettes were all added in Lightroom without the use of any additional plugins etc.  Below is a video about creating custom vignettes in Lightroom like those you see above.  This video is also on iTunes and on the Pictage Blog.  Check out more of my podcasts at iTunes and more blog posts at Pictage Blog.

Creating Custom Vignettes in Adobe Lightroom 2.6 from Jared Platt on Vimeo.

I just received my copy of Professional Photographer Magazine where I wrote an article on burning and dodging in Photoshop.  It is a great article with a great photograph.  The reason the photograph is so perfect for the article is that it didn’t need a lot of retouching or manipulation, but still opening it in Photoshop was worthwhile.  There are so many subtle shadows and tones that can be enhanced by the process of burning and dodging, a photograph is just better once it has been burned and dodged.  My philosophy is very simple: I do not burn and dodge to change the photograph, but rather to enhance the natural shades and highlights that are already there.  You can see the final enhanced photograph below and on my portfolio web site at PlattPhotography.com.

Look for the magazine on the racks now.  If you don’t know how to burn and dodge your images in Photoshop, or if you are currently burning the actual image layer, you need to read the article.  If you are not a photographer and don’t know what I am talking about, it might get a little technical, so let’s just say, Jared wrote a cool how-to-article in Professional Photographer Magazine and his photographs are really great!

The photograph I chose to use for the article was one of my favorite images I shot on a wedding in Rome, Italy.  We woke up very early in the morning to get out before all the tourists.  This was the first image of the day, the Spanish Steps.  The Spanish Steps are so crowded with tourists and locals during the day that there is no way to take a great photo.  So we hit the them just as the sun was rising, as the vendors were preparing for the day, and the carriage operators were preparing their horses.  I couldn’t have asked for a better situation to take a beautiful photograph.  And let’s face it, who wouldn’t want a wedding portrait on the Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy?

When looking at this photograph, pay close attention to the incredible detail on the walls and the shutters.  All of these details, the stains and the cracks exist on the buildings naturally, but it was the process of burning and dodging that brought them out and made them so vivid.  This is the kind of detailed attention that every one of my “Art Prints” receives as I prepare them for my clients.  I personal work on every “Art Print” myself and each one is printed under my careful supervision.

I looked around my home tonight and still can’t bring myself to take down the Christmas decor.  It will stay up for at least another week.  So I thought I would record my favorite decorations and Christmas elements before we pack them up for the year.  This Charlie Brown Christmas Tree is a recent addition, but one of my very favorites.  I shot it tonight in available light, with just the general can lights on.  As you can see in the info detail later in this post, it is shot a very comfortable 1/250 of a second because I have my 50mm 1.2 and an ISO of 3200.  On my 5D mark II, this ISO is a bit noisy, but just fine in Black and White and on my Mark III was completely impossible.  But the Mark IV does a create job with the grain structure and the color noise is non-existent.  Now, keep in mind, I am using this practically, I am not trying to be a scientist here, but rather a practical user.  I am shooting RAW and using Lightroom to produce the final jpg you are seeing.  I have added a vignette and adjusted the color to suite my taste and I have used the noise reduction in Lightroom, but nothing heroic has been done to the image.  Basic Lightroom noise reduction has produced a file that I would be completely happy showing my clients.  The grain looks good and the color noise is great for such a high ISO.  Tomorrow, I will pump up the ISO even more and see how it fairs at 6400 and 12800 ISO.

In the detail crop you can see all of the basic setting for this Mark IV exposure and see the grain structure and look into the monochromatic background, that is where you should see the color noise, but without heroic noise reduction plug-ins (just normal Adobe Lightroom – Camera RAW color noise reduction) the file is fantastic for such a high ISO.  And I am so thrilled with Canon’s grain structure, both here on the Mark IV and on the 5D mark II.  Both feel so much like film, that I almost prefer shooting at a higher ISO to give my images a bit more depth and texture to them.  We’ve become so sterilized with digital that we almost can’t imagine a world without smooth continuous tones.  That’s why film shooters always “feel” so different.  They have grain, even in the lower ISOs.

Grain is beautiful!  Say it again and again!  Never grow tired of that mantra.

I have posted about Kevin Burdick before.  I thought I would share with you a slideshow and set of images from the album cover photo shoot for Kevin’s latest album, We Are The Walking Wounded. It is a fantastic album which you can find at iTunes or on his web site. Kevin has written some of his most haunting songs for this album.

Below are shots from Kevin Burdick’s final album cover for We Are the Walking Wounded.

It is always interesting to see the final product after it has gone through the designer. The original file was a color image with the head of the model included, and is a great image on its own. But, I love the effect of the crop on the image. There are so many things that can change an image, but I will always maintain that the crop is the hardest hitting change that can be made to an image. Notice the way the focus of the image is changed completely by the crop.  In this case the focus of the image becomes the girl’s wounds, and perhaps her pain…

Kevin Burdick's final album cover for his latest album, We Are the Walking Wounded.

… whereas the original un-cropped image focuses less on her wounds and metaphorical pain and more on her loneliness and solitude, as she trudges down a lonely road.  Leaving the image in color still allows her wounds to remain important in the photograph, but the overall message behind the photograph is very different in the original, rather than in the cropped album cover version.

The original image that ended up as the cover for the album cover, complete with the model's head.

Some photographers might be upset when the intent of their image is changed from their original idea at the camera, but I was not shooting some high brow artistic project, I was part of a larger production which had as its end goal a multi media product. This kind of a thing includes the music and lyrics of the musician and his vision, makeup artist, designers, crew and models. And everyone adds to that final creation, by bringing their artistic abilities to the table. Many times, as a photographer / director, I ask for one thing and on the way to the end, a model will give me something completely unexpected and it is far better than what I had originally intended. And I am happy to follow the new path and follow where it leads. When I am involved in a larger production, it is important for everyone to have a strong opinions, but check their egos at the door. Quite frankly I was pleased with the final image and thought it furthered the song’s message quite nicely.

Scouting the album photo shoot was the most critical thing we did.  We knew that there was an old town called Thistle, Utah that had been buried in a mudslide years and years ago, so we went out in search of the location a few days prior to our shoot and found this home buried in a bog, which had a fantastic look, and was near highway, so it made access very easy.  The only real concern was how to carry a Grand Slam Piano Body through the thickets and swamp to a small patch of dry, firm ground.  It was quite a challenge, but we did it and I think the images were a success as a result.

Kevin Burdick and his wounded entourage and his stage piano in the near a half sunken house in Thistle, Utah.

Kevin, his manager and one of the models carrying a Grand Slam baby grand body across the highway back to the tour bus after the photo shoot.

I wanted to see Kevin playing his piano in the most unlikely place. This spot worked out great.

It was an fun shoot, we all had a great time and got some cool images.  It is important for me to get out of the wedding photo zone once and a while to photograph something very different.  Shooting personal work, political events, editorial portraits and such helps me to maintain a fresh eye on the world and I find that each time I come back to a wedding I have something new to give to my clients as a result.  As photographers we have to continually practice and keep our skills sharp, and any opportunity I can find to do that in a different way, I take.

Here are a few more images from the album cover photo shoot.

This one seemed to feel like an old horror film, where the girl is running away from the monster and of course she is constantly falling and looking back.

The makeup on this model was very good. As we were shooting I thought the little lip bite was adorable in a strange way.

The vantage point on this image was critical to seeing Kevin, the wounded and the swamped house. My height was accomplished by climbing up onto a half demolished old shed. Not the safest place to be, but we didn't have a ladder. Lesson: always bring a ladder, but if you forget, do anything to get the shot...

We were very proud to have gotten the piano into this position for the shot. And my hat off to Grand Slam for making a piano body that is light enough to get it into this spot.

Musician: Kevin Burdick

Photographer: Jared Platt, Platt Photography

Location: Thistle, Utah

I can understand calling a judge, “Your Honor.”  The Honorable, Judge Brown, etc…  There is reverence for the law and for those who have studied it and risen to the true top of the profession, as respected arbiter of the law.  While there are a thousand lawyer jokes, there are  not so many judge jokes.  I suppose that is because we honor them more highly.  However, when a mayor or a congressman wants me to use the title, The Honorable, I have to laugh.  Because the last thing I would call a politician is honorable.  Likewise it is pure silliness when Senator Barbara Boxer asks that General Walsh refer to her as “Senator”, rather than “Ma’am.” Even thought the title Senator contains no inherent honor, a Senator will remind you of their title every chance they get.

Titles are a funny thing.  Doctors and dentists put MD or DDS after their name.  Some lawyers even want to get into the suffix game with ESQ or JD.  Many of these titles help us to determine who has gone to medical school, who has gone through a rigorous accounting examination process, etc.  In that respect these titles can be helpful at identifying where we should go when we are sick and where when we are in need of tax preparation assistance.  But what I can not fathom is when a photographer gets carried away in the title game as though they had earned a medical degree or had been elected US Senator and thus deserve a special title with its accompanied respect.

I recently began to read an article in a photo magazine where Photographer A was mentioning Photographer B’s workshop and when they mentioned photographer A’s name they wrote, “..when Jesica Cornbluthe*, M.Photog.Cr., Hon.M.Photog., CPP, ABI, API, A-ASP, Hon.ASP. told us,…”.

You have got to be kidding me.  First, after quoting this, my spell check lights up like a dried out Christmas tree doused in napalm.  Second, listing five enigmatic acronyms after someone’s  name only help to confuse and annoy the reader?  By the time I got through the long list of acronyms and attempted to associate them in my mind, I had completely forgotten what the article was even about.  And third, if I were able to decipher one of the obscure references, the fact that Photographer B belongs to an association to which anyone can belong for $300 a year, gives me no further information about her other than she has at least $300 each year of disposable income?

As I attempted to cross the sea of shortened titles, I fell into John Nash’s abyss and immediately stopped reading the article and started trying to decipher the hidden messages in the code of the endless string of acronyms.  I was unable to find any Nazi war plans, or US government conspiracies, but with the help of Google, I came up with the following list:

• M. Photog.Cr: Master of Photography and Craftsman. I’m not sure who gives the title.
• Hon.M.Photog: Honorable Master of Photography.  This must be better than the first, because of the “honorable” part.  Although I never liked getting honorable mentions because that meant the work was not good enough to get an award.  So perhaps it means you are not good enough to get the title Master of Photography.
• CPP: Certified Professional Photographer.  Is there a state agency somewhere that certifies one as a professional?  Wouldn’t a bank account and a photography business certify one as a professional?
• ABI: American Bankruptcy Institute.  I seriously couldn’t find anything on this one except for this.  Perhaps she is a part time bankruptcy advocate?
• A-ASP: American Association of Swine Vetrinarians.  No joke, this is what google gave me.
• Hon.ASP: I have no idea on this one either.  Perhaps this is the judge (the your honor) for the A-ASP above.

By the way, I never returned to reading the article.

Besides loosing the reader completely, here is the philosophical problem.  There are plenty of people who put an acronym behind their name, they are call doctors, and lawyers, CPAs and such.  They save lives, or at least help you avoid taxes or help you out of a nasty divorce.  But, when a photographer not only comes up with , but actually places not two, but five acronyms behind her name; that is not only arrogant, pompous and self obsessed, but begs the question: why do the honorary titles and lists of meaningless accolades matter so much?

Bill Brandt (who incidentally has no acronyms following his name) would not, as a matter of principle, talk about himself. The person is of no importance, he would say, it is the picture that is important … I have to agree with Bill Brandt to this extent: honors and titles, degrees and associations mean nothing.  What defines a photographer (as a photographer) is his or her images.  Nothing more, nothing less.  By their fruits, you will know them.  Do they produce superior work on a consistent basis?  Then we can call them great, respect them and give them honor.

Show me your portfolio and better yet, your un-edited contact sheets and I will come to know you as a photographer and as a person.  Strip away your honors and titles.  Loose the acronyms, the association cliques and the name recognition and show me your images, just your images.  To me, nothing else matters. The photograph is king.

-Jared Platt, CIP, Mn.HPD, GOP, APL, M.D., LLC, PPP, AIG, GM, BofA B.S. AZ, LR.

* The name Jesica Cornbluthe is not the real name listed in the article.