Chuc Nguyen

A friend of mine recently passed away. His name is Chuc Nyguen. Chuc was one of first photographers that I met at college that really blew me away. his work was amazing. I met him in the darkroom at Orange Coast College, it was my first semester there and I was just learning to print black and white. He was in a corner of the dark room by himself and I watched him as he did what appeared to be magic motions under the light of his enlarger. I was intrigued. He printed extremely dark, burning out everything that was irrelevant. He was also was a lover of printing on warm toned paper, he always had a box of the Illford variety with him. He showed me his prints and I was instantly in awe of his talent. He was far above what I even thought was possible. Even now looking back his prints are astonishing. Since his passing, I have searched the net to find what I could, but unfortunately there is not a whole lot out there. He was not into social media and barely made a blip on the internet. If anyone out there has a source where you can view his images online, that would be amazing. I have a couple that I can share.

The first is a way too small to do it justice, it is a too small sample of his fashion photography. The 2nd is from a series of photographs he did on the homeless in Los Angeles.

Eventually we became pretty good friends. We talked a lot at school. He worked in the labs there, and we went on several photo adventures together. The most memorable was a trip out to the Salton Sea that the two of us undertook. He was socially awkward, but it was in a really good way. He came with me to parties with my circle of friends and he seamlessly would blend in and even steal the show even though if  you were to look at us, you would wonder what we had in common, he was an obvious outsider that was incredible welcome. He was just able to do that. I don't know much about his life choices over the last few years, but I know he had problems. Only Chuc could tell you why he took his life, but it hurts me to know that he felt he had no other choice than to do it. I know this is a feeling that is shared by his family and all of his friends, most of them were probably knew him much better than I. I'll miss you Chuc. This has been a little bit of a rough year, friend #3 to go out, and all of them have been too young.

The rare self portrait.

This is a self portrait I recently made.

Self portraits are not something I usually do, but I needed something new to put onto my website and in other places where a picture of me is needed. The old picture I was using is almost 5 years old, and the other picture I tend to use is something like 25 years old. Can you guess which is which?

Dolly Would @ my studio August 16th.

I photographed Dolly Would last week at my apartment (I mean studio!) in New York. Yes, my apartment (studio!), in New York. With some clever rearrangements (stacking couches and shoving them onto one side, removing bike racks, etc) I was able to clear just enough room out to fit a seamless and a couple lights. Yes, I will be doing this more often, and hopefully even improving on the set up. Pleased? Why yes I am.

"That bass player's a babe. She makes me feel kinda funny, like when we used to climb the rope in gym class."

Inwood part one.

I recently starting shooting a new project up in the neighborhood next door to me; Inwood. A little bit about it I suppose, Inwood is the northern most neighborhood on the island of Manhattan (Marble Hill is the farthest north in the borough) it is home to Inwood Hill park, and is mostly populated by immigrants from the Dominican Republic. I started photographing in Inwood a few weeks ago as an exercise in black and white photography to reacquaint myself with film. I have a larger project that is in my head, and I am not sure of which black and white film I will be shooting it with. I also feel that living in Washington Heights, I have such great access to Inwood it would be a shame not to photograph something there! It reminds me a lot of Santa Ana except in a much more isolated form, while Santa Ana was smack dab in the middle of everything, Inwood is extremely isolated. Broadway is the only major street that connects it with Washington Heights, while Harlem River Dr and the Henry Hudson Pkwy are the highways on the east and west sides. This is a small neighborhood, and I mean this to be a small and somewhat brief project, but you know how things like that go. All of a sudden you have shot a couple thousand pictures and your somewhat brief project is taking a year to complete.

I am shooting this project with a variety of black and white films, so far I have used Kodak Plus X 125,Kodak T Max 400, Ilford Delta 100, and Fuji 400. I am photographing with a Canon F-1 New with either a 50 1.4 or a 20 2.8.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph a new burlesque troupe that will be coming out of New York. The photographs were shot in a small NYC jewelry studio, space was limited. I shot with two lights against a white backdrop. I shot using my Canon 50D with 17-40 f/4L and 70-200 f/4L.

Melody Jane

Dolly Onyx

Dolly Would

 Madam Bomb

Normally I would force myself to write more, but no. Not tonight. My cat is being annoying, I need to get groceries, and I am doing laundry. So none of that BS tonight. Enjoy the pics, and check the girls out. They are pretty amazing.

Professional Photographers Facebook page

I was recently added as an admin on the Professional Photographers Page on Facebook.  http://www.facebook.com/ProPhotoPage Currently the page has over 12,000 likes. I don't really know what all that means, but I suppose that is good! Here is a copy of a post I wrote earlier this afternoon:

Two groups of questions.

First, to all of the professional photographers that are currently making the most of their income through photography: What steps did you take to make this a reality? Did you go to school for photography? Self-trained? When you were starting out, how did you market yourself? Are you a consumer photographer working in portraiture and weddings? How did you find your market? Are you a fashion or commercial photographer? How did you break into the industry? Are there any photo journalists out there?  How are you adapting to a world where nearly every photo I see is from a smart phone? Stock photography has been in decline for a long time now, is stock photography even a realistic option anymore?

Second to all of the people that want to be and are trying to become full time professional photographers: Are you going to school or do you plan on any formal photography training? What specialization are you shooting for? What steps are you taking to make your goal into reality? What sorts of successes have you had? Have you had any formal business classes?

My own answer:

I can answer my own question for number 2 to get the ball rolling ;). I am currently working on making the transition to working within the photography industry full time. I have been working on the outskirts for a decade now. I have managed two portrait studios, worked for two camera stores, helped to run an art gallery, and worked as a large format printer for a major consumer level print company. One of my current long term goals is to transition into assisting commercial and fashion photographers, as well as working directly with the studios (even longer term goal would be transitioning into shooting). I want to have the freedom to photograph my personal documentary projects while earning a living and satisfying my technical side within the studios working directly with commercial and fashion photographers. Being a door knocker, that has been my main strategy in the last couple of months. I made a list of every major studio in Manhattan and have been showing up at their front doors. I am now on the roster for several studios, and once a week I try to go out and make a couple more contacts. I am also directly emailing commercial and fashion photographers every day. I try to go through ten or so a day. I am not as consistent as I would like to be, but I try.  On the consumer level I am not quite as active, but I definitely have a contingency plan for it if the studios and direct emailing does not work out. I am building a client list from the photography shoots that I do through the camera store that I work at. I also have several hundred coupons printed that I can hand directly out to potential clients. My hope is to simply stalk the play grounds in some of the nicer neighborhoods and hope something eventually works out. As far as school goes; I earned two certificates in photography. The first is as a still photographer, and the second is for a digital lab tech. The goal of the program I went through is to set you up with the education required to enter into commercial or fashion photography as a photographer’s assistant. This is exactly what I am trying to do with it. I went through a very good jr college program in Southern California. It definitely covered all of the bases for basics, but I still feel that it was lacking. Many of the students that graduate from the program will move onto an art school of some type, Art Center in Pasadena is a popular choice. I can definitely understand this move! If I had the cash, I may have done the same thing! Unfortunately, I was not born rich, not even close to it, so I what I currently have is all I can currently afford. I would love more education, but I feel that what I got was adequate if I can get proper on the job training. One of the things that I loved about my school was that it gave me a very solid background in black and white film in all formats. I feel that I may be the last generation of photography students to receive this type of education.  Emphasis on getting the shot right in the camera and minimizing your time spent in post. One of the classes that I took was business photography. It has been the only business class I have taken, and it was actually incredibly valuable! Business is a side of photography that is almost always lost! Again, I felt like it just covered the basics, and in the future I may want to take some more business classes.

Wow! I really didn’t think that would turn into an essay! Any advice is appreciated. Also, a great magazine I discovered is http://resourcemagonline.com/. 

New York City blackout. Hurricane Sandy.

I rode the 1 train from Washington Heights to Midtown, service had partially resumed earlier in the day. I was going to see something that I may not ever get to see again; Lower Manhattan in Darkness. The last stop was 42^nd, I carried my bike up two flights of stairs and I was off into the unusually cold November 1^st night. I crossed over to Broadway and turned south. The lights of the city faded to black, the only light coming from the tail lights of the taxis that I followed. The flat Iron building began to take shape.   

NOHO, SOHO, TriBeCa, West Village, Lower East Side, it was all black. Not a single light. The only light came from the passing taxies and police cars. It was incredibly eerie, but also peaceful. Standing on Greenwich St. in TriBeCa, it was actually possible to really feel the city. Without the hustle and bustle of the nightlife, without the bright city lights that never turn off, the aura of the city was overwhelming. Had I energy, I could have stayed out all night. ¾ of a million people were without power in Lower Manhattan. The subways were completely down. Staten Island got hit really hard, as did parts of Brooklyn. Parts of the Jersey shore is pretty much gone judging from the photos I have seen. Still, It could have been a whole heck of a lot worse. There are so many people right now all over the city working ridiculous hours to things back to normal. The power to Lower Manhattan was supposed to come back on today; the trains were back up in limited service just one day after. Right now there is even a train to Brooklyn running. I am incredibly thankful that I live in an area that was not heavily affected.