Life and death…spring is beautiful everywhere.

Always with us, often on our minds. Life and death juxtaposed.

Life and death at a cemetery in White Plains, New York 4-24-09

A Salute to American Small Businesses (and Pizza!)

As Americans get robbed by corporate treachery, and as our taxes get funneled to bail-out the destruction caused by monumental greed, it is still small businesses that are at the heart of the U.S. economy.

Small business owners are hard-working people many of whom provide local services.  And they are everywhere, from small towns to large cities.  They have no hidden agendas; there is nothing underhanded going on.  Your hard-earned dollars are exchanged for their hard-earned services.  It’s the proverbial “win-win” situation in its most basic form.

We can all live, and live much better, without “upper echelon” corporate criminals and the politicians that enable them to prevail.  But we can’t live without the small businesses that provide us with so many essential products and services, many of which, quite simply, make us very happy.  Like pizza!

New Yorkers will argue that the best pizza in the U.S. is made in NYC. Among themselves, of course, New Yorkers will argue about just where in NYC that pizza is made. Manhattan? Brooklyn? Queens? Staten Island? Jersey, even. Well, you can find great pizza pretty much anywhere in NYC (even in Jersey). But the best...that would be the pizza in The Bronx! Pictured here is the pieman from this Bronx native's favorite pizzeria in all of NYC.

Tough women don’t need guns

Step aside Sarah Palin.  Toting a machine-gun, hunting down wolves and bears in the Alaskan wild doesn’t make a woman tough.  (Especially not if she’s shooting from the air.)  How about this for tough?  Being surrounded by cranes, tractors, all sorts of heavy machinery, building materials, debris, and endless vehicles passing within feet of you at high-speed.  Women highway construction workers are found everywhere in our country, even in the “elite” Northeast.  So?  What’s your definition of tough?  Shooting wildlife from an airplane for sport?  Or, putting yourself in harm’s way building and rebuilding our nation’s roads?

A New York woman on the job, rebuilding our roads

Machinery designed to build, not kill

Highway construction worker keeping things safe

Portraiture

In a portrait you can see a whole world.  Every person is an amazing story.  After the lighting, composition, and all the technical details are in place, the photographer only then begins creating the portrait.  When the right note is struck and the ambience enjoins subject and photographer, the subject will emerge.  And the portrait is made.

Marjorie Borgia in her home posing in front of an oil painting of her by her late husband Cesare Borgia. Margie has enjoyed a long and successful career as a professional cellist. As an 80-something senior, she still plays the cello regularly and is a member of the Yonkers Philharmonic.

Marjorie Borgia, then and now. Music and art transcend time.

Marjorie Borgia, a brilliant and seasoned cellist, performs privately for me. Can I get any luckier?!

Summer

Standing at the water’s edge looking out at the sea, sunshine and ocean breeze caressing you.  That’s summer, and that’s what I live for during the other three seasons, nice as they all are in their own way.  Nothing beats summer time for me.  From June through September, whether I’m on a corporate location photo shoot in midtown Manhattan, or at my computer knee deep in post-processing, my mind and my spirit are where the woman in this photo is…on a beautiful beach soaking up my favorite season.

Soaking up the summer along the beach at Fire Island

“The Birds!”

Pacific Coast Highway, Sonoma County, driving south to San Francisco.  Along with all the gorgeous, dramatic scenery you pass, you pass right through Bodega Bay.  That would be Alfred Hitchcock’s Bodega Bay, the location of all those angry and vicious birds pecking people to bits.  The famous schoolhouse and church seen in the movie are still standing, and stopping by is a must-do.  Taking a few hokey snapshots is, too.  Here are a couple of mine from my recent trip out that way.  A little departure from corporate photography and stock photography.

Location Photo Shoot

Corporate photography is often about creating custom photography for a company on-site.  With an entire studio set-up cleverly packed into several photo cases (with wheels!), a photographer and at least one assistant arrives at the company’s location and hopefully is given a room or other space which is uncluttered and large enough for the set-up.

Here’s my assistant Therese Ryan in various stages of tweaking the light set-up we just put together during a midtown New York City corporate photography shoot yesterday–

Everything tweaked, here’s Therese ready to pose for a test shot–

The result, portrait of an actual photo subject from the shoot–

What a great business, photographing people.  Every person, every face unique.  To make everybody you photograph look their best is a challenge both artistically and technically, but very rewarding for both photographer and subject.