JSP Visual Week In Review ~ 05.12.24
This is for all the mom’s out there.
Celebrating Mother’s Day here in the United States so this one is for the moms out there.
I took a quick trip up to Northeast PA to see my Mom. Just an up (yesterday) and back (today) to pay a quick visit. Mom’s really really good, happy to have my sister (who lives in Alberta, Canada, visiting for a couple of weeks.
Also took the time to do a few portraits of Mom…and to have my sister shoot one of us together. That’s my old bedroom window on the close right – where I could lay on my bed and watch the change of season happen on the mountain that less than half mile from the window. Swoyersville is an old coal town in Northeast PA that’s nestled at the base of the Endless Mountains
And, of course, I had to do some new portraits of Mom. This one is an outtake…but a fun one. If you ever meet my mom, you’ll notice she always has a smile on her face. So, capturing her here laughing at something I said while posing her, well, this is how I often see her in my head. Always with a smile.
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there…but especially my mom, Frances!
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This Week’s Links:
What I Read This Week: Still working on a few…The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy; The Lobster Chronicles by Linda Greenlaw; Finished City of Glass by Paul Auster. Also dipping in and out of The Letters of Martha Gellhorn.
What I Watched This Week: Season 4 finale of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Just because.
What I Listened To This Week: Jackie Gleason – Today’s Romantic Hits / For Lovers Only Vol 2 on vinyl
Favorite Photo I Saw This Week: Via @SeanTucker on IG
Sing, Gabriel, Sing: War photographer Gabriel Micalizzi on being in tough spots via Inside Hook
Scene Stealer: The Map of Scenius via Austin Kleon
From the JSP Archives: May 10, 2011, talking about mothers that day, too. A time, too, before my youngest son was born so I was a dad of just 2 then.
“I feel like goals are quite counterproductive. They give you a target, and until the moment you reach that target, you are stressed and unsatisfied, and at the moment you reach that specific target you are aimless and have lost the lodestar of your existence. I’ve always tried to see everything as a process.” ~ Steve Albani, RIP.
Photobook: Walkers In The City: Jewish Street Photographers of Midcentury New York
Remarkable book.
In this time of rampant anti-Semitism, as just denounced by President Biden (while another ex-president/presidential hopeful [just writing that makes me throw up in my mouth] sat in a courtroom listening to a porn actress detail his extramarital liaisons and subsequent hush money scandal = what a surreal script of our times) this book is an incredible book that look at a number of photographers, Jewish photographers, that have lent so much to the rich tapestry of documentary photography in New York.
In the middle of the twentieth century, good cameras became smaller and lighter, enabling street photographers to roam alleyways, ride elevated trains and subways, and stroll beaches in summertime to capture daily life with urgency and intimacy. Walkers in the City showcases the distinctive urban vision that working-class Jewish photographers produced with these new cameras on New York City’s streets and in public spaces. ~ Cornell University Press
If you have the time, here’s a 1-hour book talk interview with Deborah Dash Moore. Some really great insight and perspective.
Ugh, I had more photos of elements of this book that I liked, but I just can’t find them as they are deep on my camera roll. Take my word for it…head to the library and try to find this one. Great read and look!
© Mark V. Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography | All Rights Reserved 2024
JSP Visual Week In Review ~ 05.04.24
Do you shoot with your phone over your “regular” camera sometimes?
If so, is it because of convenience or the phone now does “just a good a job” as your regular kit?
I read an Instagram Story post by Sean Tucker this week and he noted how sometimes he forgets what a good job his phone camera does.
I don’t know if we forget about that, but if you’re used to carrying around a camera – even a point-and-shoot – you may not use your phone camera the same way you do your kit.
There are some times when I feel my phone camera actually DOES do a better job of capturing some scenes than my regular Canon or Fuji.
Well, maybe not better, but comparable to.
You know the scenes I mean…the quick snaps to visually journal a scene…. That plate of carbonara in front of you. A shot of a group of family or friends where you don’t want to make a big production out of pulling out the regular camera.
Even walk-around street photography images…though these are less so for me; the camera on my Samsung Galaxy is slow to focus and I’d miss the scene. Prefer my Fuji XT3 for that.
But, last weekend, after my daughter’s Jazz On The Town event at school, I shot this with my phone and am really happy with it.
Why my phone? Because…I need to be agile and quick and not “make a scene”. While Liv is usually cool with me setting up and doing portraits, this was after the performance, her friends were around…but I still wanted a quick portrait. Here’s another, which ran small in last’s week VWIR.
Yes, super vertical. But, in this case, my phone camera got the job done and I’m happy with the results.
How are you using your phone camera? As an afterthought or a forethought?
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This Week’s Links:
What I’m Reading This Week: It was weird…the other night, I just started reading New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster. I was about 25 pages in when I saw a NY Times alert on my phone saying Auster had passed away. I didn’t know much about him before starting this books, but in the wake of his death, I’ve read a number of obits and listened to interviews that NPR’s Fresh Air podcast re-ran. Interesting fellow. I also started The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy which I’m really liking. A slow -burn.
What I Watched This Week: Nothing but baseball at night.
What I Listened To This Week: A Disgraceland podcast about Garth Brooks. Jake took us down one path and then…screeeech….like a needle being dragged across a record…took us down another. Fascinating and fun.
Favorite Image I Saw This Week: via @carol_highsmith_ameria
In Theaters Soon: The trailer for Lee about fashion and war photographer Lee Miller.
Au Natural: Zooming In On Nature’s Wonders via Photofocus
Getting Lost: Danny Lyon on Photographing A Lost New York via NY Book Review (FYI paywall)
We Can Be Heroes: How Platon Captures Everyday Heroes via Time
Don’t Have A Leica, Dude: The Simpsons…photography fans? via Zach Dobson Photo
“To be an artist you need a lot of sincerity, which comes at a very high price,” Serge Gainsbourg
© Mark V. Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography | All Rights Reserved 2024
In The Field: Baseball Portraits With The Hamilton A’s
It was late winter.
I hadn’t really shot anything of note – except for some concert stuff – in a while.
And I really hadn’t done any planned portraiture in a really long time.
I was getting edgy to create something…so I started planning.
For the last couple of seasons, I had wanted to do portraits of my son, Matt’s Hamilton A’s baseball team.
Because this is his travel team, they don’t set up a “picture day” like the the Rec League does. Maybe because I love the light in their dugouts in the evenings.
But, we (me and the Coach) were never able to get it together.
Then, in February, I started to see these Instagram posts from photographers doing photo days with Major League Baseball players at Spring Training…like Kelly in South Florida, and Daniel Shirey and Scott Paulus and also the athlete portraits my friend, Saed Hindash, shoots.
I started to think of cool portraits with the Hamilton A’s team, using some inexpensive, simple Neewer battery power 160 LED panel lights and green and yellow gel sheets…their team colors…that I taped to the light panels.
Since it was February, and still too cold for them to be on the field, they were doing indoor practices in this converted warehouse. As you walk it, there’s all this exposed brick and really high ceilings with fluorescent lights. And pigeons flying around.
Honestly, I’ve been looking for an excuse to shoot in this space for a long time – all the metal and exposed brick looks really cool. There’s also a roll-down door that I used for a background too (that first pic of Matt).
For the metal door photos, I was using a Neewer 16″ Beauty dish on a Neewer Vision 4 strobe. It was set to the lowers power and I really liked the look it was giving me.
This team is a really good bunch of boys, tough to make them look, well, touch. But I didn’t want smiles from them and followed the art direction well.
And, while I had plain gray backdrop with me, I opted instead to use the exposed brick – which is painted white – as the background for the portraits using the green and yellow gels. Not sure how the gels would have looked on with metal door, but I didn’t want to keep switching set-ups, so beauty dish one, light panels on the other.
This one, of David, is one of my favorites of the set that I shot. Feels like this was exactly the lighting balance I was going for, plus you can still see the eyes.
BTS
The set-ups were really simple, I had each boy for about 5 minutes – practice was going on so I didn’t want to keep them too long. I shot this on a Sunday and what was great was that me, Chase and Matt went to the facility on Saturday for me to do some tests. It was chilly and pouring down rain when we went, but the scouting helped me figure out what I wanted to do before we even go there (Chase was my assistant for the shoot, while Matt was practicing. He also shot the BTS photos.)
Actually, there was another spot in this area where I wanted to shoot the boys – near these long plastic curtain doors. But, in the heat of the shoot, I totally forgot to do a third set-up, even though I had written it down. Looked like it could work well. Lesson learned: Always look at your notes, kids!
Could have been a cool option.
Another test shot the day before
To further achieve the look I wanted, I did use the Nik Analog Filter set in my post-processing. There is one called “Color Cast” that gave the me the tones I really wanted.
To put a cap on this….I made prints of the boys to give to the parents….and I gave them out last night at practice. While the boys liked them….the parents really liked them. It was fun to hand over 11×14 prints for them to enjoy. I used MPix Photo Lab to do the printing this time around, and they looked amazing.
And here’s a quick video I shot after I laid them out on the bleachers.
The Neewer equipment I used was great, and the Canon 5DMIV did all the heavy lifting. I had a whole other set of things I wanted to do…green eye paint. LED lights on the bats…but in the end, maybe simpler was better. I can tuck those ideas away for another project.
Let me know what you think in the comments!
© Mark V. Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography | All Rights Reserved 2024
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