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PDN Pulse ran a news story on how an image of President Elect Obama, shot by Brooks Kraft, wound up on a special issue of the Chicago Sun-Times. The editors at that newspaper say the image will become iconic. You can see the story here.

The newspaper is also selling on Ebay high gloss prints of their Nov. 5 Barrack Obama victory cover, the same one Oprah held up on her show and declared it the best post-election front page in the world. Read about it here.

Not as crazy I guess as the guy selling an Obama domain name for $10 million on Ebay. Yeah, that’ll sell.

There’s a pretty cool parking garage here in San Diego; one of those circular exit shaped things that you get dizzy driving down when you want to exit. I went there and thought it would be a great place to do some stock photos of a runner or a skateboarder “bombing” down the ramp. But there were signs everywhere prohibiting that sort of thing, and I hate being shut down during a shoot.

So I went there, shot the garage from multiple different angles with the intention of laying in a runner in Photoshop later. That same night I set up some lights outside, and shot down at an angle that matched what you see above.

The main light was from her side, at a position where the sun would have been in the parking garage photo. I wanted a strong shadow with hard edges, the same kind the sun would make, so I used the light with just a reflector. I had some fill light coming in from her front too, as you can see.

Next I cut her out, and also cut out the shadow (not shown) using the extract tool in photoshop. I laid this layer into the parking garage image, added the shadow, played with the sizing and sharpness, and viola - my runner was now in the garage.

For the record, I realize manipulation like this is not okay when shooting editorial for a newspaper or magazine, but in stock photography like this, it’s completely allowed!

Same thing can be done with a car!

If you’ve ever opened a Maxim Magazine in the past 12 months, or Fortune or Details, or Premiere or National Geographic or Newsweek, Outside, Maxim, Money, Wired, Runners World, Discover, Details or ESPN, or a dozen others, then you’ve seen his work.

If you’re a photographer who reads the bylines, then you’ll recognize his name: Gregg Segal. Gregg with two G’s, as in “Good God, this guy is everywhere!”

I’m a fan of Segal’s work. He specializes in portraits. Quirky weird pictures, full of irony and witt and fun. The light is crisp, he seems to take chances with what he does. I really dig this guy’s stuff, so I contacted him, told him I want to ask him some questions, and he was nice enough to answer.

Background please. How and when did you get started in photography?
I started taking pictures when I was about 9 or 10. Liked seeing through a lens, putting a frame around things. It was a form of collecting. I collected images of people, objects, places.

Did you ever assist anyone? Who, how long?
No, I didn’t, though it would have been a great way to learn.

On average, how many days out of the month are you shooting?
Assignments - about 10 days a month. There’s travel, prep, scout, production as well. I work on my own projects in between assignments as well as promotion.

In your bio, you write that your style doesn’t fit into any prescribed categories. Is that still true, or have you found a label for the stuff you do?
Well, I shoot much less documentary photography now. Once you start lighting and orchestrating a picture, working without that control is less appealing. Also, I prefer not to shoot documentary on an assignment because your odds of getting an impactful image are lower.

Your portraits are well lit. They are bright and crisp, and don’t have hard shadows, but they are not flat. For one of your superman photos (superman hanging laundry outside) I read that you used 2-3 power packs. Can you briefly describe your lighting style - what kind of modifiers you like to use?
I backlight with magnums.

Who are some of your influences?
Diane Arbus - from the time I was about 13.
William Klein. High energy street scenes.

When you get an assignment to shoot, say “Mori’s moments” and the published picture is of the CEO sitting in a chair with the workers milling in background in background in a non clean type environment…. do you ever have problems convincing the CEO or his executive assistant that you want to do something unique?
All the time. All that talk of “thinking outside the box” never applies to the pictures you take of CEO’s. You (or the magazine) just have to make a convincing case for the shot. I was setting up to shoot a CEO and my assistant said the shot was funny. The PR guy overheard him and scraped the shot - the last thing he wants is for the boss to look funny. I guess because CEO’s are answerable to shareholders they’re very concerned about appearances - or at least their PR handlers are. Anyway, it’s always a struggle, because of course the magazine wants a shot that stands out and the subject wants just the opposite usually.

I understand you shoot a lot of medium format film. Do you prefer film over digital?
Overall, I prefer digital now. I like punchy crisp lit pictures and digital registers this quality even better than film. Digital does not perform well in low light yet.

You wrote in your bio you have a duty to shoot the mundane and overlooked, and your work reflects that. Why do you think you have this duty?
Don’t know if it’s a duty but I’ve just always been interested in the ugly who had no chance, partly b/c I never wanted to like or do what other people did. Goes back to my identification with Arbus.

Why do you like shooting people?
I’m fascinated by people, their stories, their inadequacies and bravery, their dignity in the face of ridiculousness.

What the heck is detritus all about? It’s very cool. Are those people you just talked into being in a photo? (They look like “real” people).
All the crap we consume and throw away, much of it shiny, appealing packaging has reformed itself in our image and shadows us wherever we go. I was on assignment in Japan, China, Ohio, New York and brought Detritus with me (found a local fixer wherever I went to help organize shoots).

Your work seems to be everywhere. Why do you think editors hire you? What have they told you they like about your work?
Lighting, sense of humor (irony), going for the jugular.

What kind of work do you most prefer doing?
Assignments - I like the variety of editorial clients. Personal projects, too, of course.

Your work seems to be about theme and irony, as you mention. When you get an assignment, how do you approach how you will shoot it? Do you preplan it? Talk to the reporter? Come up with your own ideas?
Plan, yes. Mixture of my ideas and photo editor/art dept. More and more now mags want to be sure of what they’re going to get before you go off to shoot b/c there is pressure from above to deliver - there’s less room for failure, every pic has to be a winner because if it’s not, you could be causing its demise.

You have a lot of picture stories on your website. Pirates, superheroes, dreams…. Is this personal work or ad work?
Some is personal work - but this can often lead to assigned projects. The Rozerem campaign (Abe and Beaver) came from the Super Heroes series.

You can see more of Gregg Segal’s work at www.greggsegal.com.

http://nytimes-se.com/

Did you see this thing? The war isn’t actually over. This is a spoof 14-page fake New York Times that was actually printed and handed out free to people in New York city two days ago from a group called “The Yes Men”. They printed 1.2 million copies, according to the real Times. PDN Magazine reported that the “Stories in the paper are not exactly funny, not exactly cruel. They’re wishful headlines about how great everything would be if our country adopted liberal policies.” There is also an accompanying website here.

It’s a good clone!

I was in LA twice in the past five days. One for a portrait of a CEO for a business magazine (below), and the other for the London Times. For the Times, I shot at a grocery store in Manhattan Beach called Fresh and Easy, which is a UK-owned Trader Joes kind of a place. The newspaper ended up running what is below, but I thought they would run the photo of the CEO I shot in the back of a rickshaw, which just happened to be riding around in the area when I was setting up a light to take the CEO’s photo. I quickly commandeered the thing, and had the CEO sit in the back for some photos.

Notice how they put the photo byline above the photo. I’ve never seen that done in American publications (where they usually run it below the photo or in the fold). Here’s the CEO; a bloke from the UK named Tim Mason.

This is the CEO of a temp staffing company in LA which was shot two days earlier a mile away from the Fresh and Easy location.

London Times ran a story about this photo, published yesterday by the Korean Central News Agency, of being a possible fake. One of their readers noticed the shadow was a little “off” on the country’s leader, Kim Jong II. Interestingly, there is speculation that Jong suffered a stroke recently. The photo was released to offset that speculation. But in an uncanny turn of events, this photo may actually confirm the rumor! Check out the story and the paper’s analysis here.

In other fakery news, NPPA.org yesterday reported that the U.S. Army sent out on the AP wire a portrait of America’s first female four star general, which was later found to be doctored. The photo released by the Army shows the general in front of an American flag. The original, unedited photo, found on the internet by a guy named Bob Owen, was actually taken with her at her desk, with an ugly wall behind her. It’s a god-awful photoshop job, for which the chief of the Army’s media relations division told AP - according to the NPPA.org story - that the Dunwoody photo did not violate Army policy that prohibits the cropping or editing of a photo to misrepresent the facts or change the circumstances of an event.

Read the story and see the photos here.

Shot Chargers football today. They played at home against the Kansas City Chiefs. Here’s a handful of images:

This is a cool resource from the Newseum. On their website each day they show more than 40 front pages (A1s) from around the world. Interesting to see which images and stories are run…. You can see the front page of the Log Cabin Democrat, the Rockdale Citizen, the Honolulu Advertiser or your own paper! Check them all out here.

Saw on CNN tv LONG lines of people in New York city at the New York Times building waiting to buy a copy of today’s New York Times, the paper with the one word, A1, above the fold headline: OBAMA.

Same issue is selling online at Ebay for $400 here. But that’s a bargain! Here the Post is selling for $600. If everyday in the newspaper business was like this, the industry would be doing better!

http://www.geocities.com/roryklinge/nyt2.JPG

I was listening to NPR radio today and heard a good interview about historically-important photos with Bobbi Baker Burrows, Director of Photography for Life Books. She was interviewed about a book Life published called Life: The Classic Collection. There’s a video of some of the images and a narrative on the NPR site here. Here is the correct link.