WAPF + NTK + Jewlicious

In the past year and a half (or so) my wife (the fetching Mrs. Berkowitz) and I have been getting into a very healthy and organic lifestyle. We are very into traditional foods and food preparation and are very much of the opinion that food is more than the sum of its parts. Estee ferments much of our food, makes ridiculously awesome sourdough bread (ingredients: Flour, Water and a bit of Olive Oil), soaks all of our grains, and ferments deliciously effervescent Kombucha. We stay as far away as we could from processed foods, white flour, sugar and any refined oils. We love our saturated fats, whole raw milk, and succulent meats. We do not count calories, vitamins or any other attempt to boil down our nutrient needs to a number game. We don't read the nutrition "facts" we read ingredients. This is something I really believe in and will write more about some other time.

One of the people who helped us very much along the way is fermenter extraordinaire, maker of Kombucha, water conservationist, blogger, Yahoo group starter and repairer of worlds: Uri Laio.

Recently I had the opportunity to photograph a workshop of his at the Jewlicious festival in Long Beach. Twas a fun workshop with fun people. I give myself a blessing that all of my photoshoots should be this much fun.

All shot with my trusty Nikon D700 and new, old, new (my second, both bought used) 35mm f/2 el cheapo el awesomo lens.

Enjoy!

Have some fun!

From the Mailbox.

Question:

Dear Za Man,

I am ardent reader of your gracious blog and am in most awesome awe of you're photographic eye. I am in quandary and have questions about photographic field in general and in particles about photographing children. I see that in past you have been kind to have posted readers questions a long with you're wonder responses. If you would answer my quandary I would greatly be in eternal debt and much thanks,

Tandala Mkubwa

SP I engaged use of Google Translate for this letter. Please apologies for any errors.

Answer:

Dear Tandala,

Thank you for your readership and kind words. The first rule in photography in general and in particular when dealing with children, is that everyone involved (kids, parents, photographer) must be having fun. In my opinion this is even more important than equipment, technical prowess, lighting etc. While one definitely can produce stunning results while having an absolutely awful time, the chances are slim.

So next time you head for a photoshoot the last thing you want to tell your kids is "we are going to be taking pictures. You must listen to everything the scary bearded guy says or else you don't get dessert". Instead try: "hey sammy boy, we are heading to the park to have an awesome time. We are gonna go on the slides, the swings and if the weather is right we might even get to try out that kite we got for your birthday! There's gonna be this cool hipster with a camera and he's going to take pictures of us having the best time ever, and if you're nice he might even let you take some pics!!".

Obviously that's not always possible. Sometimes you're all dressed up on the way to grandmas for dinner and you really want to squeeze in some shots before you get there. Make sure it's worth it...

Here's a shoot I did some time back with that last scenario. It started with a one of the daughters waking up in the car and freaking out (though she was pretty cute about it). Eventually she had some fun and we ended up with some great pics. It helped that the kids are absolutely dolls (and the parents are pretty neat too).

As the photographer in this case I should have prepped the parents a little better. Next time.

And the pics:

Storytelling & Telling Stories

A picture is worth a thousand words.

What about two pictures?

When I started out with photography I was so excited about what a little knowledge along with a capable camera (and photoshop!) could do that I got lost in each picture. Each photo was tweaked, optimized, leveled, curved, balanced, straightened and cropped to its ultimate.

I wasn't in touch with what a picture is: a moment in time. And if the moment is taken on its own without context, it becomes lonely, shy, introverted and pimply. In short it shuts down. Becomes silent. And what good does a silent picture do?

Each picture tells its own story. And because of my workflow (editing each picture separately, with completely different outcomes) the pictures look great one by one, but dont fit together at all.

Two pictures aren't worth two thousand words. They are worth one million. Pictures that work together weave stories, express emotions and capture feelings.

Recently I've been working on telling stories.

What's yours?

We (the extended Berkowitz family) have a get together every month or so. Last week we hosted and here is the story (it's a bit long. I have to work on telling the story in fewer words (but not too few)).

Enjoy.

When in Doubt, Shoot.

I know this is from a while ago, but I'm so excited about this new storyboard layout that I'm digging up some old shoots to experiment with.

This wasn't really a "shoot", it was a birthday party of a cute little mushball named Freida (namesake of the world famous freidafroo.wordpress.com , in which I scored a write up after sending over some photos). I had two of my kids wrapped around me most of the time so I didn't end up taking too many pics, and most were of my kids.

Big mistake.

If you know how to handle a camera and you happen to be at someone's party (unless you're a pro, in which case you're not reading this anyways:)) take pictures! The family will love you for it (and you could sell some prints). So I got pictures of the b-day girl and a few of her parents but not of all the other kids and families that were there (I was also shooting with a 50mm lens. Not very good for indoor parties, a 35 or even a 24 would have been much better). I'll know for next time.

Anyway here are the aforementioned photos. Enjoy.

Here's a link to my first write up,

Thanks!

Shooting Sputnik

Paying pensions with my quarters. That seems to be the plan.

If I'm not mistaken this was my first shoot of 2011 (not to be confused with 2012). They're a friend of a friend who saw some of my work on facebook (I love facebook (and Hashem, though not in that order). Not that I'm very active but it is free advertising.).

The monumental shootage started at Veteran's Park in Redondo Beach, after which we meandered down (they meandered, I ran backwards) to the pier. It's quite a pier this Redondo version. Much to buy, more to eat and they even have this huge scale so you could see how much you gained (and consequentially how much aerobics you need to do (does anyone still do aerobics? Please tell me they at least changed the costume)).

The boys were über cute, ridiculously well behaved and smart to boot (to boot? really?). Parents were fun, and the dad had to go because he had a satellite to launch. Seriously. Now I know who to blame when my phone loses reception. Darn commies.

I still have some film to develop, so we may see some updates in the future. Stay tuned.

In other news I got this awesome new photoshop plugin (technically a script) that compiles the photos into neat little storyboards. Upside is it looks awesome and tells a story (more on that in a subsequent (which is directly underneath sequent) post). Downside is I don't get to write corny comments about each photo (quite possibly an upside).

I also widened my blog, so some of the previous posts will look awkward until i find such time as to fix things up.

This post is best served warm with a chilled beer and pink sauerkraut.

I think I'll break it up next time so it will load better. Remind me.

Use Silencer When Shooting Indoors

This following post is dedicated to the city and people of Long Beach, who may not know it but they are beautiful and so is their city.

I don't shoot much indoors. Officially because I'm a "natural/available light photographer". Unofficially? That's complete balderdash. Well, maybe more like partial balderdash, or maybe more of a balderwalk or a recedingdash (I'm getting lost here, help me out).

The truth is I do not know how to control the lighting indoors enough to shoot consistent exposures. Although I do have a book on the way on the subject (I'll let you know if it's any good). It's somewhere between my old place (the address on my Amazon profile) and the new one, hopefully closer to the latter.

The issue is more of bad lighting than low lighting. There's usually a mixture of light sources, light types, light temperatures, light direction etc. And while many times the mix looks good, if the subject moves a bit everything changes. If I'd be doing posed studio shots, I'd be able to set up the room, the subjects and the lighting properly, but that's not what I do. I'm not a fan of the posed shots (i.e. I'm not good at it. Or to be fair I'm not good at awesome posed shots. And until I am I'm not into the cheesy ones). So somehow I need to have consistent lighting all across the shooting area (which may move from room to room).

The obvious answer would be to use a flash. Problems: pop-up flash is weak (only lights short distances) and straight on (gives that washed out ghost face look). So we stick one of those fancy gilkonks on top of the camera. Now it's much stronger but it still has that straight on, dead man walking look. So now we bounce the flash off of the wall/roof/mirror. But as we move we got to keep adjusting where you're going to bounce of. (Well one option would be to anticipate the moment and plan the shot. Yeah right. Maybe one day). So we get one of those Gary Fong knock off's to stick on top of our gilkonks. And we get a cord that allows us to take the flash off the camera and hold it up and to the side with our left hand while we hold the camera in the right. Which leads to carpal tunnel and texting thumbs. But we do what we got to do. And then, since we still feel inadequate, we convert almost everything to black & white.

Here's my first (mostly) indoor shoot. There was much extended family involved so for the most part I have no clue who the photos are of.

First some family pics outside

Silly one. Of course. The kids got to have fun.

Would have been the perfect shot IF I'D HAVE SPENT A FEW SECONDS LOOKING FOR DISTRACTIONS! (sorry about the caps) The water bottle and hat on the table should have been chucked along with the ottoman. Dork.

Playing with my new baby (she's actually holding it quite nicely. You have to make sure to hold its head)

Posing with my baby

Grandma and Granddaughter

The grandson wasn't into the whole kissing thing

Mommy and daughter

Love the look on her face

Got to love glowing ears

Example of nice window light (though a small fill flash may have helped. I just can't work quick enough yet)

The grandparents are really into music, so we posed a shot with all the grandkiddies and some instruments (though it's hard to make everyone look interested). The mom was standing on the couch holding the flash.

Love this one

The whole fam was running around with nerf guns shooting each other (even granddad!). Was mucho fun.

You could see that the flash is not straight on. Makes a big difference.

Cut off her hand. Crazy bearded amputator.

And for some film shots:

Should have fixed her hair.

Yeehaw. The camera must have gotten into my herbs.

And there you have it. My first indoor shoot. As usual a shoot very much depends on the people having fun (especially kids and the photographer), and we definitely had a good time.

Peace & Love. Harmony & Trust. Jinkerdinks & Tongerlocks.