Is It a Lens Barrel or a Gun Barrel?

Some will say that when 1994 Pulitzer Prize photographer Kevin Carter, 33, claimed his own life from what many believed taking one too many heartbreaking photos (particularly an image of a vulture sitting on the left of a starving Sudanese child, waiting for the child to collapse), that photography is dangerous—is it a lens barrel a gun barrel?

It all depends whom you ask. I myself have almost 30-years experience as a photographer, many of those years photographing women in my “private glamour” group for what I like to call Photographic Therapy—so I can tell you from my own experiences, photography and war, photography is deadly if not executed properly.

What I mean by that, simply put, many photographic therapy clients come from my private shoots. They are usually women with almost 15-years of marriage under their belt, many unhappy with their belt size that age and child bearing years have brought them. Most are looking for a spark or sizzle as an insurance policy to sustain their marriage, through sexy photos.

While great glamour photos that meet their needs are not hard to accomplish as an experienced photographer, many inexperienced photographers could actually do their subjects more harm that good—thus ultimately leading to death.

Now that is a strong statement and many are wondering how can this be true? As an example, some of my private clients are women who want their photographs taken shortly after becoming “Moms.” Many new mothers suffer from postpartum depression. Depression is deadly and if a photographer doesn’t know what they are doing, poor photography can reinforce the subject’s lethal depression already in place.

As photographers we must realize, we are not there to replace the psychiatrists’ couch, we’re there to capture the inner- and outer-beauty of our subjects to hopefully add a layer of great feelings that can help build self-esteem.

While Photographic Therapy is not usually practiced in the killing fields of a war zone as when Pulitzer Prize photographer Eddie Adams did of his famous photo from Vietnam (General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon), some forms of photography are deadly, especially when photographing subjects in a depressed state of mind—as photographers, we must recognize when it’s the right moment to pass up an assignment to a more qualified colleague.

As the late Adams once put it about his famous photograph, “The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation.”

All the best, rg sends!

Working with Big Egos

On some occasions, you might wind up with a great looking subject who knows she’s gorgeous and blatantly displays her ego, making sure everyone knows she’s hot. These are the types who will also tell you how the light and shadows are supposed to fall on her body—insisting that she knows the right light, the right look, the right poses, etc.

Fortunately, I only get these types of subjects once in a blue moon. When this happens, I let the client do her thing—but I’ll also purposely ask her questions to send her mind off in a different direction. This works best when you ask open-ended questions that require more than a simple yes or no in response. For example, instead of asking her if she likes being photographed, ask her what motivated her to get in front of the camera. Ask her what she studied in college, not if she went to college.

When you initiate a conversation like this, she’ll feel like she’s number one (and you should not treat her as any less), but it puts you in control of the shoot. That’s an important thing to remember: it’s your shoot. You are the one responsible for succeeding and you may have to be creative and make your communication skills work for you to ensure that it will happen.

Never be rude. Always be polite. And if need be, just agree that she is, in fact, God’s give to Earth. (Excerpt from my latest book, Rolando Gomez’s Glamour Photography: Professional Techniques and Images). Thanks, rg sends!

Back at OMP

Almost 8 years ago I joined “One Model Place” and watched it grow from a small modeling community to a rather large one. At some point in the beginning, I was some how deleted and finally at the recent Glamourcon in Chicago, the CEO of OMP, Brett Cramer, invited me back to join the community that he and Stewart helped to create.

I’ve seen many improvements at OMP over the years and I’m happy what I now see and intrigued by Cramer’s positive attitude and the future of OMP based on some ideas we discussed recently—we’re even considering possibilities to work together with our own Glamour1.com site—stay tuned, the possibilities are unlimited!

Obviously I wouldn’t abandon G1 and will do everything in my power to move it forward. OMP offers some great solutions in that direction, again, stay-tuned!

For those interested, my OMP number stayed the same as when I first joined, #1332, now that’s a low number and easy to remember! Thanks, rg sends!

Calumet & California Sunbounce European Tour Comes to an End…

Well I’m finally back in the good ole U, S of A! While I love Europe, the people, food, culture and the countryside, unfortunately I have family and obligations to return to like everyone else and they reside on this side of the globe.

Words cannot begin to express my gratitude for the folks at Calumet Photographic and California Sunbounce for the opportunity they have given me to share my American photographic style with my European colleagues—whom in return have shared their style with me, a true marriage of the minds.

The European people and photo industry truly greeted me with open arms and impeccable hospitality. The response was tremendous, with press and almost 400 people in attendance. Not to mention the great food, drink and culture they shared with me—I still remember in Belgium where we sat at the table enjoying great beer and words of wisdom as the photographers practiced photographing one another with my camera. From there, some of my new friends from Holland spilled over to the dinner table—now we’re looking at three “Dutch” female photographers all volunteering to be assistants for the next one on one Virgin Islands trip!

After our last stop in Munich, I headed for the Hauptbahnhof to catch an ICE train to Würzburg, the high-speed train ride took 2-hours through the beautiful countryside that allowed me to reminisce about my military days in Germany. Upon my arrival at the bahnhof, I was met by the Managing Director of Hensel Lighting, Joachim Renschke. He would help me with my luggage then take me in his car to the wonderful hotel in downtown Würzburg. After giving me a few minutes to check-in, we headed to a beautiful, at least 250-year old German restaurant where we ate some great food at a reserved table. I’m still trying to remember the name.

The next day I toured the multi-million dollar facilities of Hensel Lighting were I was photographed with Mr. Renschke for the German press. I felt honored to finally tour a factory filled with German engineering and precision. We also spent time in the conference room with the Export Manager, Christian Lutz, whom I’d meet before in New York. It was great to see him again and all three of us shared some wonderful ideas that would benefit photographers that utilize Hensel equipment. It was great to see how Hensel is moving forward with improvements, new products and ideas and I can’t wait to be a part of that future.

After spending one more night in Würzburg, I took another ICE train to Frankfurt—this was a quick one-hour ride as the train reached speeds well-over 150 mph, though sitting on this luxurious train it doesn’t feel so fast inside. We had a misconnect with Leica, so we skipped the factory tour for my next trip, but we had a great conversation on new things for Leica and I can’t wait–they were happy to see I brought my new M-8 with me, though my shooting time in Europe was very limited.

All in all this almost two-week trip was exhausting and exhiliarting. It brought back memories of the three years I spent in Europe as an active-duty, U.S. Army soldier.

I enjoyed meeting new people, seeing old friends, and learning about a great future with Calumet Photographic Europe. California Sunbounce, Hensel, Leica and even other fascinating possibilities that involve not only Europe, but other parts of the world and I can’t wait for 2008 to hit! The hardest part of the entire trip was sitting at the Atlanta airport for almost another 5-hours, after an almost ten-hour transatlantic flight, as the airport was shut-down due to bad storms. Most of that time was in the baggage holding area where you reclaim your bags briefly to clear Customs, as no airline ramps were open during these lighting storms.

The Calumet and California Sunbounce European Tour ended for me when I finally arrived home at almost 1:00 a.m. on the 15th. I’m taking at last 12-hours of rest as we gear up for the Chapel Hill workshop this weekend, followed by Philadelphia, then Glamourcon in Los Angeles, then Atlanta before we hit the Virgin Islands again! While my bones and muscles are still sore and the jet-lag is not too bad after a couple of margaritas or mojitos, no words can merely explain this generous experience of the European people and photo industry as they have given me a new outlook in photography—thanks to all involved, you illuminate my world of photographic possibilities and I’m forever grateful. Thanks, rg sends!

The Calumet Tour Continues–Germany, Netherlands, & Belgium

What a week, after Berlin and Hamburg, we drove a few hours down to Düsseldorf then high-tailed it to Amsterdam as the Calumet/California Sunbounce tour continued on through Europe. Out of the nine photography magazines Calumet advertised in, so far I’ve collected three, Photographie, fotoMagazine and the latest, PROFIFOTO, which leaves me one German and five BeNeLux area magazines to find as we continued our travels and the tour begins to wind down. (I’ll be posting photos soon!)

I’m not real worried as yesterday I met the head of Calumet Europe marketing, “Wim,” and he promised he’d get me copies of any magazines I couldn’t find. Yesterday I also picked up a poster from the Calumet store in Antwerp, Belgium, again, Calumet has done some incredible advertising to help promote the workshop series and my name in Europe and I’m very thankful as this was not something I expected—I’m guessing that 18 total full-page ads (2 pages per magazine) costs the company somewhere between $50,000 on up plus with the additional costs of their own in-store posters, fliers, web promotions and even the lunches, chairs, sound system, studio rentals, etc., Calumet seriously went out of their way to may this tour a great success, and so far it’s been fantastic!

I brought my newest book, Rolando Gomez Glamour Photography Techniques up here and they were all sold in the early part of the tour before we ever left Germany, the last 25 books were sold at the workshop in Düsseldorf, thus I was very apologetic to the people of the Netherlands when we arrived in Amsterdam as many asked if I had copies of the new book. That was my mistake as I underestimated the people in Europe wanting to purchase a book written in English by an American photographer—after all Europe is home to many great photographers and other artists. Regardless, the response has been tremendous!

The people in Amsterdam were so nice and it was great to do a workshop were my lecture could flow much easier without the interruption of the translation of English to the local language as most everyone in Amsterdam speaks English fluently. The crowd was our largest so far in the trip, row after row of photographers. The amazing part of this trip, in Germany, the Netherlands and even Belgium, was the amount of women photographers attending, there were at least six women photographers at every location so far and in my conservations with them, they love what I do and they too photograph women.

We had three women out of seven of those attending the Belgium workshop drive in from Holland–not only were they beautiful, they want volunteered as assistants for the an upcoming “one on one” Virgin Islands workshop. Now that workshop is going to rock, seven photographers, seven models and three of the seven assistants are women photographers from Holland! See my workshop pages for more details!

One interesting note while we spent two nights in Amsterdam, we stayed at the famous Lloyds Hotel which until 1998 was a prison. While my room was not a jail cell with bars, it was obviously a prisoner’s room at one time with the floor plan. Many artists and photographers have stayed at this hotel, in fact the World Press Photo winners celebrated their previous winners there a few years back. While the hotel lacks some amenities, it’s a “hip” hotel for artists, my only regret not having a model to photograph while there, though as exhausting at this trip has been, I’d probably not want do much in the way of photography.

Back to the ranch, from Amsterdam we moved on to Rotterdam were another large crowd attended and I joked with the Calumet folks on how they were making me feel like a “rock star” as they took my Canon camera into their store, directly across from the studio we used, and while I spoke, they professionally cleaned out the dust off my camera sensor. One of the guys there was excited that I let him use my new Leica M8 rangefinder. Later next week I visit the Lecia factory in Germany on the last day before I return back home as Leica is one of my sponsors and I’ve been dying to visit the factory that invented the 35mm format—many people often think 35mm was invented by Kodak, it was not, Kodak invented film—so it will be nice to the see the roots of one of my favorite formats of film I use in my glamour and photojournalism photography.

Well before I get to Leica, yesterday we finished Antwerp and the people were so nice, after a workshop that lasted almost six hours, we had a few local beers and a few of us had dinner with not only Belgians, but folks from Holland that drove in for the event. Such nice folks!

It’s morning now and shortly we pack our “panel tour truck” to head to Munich, that’ll be about a seven hour drive for us, but it’s our last stop on the trip as on Monday we tackle the Munich crowd and I’m looking forward to Sunday’s rest before it all happens again. My voice has held out so far, but it was a bit raspy yesterday and that began to worry me, but that’s what happens when you speak for hours four days in a row. From Munich I’ll be taking the train on Monday night to meet with the owner of Hensel Lighting. Tuesday I get to tour the factory of one of the greatest lighting companies in Europe and I can’t wait. And to encore the trip will be when I take the train toward Frankfurt and we head toward Leica’s factory for their visit.

Hopefully I’ll get to report on those two factory/headquarter visits as the trip progresses, but for now I have to close and hopefully get another great Internet connection to write more. Thanks to everyone in Europe and a special thanks to Calumet and California Sunbounce for making this happen. The European community as a whole is just amazing and I seriously thank them from the bottom of my heart and I can’t wait to do it all again. Thanks, rg sends!

Black Reflectors (Flags)—Subtractive Lighting

When photographers discuss reflectors, most folks think of silver, white, gold and zebra colored reflectors, rarely do you hear of black reflectors, though you might hear of gobo’s, cutters, and black cards, which are usually black in color, and named more from the concept that they block light, rarely that they subtract and reflect light. While most photographers will call these black panels “flags,” I still like to think of the them as reflectors too.

These black flags normally reflect about 10-percent of the light that hits them, thus absorbing 90-percent of the light that falls on it. This imbalance in percentages is why it’s often referred to as a flag, more than a reflector. It’s the absorption quality we often call, the subtraction of light. While this is true, the black material is also reflecting black-toned-light back onto the subject, which is a technique I like to use in my photography, especially when working with blonde hair, in addition to the natural subtraction of light that occurs with these flags.

Referencing the 90-percent rule, which I often discuss in my books and internet articles, pure black will absorb 90-percent of the light that hits it while pure white will reflect 90-percent of the light that falls on it. Keeping this concept in mind, anything toward the white-side of the scale is reflecting more light than anything toward the middle or black tones. Thus blonde hair, especially platinum blonde hair, will always reflect more light than normal skin tones—the human eyes and brain corrects this imbalance and causes a perception of equal tones as we see the human form, but digital cameras do not, they reproduce the hair brighter, or slightly overexposed than the skin. And if you’re a photographer that shoots for the skin tone as most pros do, then the hair will always be washed out unless you place some type of black panels around the subject’s hair. I personally use the California Sunbounce black fabric on my Sunbounce Pro and Mini reflector frames.

These frames are not only portable and lightweight, but they have strong aluminum cross bars were I can attach a grip-head that secures the frame to a sandbagged light stand. If I attach the grip head to an arm mounted on a C-stand, then there is even more flexibility to maneuver the black reflectors around the top of the model, closer to her hair. The concept here is to place the panels just slightly above the camera frame, thus adding 10-percent black, this technique was similar to what I used to photograph Playboy Playmate Holley Dorrough for the cover of my first book, Garage Glamour, Digital Nude and Beauty Photography Made Simple (Amherst, 2006)

In addition, the panels are subtracting light from the area around the models hair, through the absorption of light, or what we call in photography, subtractive lighting. Photographers often use this technique in the studio too, as an example, when shooting a model in a white dress or outfit in high-key lighting were the background is white, if you place a California Sunbounce Pro, Black flag on each side of your subject, the black from the flags will be reflected on the outside edges of the subject, thus separating your subject from the background.

The exact opposite would also happen if you had a subject in black against a black background, simply reverse the crossbars on the California Sunbounce and utilize the highly-reflective white surface toward your subject, thus providing light around the subject’s sides and creating a separation of the subject from the background.

While many professional photographers will call black panels of various materials flags, cutters and gobos, I like to think of my California Sunbounce Pro and Mini frames, outfitted with the black fabric on one-side and white on the other side as reflectors, after all, even though black absorbs more light than it reflects, it does reflect light so it’s not usual for me to say, “Hand me the black reflector” to one of my assistants when I’m utilizing my subtractive lighting techniques. Try this technique, I think you’ll like what you see, thanks, rg sends!

While in Garlstorf, Germany

Today in Garlstorf, Germany, while on my Calumet Europe and California Sunbounce tour in Europe, we took the day off and attended the Erntefest in Scharmbeck. While in America we tend to think of a fest as a big party, this fest is more of a Thanksgiving festival for the local community of Scharmbeck celebrating the successful harvesting of crops for the year. Apparently they had a great crop as demonstrated from the farm tractors that pulled decorative trailers, trailers with themes of farming and harvesting often made of the plants and grains.

There were also carnival type rides for the children with food and drink booths too, though not as commercialized as we often see in the United States—these booths and attractions centered more around the locals than trying to draw people from other communities, a small and quaint atmosphere.

We stopped and ate the local bakery pastries while sipping a diet Coke. Sure, the smell of grilled bratwurst was temping, but we only visited enough to take in the parade and see the country side, then back to the office we went to prepare for our trip tomorrow to Hamburg. From Hamburg tomorrow we’ll come back and pick up our luggage and then head to Dusseldorf before we set sail to the Netherlands were we visit the Calumet stores in Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Ok, we really won’t set sail, we’re driving from location to location in a large panel truck that looks like a cross between a passenger van and a old U.S. Army deuce and half, or 2 ½ ton truck. Our vehicle I’m sure is not rated at that tonnage and it’s practically brand new, but sometimes it feels like I’m riding in a truck as yesterday we did six hours of driving to Berlin and back.

I was shocked to see the outcome in the Calumet Berlin store, my thoughts were, “Why would European photographers come and see an American glamour photographer?” I’m still trying to figure that out, but what I did realize today, Calumet spent tons of money to promote the event as they took out full, two-page advertisements that featured the tour and my photography in nine different European magazines that targeted the countries of Germany, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg (BeNeLux area). I picked the current copy of PHOTOGRAPHIE, one of the most prestigious magazines in Europe, which carried the two-page advertisement and an article on my seminars in Europe.

I also picked up a copy of foto Magazine, another great European magazine that carried the two-page ad and I’ll search for the other six photography magazines as we travel. The folks at the Berlin Calumet store even gave me a copy of the full-color posters advertising my seminars that are on display at all the stores. Add to that marketing blitz, Calumet took out newspaper ads too, so again, I’m thrilled to see how much coverage they are giving not just me, but an American photographer.

All this reinforces what I said on an earlier post in the Glamour1.com photographic forums, the people in Europe are not only friendly and kind, but literally accepted me with open arms. We also had the local press attend the Berlin seminar and word on the street is that tomorrow in Hamburg they’ll have television coverage of my seminar too. Wow is all I can say! Well, I ok, I’ll also say, thanks to the folks at Calumet Europe, California Sunbounce and the people of Europe, without you none of this would ever be possible.

Well that’s it for now, it’s Sunday evening and I have much work to do in preparation for our travels that really begin tomorrow and on top of working on my new books and images, the day is getting shorter as we’re seven hours ahead from home in this time-zone and I have to eat, then get some rest. From Europe, thanks, rg sends!