Always my favorite building in Boston, now bite-size for your consumption.

The light wasn't great, but you leave with the girl that brung ya.

While at the festival, I reached into my back and loaded a roll of portra 160NC film. Or at least I THOUGHT that it was 160NC. When I rewound it later that day I realized that I had grabbed a roll of T-Max 400 instead. So I had a b/w roll that I thought was color, exposed one and a half stops too hot. Oops.

Connie down at Accurate Photo near my place in Park Slope just pulled it back a stop which smoothed everything out. Good thing I did it with the b/w and not the color film. I'm not sure that would have fared as well.

Anyway, here's a photo of my sister.



Oh, and I've made a revision to my main portfolio site if anyone wants to take a look. http://www.billwadman.com/

Almost 5 years ago, I was doing a lot of Flash development work and taking pictures on the side, and I wanted to write a little flash app that would let me stick a bunch of images in a folder and have a nice little gui for people to view them on my site.  A couple nights of work and what became Photofolio was born.

Once I got to version 2 and added thumbnail support, I posted a version on my site and let people download it for their own use. I figured that if I found it useful, maybe other people would as well. In fact, for a while I used photofolio as the basis for my online portfolio. That is until so many other people did so that I had to start custom coding new looks to differentiate myself.  <grin>

Well it took on a life of it's own and as of today I was up to version 6 with all kinds of neat doodads and customization and such.  However, I haven't had the time to add the features that people have been asking for, and I wanted to keep the source code under wraps with the fantasy of turning it into a real product one day, not just donation-ware. So I've decided that starting today, anyone who has paid for photofolio in the past, or donates in the future, can also download the source code to customize as the see fit.

This is pretty sad for me because I started Photofolio when my father was still alive and remember working on it up in CT for the months that we sat around while he was sick.  It's also sad to see the end of something, though you could also look at it as the beginning of something new.

Here's what I posted on the photofolio.us site:

OK, big news here. Since I don't have the time maintain PhotoFolio the way I'd like, and since all of my users are such supportive people, and since life is short: I've decided to release the source code .fla files for the latest version of PhotoFolio to all of those people who have, or will in the future, donate to the cause. So if you've bought a Photofolio license in the past, you can log in using the download information I emailed to you, and grab the zip file.

Since the reason I'm doing this is because I have no time, I won't be able to support the source code at all, but I think my work is fairly clean so Flash geek among you should find is useful. Also, any further money that I receive from PhotoFolio donations will be send to the wonderful AndreaB, who has run the PhotoFolio support forums out of the goodness of her heart. So please continue donating.

This is a bit of a melancholy decision for me, certainly marking the end of a small era in my life. Please do good stuff with it, and thank you for your support all these years.

-Bill Wadman

It's the distilled culmination of a photographers work; a collection of their best images, their 'book'. But how do you choose what photographs you include? And in what format? I've spent some time thinking about all this and thought I'd share my thoughts.

First off, the physical decisions. How big do you want/need your images to be. This depends on the style of your work to some extent, as a landscape photographers stuff probably won't look best at 8.5x11". Some people have these books which have hard cases which latch and strap and fold like some kind of matryoshka doll. To my mind, unless your book is really getting messengered around every day, that sort of external vault feels like you're compensating for the work inside. I chose a soft leather covered Pina Zengaro book which I picked up at Sam Flax. It's pages are held by posts, so it's expandable to however many pages you need. And I went with 11x14" for paper size. Because I shoot environmental portraits, I feel like a larger print gives a better representation of the images, regardless of the fact that most editorial use of them would be smaller than that.

As for paper and borders, I've been printing on Red River Arctic Polar Satin with the image centered inside 9x11". Therefore, they don't take up the whole page and feel more like fine art prints. There are those who say that full bleed works better or is more in style, but I say that trends change and while my look may not be "cool" now, my book will look classic and hopefully never passe. Plus as much of my work is in the 3x2 ratio of 35mm, there really isn't a paper I could use to go full bleed without cropping the image way too much for my liking. Maybe 11x17" but that's a wierd size for someone to be looking at, and if there is a landscape image, then the viewer would have to rotate the whole book. Yuck.

However all of this is circumstantial to the real question of which images to include. Not all of my images have the same feel. In fact, a few of my favorite images don't look like my work at all (maybe that's something I should discuss with a therapist). It seems that everyone has different opinions on this topic. I've spoken to other photographers, to art buyers, to magazine editors, to gallery owners, and to muggles. Some say to include your best work, some say to include your favorite work. While I think these people meant the same thing, I think there is a subtle but important difference between your 'best' and you 'favorite' images. Then others will tell me that it's too eclectic a collection and that I should choose one 'look' and have a book just of that. For example, choose one section of my billwadman.com site and create the book around it. They say that editors and buyers want consistancy. They want to know that when you hire Bill you get X. I once asked a big photographer friend of mine about my fear of getting pidgeon holed into a look, to which he said that getting pideon-holed and working is better than better than not.

Because so many people have differing opinions, I've come to the conclusion that they're all just opions and that there is no right answer. Or rather the right answer is that your book should contain the images you want it to contain and to hell with the way the viewer interprets that. You have no control over them anyway. Maybe the person you hand it to will pass you over because they think your consistancy shows lack of range. Or maybe they're looking for something specific and think you're too unpredictable. I've met both on both ends of the spectrum.

I'm currently reworking my book and am ending up somewhere between the two extremes. I have no real problem with an image looking a bit out of place. Yet as time goes by my images are settling more and more into a consistant look all by themselves, and maybe that's a good thing, Maybe it's saying something about my maturity as an artist or something. Funny thing is that I was happy with my book last time I updated it a few months ago, but now I look through and can't believe I let people see half the images in there. Yuck!

Ok, back to obssessing.

I'm back, and done.

4 days of shooting, 24 people from 3 orchestras, at 3 locations, with over 3000 images to show for it.  It was a marathon, but in the end I'd say it went about as well as it could possibly have.  Everyone got along, everything went smoothly. Couldn't have done it without my producer Marlene, Meg my assistant, and PA's James and Kevin. As well as Jennifer, Carlos, Larissa, and everyone else at the agency. <cue applause>

At the end of day 3, I shot a cello player from the BSO named Owen Young. He was such a nice guy that when were done I pulled him over to a window, picked up the backup body and snapped off a dozen frames just for me.  Three of those shots are below.

So, day two of this four day shoot was completed on Thursday, this time on-site in Saratoga Springs where the Philadelphia Orchestra spends their summers.  And just like the first shoot on tues, all of the people I met were delightful.  My side of the crew was the same with the addition of James and Kevin who worked as PA's and drivers and such. It was nice having a couple extra pairs of hands when things needed to get done, as there was more driving and larger instruments this time.

When we met up with the boys as I'll call them, I did a quick double check of the equipment they picked up from the rental house, and sure enough we had packs but no heads, so we had to make a pit stop at fotocare before getting on the road.  As is turns out, ultimately the fault was mine, I didn't have them on the list. One of those "staring straight through" the obvious stuff.  No harm, no foul. That's what double checks and teamwork is for.

In the last shoot we worked in a big New York studio, but this time we setup on the stage of a theatre.  It was just big enough for our setup width wise and everything came together quickly.  However after a few test shots I noticed a little problem.  You see, in the studio there was a white floor and walls, and so I had a de facto reflector on the far side of the subjects filling in the shadows.  However here on the stage, there was nothing to bounce some of the light back onto the other side, just a whole lot of cubic feet of really dark air.  So Meg and I fashioned a quick solution by clamping a white tablecloth to a clothing rack we borrowed from the wardrobe person (thanks Patty).  It worked fine, but obviously I would have rather seen it coming.

Lightroom 2 was released last week and runs pretty well.  The adjustment brush is a great idea and could prove very useful trying to tame RAW data even before it gets rasterized into a PhotoShop file. However I've found that it's a little sluggish when painting in the adjustments, and I've got some pretty beefy machines.  We'll see if it improves. More about my thoughts on Lightroom 2 when I get back from Lenox later this week.

The reason I brought Lightroom up is that I used the automasking features to desaturate the green screen paper to grey for the selects before I send them to the client.  And it took no time at all.  Just choose Saturation in the HSL panel > click the little handle icon to activate the tool and then click and drag down anywhere on the green and presto, you shot on grey paper.  I'm very impressed, and it makes the images much easier to visualize in the final composite.

On my next big shoot, I'd also like to try double diffusing my light. I'm using a 60" softlighter for my key, but I see a lot of people in shoot videos sticking a scrim or diffuser between a softbox and the subject..  I need to play with that.

At the end of the day, a few of us where invited to to see the orchestra play.  It was a pops night and it was a program of movie scores. So I walked over mid-concert with a couple of my co-workers and we caught 15 minutes of it before we had to hop in the car to head home. A full orchestra playing live outdoors in a lovely setting on perfect summer night as a special magic.

So, in the end I learned to always check the equipment before getting on the road, tableclothes are my friend, Lightroom's automask is very handy, and that the Philadelphia Orchestra can play.  Ok, I already knew the last one.

Off to Lenox, MA tomorrow, more updates in a day or so.  Someday, hopefully, I'll get to show you the fruits of all this labor. 

Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I was away with the family last weekend and now I'm in the middle of a multi-day job. I figured that I'd give you an update and let you in on how it's going.

So, yesterday I had the first shooting day of a four day shoot for an advertising campaign I'm working on. I'm shooting musicians on a green screen, which is fun, and I must say that if they're all like the 6 I shot yesterday this whole process is going to be a really nice experience. Everyone, especially the players who flew into NYC for this, were great. That said, I'm exhausted, or rather I was when I got home yesterday about 12 hours after I left in the morning. Standing and talking and shooting for hours on end while trying to keep your attention at 100% is really draining, and I don't like coffee so I don't have that little crutch. Plus my back is screaming at me.  Time to load up on ibuprofen. Better still, later this afternoon I've got to get in a car to drive for 3.5 hours to get to the next location for tomorrow.

I'm shooting tethered with a 1DsIII to a macbook pro, Canon remote software with Lightroom picking up the RAW files automatically as they're dropped onto the hard drive. It takes about 10 seconds for each 22MB RAW image to transfer and show up which is a little annoying, but it's certainly a more instant feedback than film would be and at least you get to see the image on the screen. I've heard that the camera to computer transfer time is much faster on a windows box (which I usually use), something to do with inefficient USB drivers in OSX. I went to go use bootcamp to install vista and try to get that boost, but the DVD drive on the macbook pro won't read half the disks I insert, so I guess I'm stuck on this gig.

I've shot about 100+ images or so of each person. Trying to come up with and capture interesting 'poses' or expresions which will be useful in the post production phase of the process. My big thing is trying to make it a comfortable experience for the subjects because that's how I get a portrait of that person and now just a picture of some guy playing violin. To that end, I like to keep it largely one-on-one, with the clients and other gaggle of agency people and the like not right there watching while I shoot. I'm happy to show them work at intervals, but this is a case of where too many cooks really does spoil things. Makes the subject feel like they're on trial.

After everyone (the client team, art director, me, and anyone else who happens to want to weigh in) is happy with the images from each subject, my assistant copies the RAW onto a couple external drives just in case all hell breaks loose. BTW, I needed a couple drives for the shoot and so went to techserve the other day and picked up a couple 250GB Lacie Little Disk drives for $139 a piece. Not the cheapest for bus powered little drives, but they're bost USB2 and Firewire which we've found is substantially faster for this kind of thing.

Most of them are wearing black, so I'm exposing to the right when I can to try to minimize the amount of noise in the material and shadows, and then pulling back the exposure a half a stop or so in Lightroom. It seems to be working. Unfortunately most of the men are also wearing white shirts which means I've got to be careful not to blow out the highlights on the other end of the spectrum.

That's about it for now, but I'll come back with more tales of the shoot tomorrow. We'll be back to regular posts and programming soon enough.