Brandon Rossen Creative

New Infographic: Cost of Living in Australia versus the US

2012-01-18T04:57:00.000-05:00

Understanding the 99%: A Lot of Greed Vs. A Lot of Need

2011-10-19T07:12:00.010-04:00

When I looked at the website for the "We are the 99%" (http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/) I found it an easy way to look at several individuals in a few moments, looking at their pictures and reading their hand written messages. An understanding is what I left the site with, after reading enough sad and heartbreaking stories in few minutes that could make me angry for years. Because for me what it comes down to is hope, and that used to be something that came with living in America, a benefit of living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world. But as more and more of the nation’s wealth is tied up in the bank accounts and mutual funds, of the elite 1%, and as its conceivable that it could even get much worse given enough time, their grip and strangle hold will only tighten. The only hope is that maybe we will die suddenly without getting sick, because we don't have enough to retire and because a hospital stay without insurance is sure to leave my loved ones with debt. I don't want to divorce my wife to protect her from my debt should my health fade but I think about it.

We are playing checkers against an opponent who never moves their back row. And in the bizarre chance when you happen to get them to move and bring them down, the government refills their ranks and their pockets with your money. King me. King me indeed.

So with this anger of reading about these people; jobless, homeless, sick, dying, I wondered, is there even enough money out there? Is it even possible for everyone to eat, see a doctor, and have a place to sleep inside? While the 1% live in sky palaces on Park Avenue, nearby people live on benches and in boxes in the park.

Today we live in a economic situation of extremes where the rich have so much more than the poor its hard to fathom. So to contrast I sought to propose an economic situation of extreme equality. (see infographic attached). Where by it would successfully eliminate homelessness, social security, and other such problems related to money. In this system the money could be divided equally in what is quite literally a socialist paradigm, meaning there is enough to go around, enough to live, eat and breathe again. I am not saying I am a Socialist or this is what should be done, but I think it is an interesting way to look at this situation from a different perspective.

When we look at money as a fixed thing, the nation has $12 trillion to distribute amongst all working Americans. Mathematically if we divide 12 trillion by the total US workforce of 150 million people that leaves $80,000 for each working person.

Now, if each worker thought about the reality that every single dollar paid to them in excess of their allotted $80,000.00 would be taken from someone else – would they still want it?

If your gain was a result of taking money from those worse off than you, would you take it? Because for you to have more it invariably means someone else will have less.

Lets look at it as if the $12 trillion is one big pizza. The pizza seems really big before it's cut up, and the rich get their slice first, it's the biggest slice of pie, and they just put it in the freezer because they still have leftovers from last year, but they take it all the same. And then the middle go through and they get their slice just big enough to get them close to what they need, but not enough to repay what they borrowed from the rich last year for a sliver of frozen pizza they wouldn't have known was gone if you didn't tell them, but now your paying them 8% on it, repaying a sliver with a slice, to go right back in the freezer.

And then the people who really need it come through, but there is no pizza anymore, just crust, melted cheese, a few spare pieces of pepperoni to the lucky ones and a box for those who get no pizza at all.

If you were at a party and took more than your fair share you are considered an asshole and inconsiderate, if you’re in America and you take more than your fair share, then you are a CEO and a capitalist. A lot of greed versus a lot of need.

Controversial: Is it smart to do work for friends and family?

2011-10-16T19:57:00.033-04:00

Last week I posted some fun infographic work we have done in between client work. We are working on another infographic this week about the "we are the 99%" (http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/) and will hopefully have it all finalized shortly and post it here soon.

In addition to the creative self commissioned work we do, we are often asked if we can help our friends and family with some design and or photography requests.This I think must be a pretty common request asked by a lot of designers and photographers out there.

Due to time constraints unfortunately we cant always help out even if we would like to - but a couple of months ago I had a bit of spare time up my sleeve so I helped out one of my best friend's Dana with her wedding invitation. Sometimes when you work with family and friends it can be become complicated but working with Dana and Garrett was an absolute pleasure. I think it was because they came to me and said that their only real request was that I match the colour palette they used on their Save the Date and that the invite would be post card size, but otherwise everything else was up to me. I think it was the fact that they said they trusted my creative vision and didn't try to micromanage me that it turned out to be really fun.

I guess when it comes to family and friends it can be really complicated if the communication is not clear. As long as some basic terms are set up, such as whether there is an idea or style they would like me to create or whether its totally my call and how many subsequent revisions we are going to go through. Often design projects have a way of spiralling out of control if you allow endless revisions. By enforcing a couple of rules, like how much time you will give the project and if its not working and leading to feelings of resentment and annoyance then it is time to speak up and be honest.

Giving one of these projects enough time and effort can really be difficult because you are always feeling pulled to return to your paid work. But then I always feel torn b/c if someone asks me to help out and my name will be associated with the finished product then I want to give 110%.

Anyway here is the invite I did for Dana and Garrett - which is really true to my style - strong typography and simple illustration. I wish I had been able to give this invite some more time. When I look at it still I see things I would have changed but overall I was pretty happy with the final product.

While I was writing about Dana and Garrett's invitation, it got me thinking about when I designed Brando and my wedding invitation. Partly because Dana said she liked my invite and wanted to go with that style. Easy.

Anyway last year when I sat down to sketch some initial concepts for our wedding invitation I knew I wanted something different and anti traditional wedding. I went for a long DL sized double sided invite using some beautiful stock from Raleigh papers. B/c I love typography I made that the feature. That along with a lot of white space. I also love white space and wanted an interesting composition. When I showed my family the initial concept, they all thought I had gone mad - "really? that doesn't look like a wedding invitation? are you sure?" or "hmmm I dont quite get it" "do you think people will be able to read it?". I mean along with all the complexities and family drama that go along with planning a wedding in Hawaii, the comments regarding the invite were nothing.

When the invite was finally printed and my family had had time to get use to it, they all changed their minds and said they "loved it", "so unusual", "really different". Maybe thats not what they thought, but its what everyone said out loud :)

I would love to hear other peoples comments about how you feel about working with family and friends. And if you have good or bad stories to report...

Obsessed with Infographics

2011-10-12T21:31:00.013-04:00

I am the other half of Brandon Rossen Creative and dont normally do any of the blogging but wanted to share some of our design projects. Over the last couple of months, we have been trying to take the time, in between client work, to work on our own creative projects and ideas. Here are 2 recent ones we have created.

Obama's News Feed: pretend facebook newsfeeed for President Obama

This was designed before facebook went through its recent design upgrade! With the development and popularity of social media the way we receive our news today is vastly different to 10 years ago when we relied more heavily on traditional forms of media such as newspapers or television. To play on this development we decided to create a fictional Facebook account for President Obama and to depict various news stories within the playful news feed.

These events/stories are presented as the various elements that typically appear in one's Facebook news feed: status updates, friend requests, event attendance, relationship status, places etc

In no particular the current events that we included:
- Strained US and China relations: China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt.
- The need for bipartisan support to avert a federal government shut down.
- Unrest in the Middle East: recent uprisings and violence in Libya and Syria.
- The Palestinian Authority's attempt to gain statehood through the UN
- 2012 election campaigning

To keep the project light we added some fun elements such as the Australian Prime Minister's friend request, George Bush's comment that he left a board game at the White House and Donald Trump's request for Obama's birth certificate.

Infographic on how creatives spend their time online

This is a fun infographic about how creative people spend their time online and how the boundaries between work and play are blurred. We are big into infographics as an effective and interesting way to communicate complicated stories and data.

Hope to show you some more new ones we are working on soon....

In other news we are now looking at moving into a new studio space and releasing our new and exciting branding...details to be released soon

Why I cant work at a office

2011-10-12T20:46:00.004-04:00

There are quite a few reasons why Im not good in an office, I like to come and go as I please, I enjoy a casual dress code, and I pretty much wear sandals everywhere, with the exception of the gym and shower. But thats not the reason for this post, because the other day I saw a fish, a rainbow trout actually and it was a beautiful fish, so I brought him home, and I was thinking of photographing him and how I was going to light him and then from across the room Karyns scanner jittered to life, squeaking and humming before reverting to its normally silent state.

This gave me an idea, now call it divine intervention, or call it coincidence, but Karyn wasnt home to protest what I was about to do at her desk on her combo printer/scanner.

So I closed up all the blinds, and grabbed a black board from the studio to block out as much light as possible, and I put that fish on the scanner, which surprising can scan at resolution of 1600 DPI, if you dont know what that means, its a lot, a normal printed photo is around 300 DPI. I am still working on cleaning the shot up a bit but due to the scanners very limited depth of field you get some nice dreamy boca that I think looks like the fish is swimming is some mysterious black pool, but no its carefully laid on my partners scanner.

Also Speaking of partners Karyn who will start guest writing on here shortly will be blogging and showcasing some of our new design work, and gripes related to completing them.

Last Minute Job

2011-09-27T00:13:00.009-04:00

My phone Rings on Friday and it is a PR company who got referred to me by a friend, thanks Joel.

They ask me if I am available to shoot monday, I am, sounds good, portrait type shots of three people for a couple ads running in the Australian paper. They tell me that they will send over the brief soon, it comes in, and then my phone rings again, one of the people cant make it on monday, and can I shoot him, like right now.

So I start scrambling around, collecting gear, from my desk, from my little studio, from the car, and start lamenting how when I set up lights in the studio, I leave them up, instead of packing them up when Im done.

So I get everything I can think of and throw it in the car, and head off to the location, which I dont know very well, which is why I brought everything, I pick up my assistant on the way, she reads the brief to me while we drive, yeah it was that last minute.

I decided to shoot natural light, because it was 5pm, and if I wanted to get a couple of looks done, I was going to have to work fast before I lost all the light, and the brief wanted shots that could be cropped short and wide like the first example above.

We managed to get shots in a few locations, but as it turned out the first place we went turned out the best, and the first shot out of the camera ended up being the clients pick.

I relaxed a bit, and went home and thought about lighting and locations, and the nervous tick of fear about monday because I didnt know who I was lighting, how I was lighting, or even where I was lighting, I just knew that I couldnt shoot in same place, the shots all had to be in different locations.

Shoot two started 9 am, and all my planning went out the window, as I drove by the local market which was closed, and offered a range of different colored corrugated steel roller doors, and that became location 1, we had two good sides, one partially lit with silver doors, and one side all shade with cream doors and

brick, shot almost exclusively natural light, with a few shots with a soft box camera right filling in the shadows.

Second location I decided I head over to a lane way where Drew Funk, a graffiti artist I shot a couple months ago did some work, and there was a popular cafe, St Ali, and I figured between the cafe and the graffiti that Id get a couple different backgrounds. Like the last I shot almost all natural light and occasionally pulled out the soft-box for a little bit of fill.

It was a liberating break from how I have been working, where everything was thought out before hand, lighting planned, location scouted, time of day taken in to account, this was running and gunning, when an idea didnt work I just scrapped it and moved to the next look, it was a lot of fun, a big thanks to the great people at Haystac, and Ill be sure to post the final artwork for the ads when they come through.

Waiting on a Train

2011-07-14T23:59:00.005-04:00

There is a lot of stuff coming up, but sadly not a lot of pictures to post. Ive been working on my book a lot, with Sally Brownbill, who has been amazing and so helpful, and Mel T, from Melt studios who has done an amazing job retouching and editing my stuff, and hopefully over the weekend Ill have Karyn get all laid out and then posted up here soon.

T-shirts, we are releasing limited edition T-shirt prints which will be signed and numbered, we are currently working with the manufacturer and Ill be posting some images of the art work we are using for the shirts, and the samples as we get them.

Pictures, well the other day, thanks to the Melbourne train system, which runs consistently behind schedule, I was stranded at the station in the cold with my tiny G12 camera and an ipad, for a meeting I was most certainly going to be late getting to, in the cold, in sandals, but I guess that last part was my fault.

So I pulled out my camera and took some shots while the sun was setting, and edited them while I rode the train into the city on my ipad using a great app Snapseed, which I talked about in the previous post. However the more I use it, the more I like it, once you get past the amusing filter hipstamaticish filters, there is actually a very powerful, and controllable system, if you have an ipad I highly recommend you check it out.

Snapseed Review

2011-06-12T07:37:00.005-04:00

Much like my quest for the perfect camera bag, I find my self searching for apps for my ipad. When I saw snapseed and it was five bucks I was intrigued what could it offer for that price, swimming in a sea of 2 dollar apps 5 stands out. however when I saw it was made by nik software my five dollars was as good as gone. I bought it and read the reviews while I waited for it to download, luckily the reviews mostly gave it the thumbs up. However it wasn't a minute and I was enthralled by the clever interface and how logical and easy making image adjustments can be. The app really pushes the limits of the ipad capabilities, and amazes me at overturn. It allows for selective adjustment, using a very similar dropped point system seen in their full featured computer software. I never thought that I would be able to use the ipad for anything more than hipsta-gram (hipstamatic and instagram) type images. I find myself looking for reasons to use it to edit photos over my computer.

Both images were edited using snapseed.

Ranger Quadra Review and pics

2011-04-24T21:03:00.006-04:00

Ive been in the market for a new light kit for while now. But due to the variety available and price I could never really pick a direction I wanted to go in. Alien Bees, have it cornered in watt second to dollars, but you cant get parts from anywhere but the manufacturer, so that made it impossible. I demoed a set of profoto D1s which had nice light, but a funny 77 degree built in reflector that just didnt make sense to me. So I started looking at Elinchrom, and found the Ranger Quadra, they are small, have LED modeling lights, battery powered, built in radio trigger with power control. So I rented a set of the A heads. And by now I should now better about renting things, check them out at the rental place, take out all the lights plug them all in make sure everything is there, and make sure it works. Well I checked that everything was there. It was indeed all there. Later I found out one of the cables that was there might as well not have been, there was a nic in it covered with electrical tape. So now I got two lights, and one cable, so Im shooting one light, which is allright bc thats how I normally roll, but if I had a second light, Id use it.

Took some shots on the city fringe, building in the light with the ambient that I was quickly losing. Shoulda brought a assistant, very windy, a umbrella or box wasn't happening, so lights were bare with frosted plastic covers that dual purpose diffuse light or protect the flash tube in transport.

The next day I was planning a dual purpose lifestyle/engagement shoot at a farm on the mornington peninsula. I tried the second cable again, it still didnt work, annoyance growing. Shot everything one light again, with a medium shoot through umbrella at the vineyard, and the rotalux deep octa 100 at the property. I set it up, started installing the inner baffle, and it was way too big, it flapped around like a spinnaker when there is no wind. It was clearly the inner baffle for an octabox, just not this one, I pulled it out and shot with front diffuser only.

The range on the radio was kinda hit or miss past 30 feet, and I plan on testing the range more throughly soon.

All in all a good kit, set up and broke down easily, but a couple unlucky events have made it a bit sour for me, but in truth thats on the rental house, not the lights.

Death from Above

2011-04-11T23:34:00.003-04:00

Ive had my head down the last few weeks, straight down to be exact, like a bombardier in a WWII movie of your choosing. Working on a collection of images shot from birds eye view, for what I hope will be an interesting composite. Or in other words something I think will look cool.

The shot above, was created using two strobes, a shoot through umbrella camera left and a honl 8' travel softbox on the right. The honl softbox is pretty lightly used piece of gear in my kit. I thought I would love it. I dont. Its better than a bare speedlight but its supposed to be a round soft light, but in reality its a kinda cats eye, which you can squeeze to make round, and release, cats eye again, its a funny shaped light. Secondly, its not really soft, its not soft at all, it behaves more like a loose snoot with a bit of diffusion fabric on the end, its squeezes the light, and then spreads which is probably not what happens if it was round. Thirdly I used it here, and it worked as a bit of directional fill.

Also on a interesting non photography side of things, my post about BNI a months back, is getting a fair amount of traffic and a few commenters, my rants are reaching beyond the photo world, who knew.

espresso 1

2011-02-11T00:02:00.004-05:00

Did a shoot recently for www.espressomelbourne.com, which is a blog devoted cafe society and culture. I was really happy with the way shots came off and I hope to be a part of many in the future.

On the interesting side of things, I have learned that you can probably eat for free wherever you want with a little bit of preparation and a camera.

Photos are from the cafe Ernest V. in Elsternwick

getting mauied in Hawaii

2011-01-24T20:08:00.004-05:00

Been away in Hawaii for a while. Apparently 2 years was the limit on my wonderfully long engagement, I was hoping of stretching it out for a decade or so, but it was not meant to be. So on Jan 12th Karyn and I got married in Maui.

From the beginning we said we would have the wedding outside, we found this great venue, booked it, and the rest kinda went from there. The big issue on our minds was what to do if it rained, I would joke with her, its going to rain, but we will still have fun, or if it rains we will dance in the rain, it sounded very romantic.

Until we woke up on the 12th and it was pissing down outside, which subsequently caused all hell to break lose inside. I was sent to investigate the venue, and after much deliberation we decided to stay the course, with the optimistic idea that maybe the rain couldn't go all night.

It pretty much rained all night, aside from a few brief moments. What was even more surprising was that we did just what we said, we danced in the rain, we had a wonderful time, and it was without sounding to girly about the whole thing very romantic.

I dont have pictures of any of this, I wasnt allowed my camera at the wedding, and we hired a photographer on Maui named Natalie Brown, and I dont envy her working for me. Although I have not seen what seen what she got Im sure she did a great job.

But due to all the rain, by the end of the night we were rather dirty, and the bottom of Karyn dress looked like someone dunked it in coffee, which was a good thing. I wanted to do a trash the dress, she wasnt so sure, fate made it an easy decision.

I threw all my gear in the back of our yellow jeep rental along with her dress, and set out to find a hidden beach. One of the coolest parts of Maui is along the main roads there are all these little unmarked dirt roads leading to little beaches. So we drove along and pulled off at one of them, she threw on the dress and with some assisting from my cousin (thanks Lisee) pulled off a pretty cool shoot while the cars passing by on the main road must have been pretty confused.

So these are the first shots I took of Cookie as my wife, I think youll agree they are pretty great....and shes not bad either.

Brandon

2010-12-13T19:43:00.004-05:00

Wow, so awhile ago now, I met Brandon, he was a friend of a friend, yeah that old story. Anyway we started hanging out, and having a beer every now then, which sounds a lot like dating, but I guess thats how it goes when your making friends in dare I say adult life.

Brandon, and again not talking about myself in the third person which is probably confusing because in many blogs I do. He wanted some shots because he wanted to try his hand in acting and modeling, and maybe he just wanted to get away from the wife and kids for a while. Whatever the case I was happy to have someone who wanted to get in front of the lens while I try some new ideas. The shot with the background with holes in, was a found opportunity, as we were looking for a plain concrete wall and found that the light coming through the rolling garage door looked pretty cool. I love a found photo, because you can plan and think out your shots to no end before the shoot, but a found shot, where you just have to make it work around the opportunity, often makes a great photo, because working a situation that you weren't prepared for is what its all about.

$$$$$

2010-10-14T19:55:00.004-04:00

A bit of local culture and observation

Something really interesting is about to happen in Australia, and its got to do with money. Typically speaking, things here in Australia are expensive, especially when compared to America which is in fact the paradigm that I use.

For the last 20 or so odd years the Australian dollar has hovered between .70 - .95 to the US dollar, so one american dollar would buy you about 1.25 of Australian money.

So if you project this onto the prices here which coming from America seem high, and then understand that your dollar is essentially buying you anything Australian at about 25% off, with that discount prices begin to align to the more comparable familiar. Average price for eating out lunch in DC $10-15 bucks, lunch at a cafe here probably $15-23, both prices in native currency.

Assuming that you take 25% off the australian lunch you get a relatively nominal price increase.

Now here is when things get interesting, you would think then Australia is just a more inflated society, so I assume that the normal minimum hourly rate would be in the realm of ours albeit mildly inflated. What I found is that the minimum hourly rate is double that of the US, so the poorest workers in Australia have to work just over an hour to eat lunch in Melbourne, while the poorest workers in DC have to work almost three. Which is great for the people living in Australia, but its terrible for the Australians doing business with the rest of the world, until recently.

For the last few weeks the Australian dollar has stayed pretty comfortable at .95 to the US and yesterday it hit .99 and is expected to reach 1.20 in the next few days. Which means that a mac here in australia costs 2400 and the same mac in the states costs 1600, and I could spend 1300 australian to buy the mac in the states that costs $1600 in US currency. I am very curious how the prices here will adjust or if they will at all, but with the unique situation the Australian dollar will have nearly a double buying power in the states. Why buy a 2400 mac from the store in Australia when for just 200 more you can order two macs and have them sent? A bit of a pain with a lot of a gain. And thats my 2 cents.

MIA

2010-09-03T23:51:00.003-04:00

So a whole month with no posts, I think that is a first for me. So lets catch up. On hasselblad.com if you have the time you look up this years masters competition, and find the category for upcoming photographers, and cycle through a bunch of them and try to find me. The website is kinda hard to navigate and I have not been able to find an easy route to find my work, but its on there, Ive seen it.

I had a meeting with a local photography agency called miss bossy boots. It was an experience, to say the least. The photo agent didnt show and didnt cancel, but instead I met one of the photographers who turned out to be a really nice guy. That being said, they didnt like my book. They really didnt like my book, literally, my book. My pictures seemed to come as a secondary element to the quality of my book it self. But I am photographer, not a book binder, I make nice pictures, I never said I made nice books. On top of which from what I understood, books are the type writers of the photography industry, for a while they were the backbone, but as computers and websites came about, why do busy people want to come sit down and look at a book when they can look at your website while sitting in their underwear on their own couch. Isnt that the american dream, to get more by doing less, all the while avoiding the office and getting dressed alltogether? Maybe thats just my dream. I think next time Ill leave the actual book at home, and just upload a photo presentation onto an Ipad. Slick.

Also heres a pic of a composite we did a couple weeks ago, a slow day at the studio usually means we make a project, so my graphic designer didnt have a lot work, so she modeled for a composite and then put it together. Not really my normal style of work, as I tend avoid photo shop, but its been an idea we have been playing with around the studio.

No Photo Shop

2010-07-25T21:38:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I experimented with incorporating prints into my photographs. So essentially as you can see from the photos, I used a layering technique to create the final shots, by taking a picture, printing it out, incorporating in to the shot, and then taking a picture of that. Pretty cool huh.

Rough Cut

2010-07-19T21:02:00.003-04:00

I am almost done working up the new promo video, which I have watched way too many times. I made it on iMovie, which is a great program, but a huge step down from Avid and Final Cut Pro which is where I learned my editing chops. I know it end kinda abruptly, but relax Im working in it. Its a draft. Im sure Ill finish it soon, or at least within the year, when I want to change all the photos.

In other news been really pushing some new ideas particularly hard light. Keeping my self from pulling out the soft box and umbrella first thing has been a challenge. I guess old habits die hard. And this seems particularly like self inflicted injury, because as Im shooting I know I can just pop the soft box on a stand and make it work, but I dont, I adjust the snoots and play with the power, and set up gobos in a disappointing but improving attempt to break old habits.

And while Im thinking of new stuff yesterday I took some shots for a composite piece titled Wake Up and Go. Which is being assembled by my team of photo shoppers (1 person) as I type this.

And other less new, but still new news, did a shoot a few days ago utilizing our fancy Canon Pixma Pro mkII printer to print out some shots I just took and immediately incorporate them back in to a new shot creating a kind of infinity mirror thing, Its pretty cool, yeahh.

BNI Review.... basically it sucks

2010-07-07T02:24:00.002-04:00

So today Im going to take a step away from the photography side of things and talk a bit about business. As I said in my last post, marketing has been a big topic lately. So amidst my endeavors which at the moment has been editing together pictures into a movie slide show for presentations which should be ready and thus will be posted on my next post.

It all starts with one of my friends, also a photographer, who says he went to this Business Network International (BNI) meeting and that it wasn't for him but he gave me some details and said it may be worth a look at.

If you don't know about it, its small local business, who meet once a week, in community groups or chapters, in each chapter only one of any profession is allowed. I was intrigued. The basis of the group sounds good. Who cant use more business? Why not rub shoulders with my fellow business owners. So I call, and they invite me to a meeting, its at 7 am. Now lets pretend for the sake of things that Im normally up that early which Im not, and that I like being in the car on my way to a meeting before the suns up, which I don't. (maybe for a sunrise shoot that Ive been excited about and planned)

So I arrive there, and order my breakfast and coffee, and I dont get it (the coffee) right away, and things are already off to a barbaric start, they tell me to go in the back where the meeting takes place, there are several smartly dressed people ambling about. A lady comes and finds me, asks me to fill out a visitor sheet, I fill it out, and she asks for a card, I give her one.

She introduces me to another lady, a stylist, so she tells me, she dressed like a librarian I had in elementary school, grey coat, with a silver pin on the lapel and a neckerchief tied around her neck like an ascot and tucked into the grey jacket. She seemed nice, aside from the dichotomy of her dress to her profession.

Someone rings a bell behind me, the kind of bell you would expect to find at a cheap motel, where you could pay by the hour. However adversely when this bell rings the people are sent scurrying to their seats like toddlers for story time.

Now in my business, I never say Im good, I know Im good, when Im in a room full of people and selling them my services of photography, I dont say Im good, Im there because Im good. I tell them my vision, my ideas, what Im thinking and where Im going, my clients expect me to be good. If I hired a chef and he said he was a good cook, well I imagine Id say "I should hope so, because if I wanted so-so food Id have my secretary cook"

The meetings general leader of sorts begins the meeting with a nice pat on the back for BNI, with statistics that are undocumented, and applause that is undeserved.

The lady from earlier comes back to me and asks for another one of my cards.

THEY LOVE BUSINESS CARDS, I mean they LOVE them.

Now things start getting weird, everyone takes turns standing up and giving a pitch of sorts for their business, which I would imagine was for my benefit as I am the only new person there. You'd think that, but you'd be wrong.

This group, and every BNI group in fact meets weekly for breakfast at the ungodly hour of 7am, obviously the true sign of successful business people is the ability to go to a weekly glorified show and tell. And if that weren't bad enough, everyone brings in the same thing as they did last week, complete with tag lines, joes plumbing we will plug your leak, dr joe the eurologist, also good at plugging leaks, janes flowers, where flowers are always in bloom, joes computers, the last name in computers. Ive been lured to a hard sell meeting, and Im waiting for someone to ask me if Id be interested in a time share.

Its right at this point where I start to get the its time to get the hell out of here itch. And my coffee shows up. I drink it and watch now a bit more out of awkward admiration for the public speaking skills of so many people who have clearly gone out of their way to be here, and are now standing up and reading a prepared 60 second monologue about their business.

Now I have a problem with this for many reasons.

You have a business and cant explain it without note cards?
You haven't memorized it yet? You do this once a week.
You woke up at sometime before 7 to be here, and the best you can muster is a poor imitation of a six year old reading a poem to his great grandmother that his mom made him write? (kudos to those that added nervous single leg waving)
Your up before dawn for 60 seconds?
Its the Tivo generation, we skip commercials, and if your talking to me like a commercial, Im not listening to you like you are one.
Your going to close your 60 seconds with a catch phrase you worked up with the 19 year old kid working at kinkos? Joes accounting, you can account on Joes. Joe if I had to hear you say that every week you could account on me waiting for you in the parking lot with a framing hammer, and Ill hire you to account how many times I hit you with it before I have to switch hands. (a jobs a job right)

But everyone does it one by one, as the rest pay little to no attention, and drink their coffee and begin to eat their food that is sporadically arriving in front of them.

Now the new people get to share in the self indulgence, and I stand up and say what I do, I feel the need to tell them Im good and show my business card (when in rome) but I hold back.

I am followed by two more visitors, they are both on their second meeting I find out, they have big stacks of their own business cards in front of them, looking like they are ready to go all in with them on Ace King suited. Its 7 am and there are 30 people here and you brought 200+ cards? Really?

Fine Ill take you all in with the 6 or so cards I have stuffed behind my visa and amex and swimming with various receipts in my wallet.

Now a rolodex is passed around, and Im told that non members cant put their cards in, and Im obviously crushed, ya know with my proclivity to put my card in things. But its a big deal to them as people clamber over their eggs and bacon to get their greasy hands on the card collection, and see that just like last week, they don't need to refill their section, everyone checks their cards, no one takes anyone else's. Good system.

The women next to me keeps looking at her cards and looking at me, cards, me cards, me. She really wants me to ask for one. I really don't want one. I feel like Im at a science fair sitting next to the kid with the does shit stink?hypothesis both that no one has visited, because it does, I know it does, please don't make me discuss it with you, you'll think Im interested when Im just being nice and you don't need anymore encouragement. In fact you might need a bit less. I don't even remember what she did, but Im positive that no one I know or will know needs it.

Luckily the leader comes back on, and he tells everyone again how great we are, well the members at least.

"The ten minute presentation will begin momentarily" holy shit theres more "but first a word on membership" I expected this, some nominal amount for dues and what not "600 dollars initiation and 300 for yearly dues" HOLY SHIT, these people are paying for this, like really paying, that money doesn't include the breakfast, thats 900 for the newbies, just for the flavor "also attendance is mandatory and missing meetings will result in termination" they'll kick you out of the breakfast club, which is strange because the movie of the same name had differnt message "also new people are expected to meet one on one with everyone" so thats like 30 more meetings in addition to the one mandatory meeting a week? I haven't got a job from this yet but at least now Im $900 in the hole and I seem busy while not making money, speed dating small businesses, and Im just not sure Im emotionally available right now. I just broke up with my electrician because he was clingy and jealous of my relationship with the plumber even after I explained there was totally nothing going on between the plumber and I.

The guy gives his presentation, complete with hand outs, which is good because now I have something to pretend to look at while my brain struggles to comprehend the situation. Everyone takes turns on some kind of rotation for their chance at boring the rest for 10 min. At this meeting the guy must have gone over his 10min or someone needed fresh towels and was pretty upset about it because the bell rang several times towards the end.

Relieved I think its over.

Its not.

Its referral time people fill out little carbon copied sheets of names and pass them around, your not very cool here if you dont have a referral for someone. No referral you have to tell an anecdote about how great BNI is. Its like catholic confession, complete with our fathers and hail marys. If you have a referral you announce it to the group, hey joe in injury rehab, I was at the supermarket and this guy asking for change with a cardboard sign that read injured cant work to much pain, outside the Safeway, I gave him your card, he doesnt have a phone number but maybe you can call the safeway and they will get him for you, I told him you would give him a call, he said "thanks can you spare a dollar?", which I think means hes very keen and can definitely afford to pay your rate.

The girl with the big stack of cards next to me gave out two referrals, both were for herself, hey accountant guy my husband and I need someone to do our taxes. Hey phone guy, I need a new iphone case, now the panhandler may have been a bit of embellishing above, but this chicks were true to life, no lie, thats what she did, she referred herself to people. Good business right?

The answer is Yes because it happened again immediately after. The lady that put the name tag says she wants to say thanks to the stylist, the women I spoke to earlier. The name tag lady says that she went shopping with the stylist and not only did she have good time but she's a good stylist. I bit my tongue, and that is when my eyes bounced back and fourth between them, and they are both wearing the same thing. Grey coat?check. Silver pin on lapel? check. Scarf thing wrapped around her neck and knotted tucked into the front of the coat? Ohhhh yeah, thats affirmative.

Now Im thinking of joining for the entertainment. It was the biggest hodgepodge bush league, loathing, convoluted, meandering, repetitive, socialist attempt at professionalism, thats so bizarre and uncomfortable that part of me wanted to believe it was some kind of unpractical joke, and the other part of me the professional in me, well it just loves a train wreck when Im the only one around with a camera.

New Promo

2010-06-28T00:20:00.002-04:00

Sent out a new promo last week and I am having a big marketing push over the next few days. The image went out as a email campaign to my Australian hopefully clients to be, and in part with the help of Agency Access. So far having some issues with Agency Access over timing issues as they have only recently started expanding to Australia and are not yet at full speed with things like time zones. So they have gotten so less than friendly emails from me about when I say 10 am tuesday in Australia and they sent it out 10 am tuesday east coast time. Also did a quick little photo set up at a vineyard this past weekend and working up those images as we speak, so should have some of those posted soon.

10 min portrait

2010-06-14T19:58:00.003-04:00

For a while now I have had this terrible (mild at worst) eye problem. It all started with an xbox 360 that I bought right before heading over to Aussie land, to try and give myself something to do as I expected the adjustment period to have some down time. Turns out in Australia you cant buy games for it and the xboxs are region locked, so I have been stuck with the games I brought with me, anyway. I was sure that there was something in my eye, a scratch, a splinter, a bug, something. So I went to the Doc-n-a-box in the states, they said I had a scratch, got drops still hurt, I went to a general practitioner in Oz he said I had allergies, got drops still hurt, went to Optometrist here, one eye has a +1, which is good bc that eye loves bringing the other one to events, said I had dry eye and allergies, got drops, still hurt. Came back home and saw an opthamologist, a friend of my pops, said i had dry eye, got drops, life is good, finally.

As he was the first one to get me straight, and the first one to not charge me, I said Id be happy to repay him in trade.

What I didnt know was that he would call my father, schedule the shoot, and I have 5 min warning to get it done. It was close to dusk, and closer to the end of it at that. He showed up with his two lovely girls, I threw a reflector in his hands and we started shooting, racing the setting sun.

Back in Australia

2010-06-08T18:52:00.002-04:00

Winer has finally caught up with me after a year and a half and I dont like it one bit. After three months spread between DC and Virginia Beach I am back in Australia. And as I was traveling out of a suitcase and rarely had access to a desk Ive had plenty of opportunities to dodge blogging, which is too bad because I was working a bit. So as is a theme with my blog Im going to attempt to bring you up to speed with what Ive been doing, starting with a engagement shoot in the Historic streets of Norfolk VA, which is really a striking location but unfortunately long before I was born had a terrible fire so only a few blocs remain. But I love the cobbled streets leading right up to the waters edge and I was pretty stoked with what came out, if you are a fan or Brandon Rossen Creative on facebook you may have seen these already and if your not a fan, well maybe take a minute and ask yourself why not. Ill wait.

I had a couple assistants on the shoots so a big thank you to Sam and Morgan for moving lights and minding the balloons, and occasionally inhaling the helium.

Most shots were with a hotshoe flash mounted in a smaller side of medium softbox and quite a bit of ambient.

Playing with Toys

2010-04-25T16:06:00.002-04:00

So as I have mentioned before I recently came to own a Mr Potato Head. However since I was a child he has updated his wardrobe, and now can be purchased with the silly suitcase which has more noses, faces, ears, and other such semi worthless pieces of plastic. Experimented with a couple Ideas with a police potato and firemen potato, however setting another potato on fire was more complicated than expected and turned into a situation that might require real firemen. So we went with the murder scene.

Still showing up at my parents house and taking over the garage

2010-04-22T10:43:00.002-04:00

While ive been home and had access to my folks garage and an some old paper backdrops since before my trip. So as I do, I started digging through the stuff I left there and found my mobile backdrop stand, so Ive been setting it up and doing some shoots with my buddy Ben, My Brother and his Wife, and my buddy Sam who helped me acquire and create the Mr. Potato head promo, Bens pictures are posted above and the rest will be following shortly.

Back in the USA

2010-03-15T15:33:00.002-04:00

well in actuality I have been here for about a week now, and Im just about adjusted to the time. As it happens quite a bit went down photo wise since I have last posted. I have done a couple shoots, updated my Mac to the newly released Aperture 3, and thrown some new gear in the bag.

Firstly I got a hand held extendable pole that a medium sized soft-box fits on top of. So instead of setting up a light stand that has limitations that it must be on flat ground and so fourth, this allows my assistant or talking light stand to position the light pretty much anywhere.

Second Aperture 3, you scared me, I put you in my computer and you told me my library was going to be updated, you told me it was going to take 6 hours, i believed you, you unexpectedly quit 23% in, I was asked if I would like to send in a report of the problem, I was too afraid of the repercussions, I restarted you, and you worked, I always thank you for that. After a lot of tweaking and turning off facial detection it worked even better, however all be warned if your using Aperture and wanting to update, back up everything, and turn off face detection, it sounds like a cool feature but you probably dont need it and it ties up all your RAM and resources.

Its been awhile

2010-01-25T03:55:00.003-05:00

Things are moving, at pace that seems slow and then suddenly seems to rush ahead at once, or maybe it just seems that way be I wait so long between blogs. Anyway officially Rossen creative has launched www.brandonrossencreative.com take it for a spin. happy to finally have it launched and get to work on some clients pages and stop working on mine and get back behind the camera. Which is one of many places that I really like to be, also after a a lot of thought and re works I have the shot list for next personal project entitled "Literally" which is a big list that Ive narrowed down to about 6 shots which are complicated but I am really hoping to to pull off in the next two months with the help of some models. Which brings me to my next point of interest,Modelmayhem.com, the internet continues to surprise me with the amount of talent out there, and model mayhem is no different. however what it has in great quality it also has in equal parts terrible photography, so so porn, and your run of the mill weird (or on a scale for those outside the photography world, probably some of the strangest things youve seen).....that being said, I signed up, everyone seems to be doing it, and frankly I need to models, so I have launched a model mayhem page, I still have very mixed feelings about it, but we will see and Ill keep you updated.

Also check out my product portfolio on www.brandonrossen.com and see the shots of the tea and sake cups which I think are lovely, unfortunately my client disagreed, you be the judge.

Rossen Creative

2009-12-11T06:52:00.004-05:00

things are beginning to shape as the new website, brandonrossencreative.com is built to house both my current site brandonrossen.com and the even more newly launched Brandon Rossen Print and Pixels as my head-designer/business partner/fiance takes takes the stage in the newly offered services of web creation/development, graphic design, and printing.

Pictures below are of the new work studio which has been a blast getting set into and now that we finally got some internet in this joint, I can start getting some work done. Which is primarily at this point updating my pictures. Im behind in adding to my portfolio, as many have done before me, you get your portfolio up, you get work, you stop updating, you stop getting better work. So these days Im staring at any number of sets of three images trying to pick the best one from the set before I decide I am not as thrilled about them as I was 2 hours ago. An hour or so passes and I go back to that set and fall back in love with the three and start the whole routine over, again. By the end of the day my eyes are so tired I can hardly see, and ive added two photos and taken one older one down. The ones I take down, I do so with great guilt, I give them a heroes good bye, old friends you served me well, I give them a little salute as I hit the delete key. And they are gone from my portfolio back in Gen. Pop. with the thousands of inmates of my digital prison where I most likely will lock them up in a corner of my hard drive that Ill probably never see them again. Its the digital burden.

2009-12-11T06:51:00.001-05:00

New studio

2009-12-11T06:50:00.001-05:00

slow learning curve for speed lights.... go figure

2009-11-15T18:16:00.002-05:00

So about a year ago now I met a dude/bloke depending on if you are my aussie or american readership, at Teds Camera store in Melbourne. He was one of many photographers I have tried to network with and to occasionally poach information out of , however he has been the first willing to give up useful information. For a while now I have been struggling with Canon speed lights and as a google search will show you, this is not new. I have been trying to find out how to work the powerful but ungainly machines, you would think in this situation I would turn to the manual. Well I did, they are clearly written in Japanese first and converted to English. for example, "for happy happy flash, select flash mode twelveteen to make super happy flash light and honor to your family". I never found the super happy happy flash button, I looked, but I never found it.

I asked some of the other photographers I knew, who offered helpful advice like, "switch to nikon", thanks, but ill go ahead and call that plan B.

Well now thanks to Joel, some beers, and some of the new pocket wizards for canon preserving ETTL, results are on the up and up. Check out his site here.

Photoshop for I phone

2009-11-15T17:57:00.000-05:00

I recently switched from my tried and true black berry to an iPhone
which fits better into mac centric life. I was unsure at first but the
iPhone is just remarkable.

experimenting

2009-11-08T17:54:00.002-05:00

Im not in college anymore but im still experimenting. So be sure to check the experimental section on the best website on the internet www.brandonrossen.com it has recently been updated with new work. So as is usually the case when business slows down I get a chance to work on some of the stuff that blows my hair back. Or in other words to take photos in the dark and play with flashlights, and the more I do it, the more I rekindle my love affair with the idea of a Hasselblad and not a new hasselblad, which I would love, but an old used one probably older than I am, the idea of owning one feels like owning a piece of history, a classic car of the photography world, sure its not as fast as my digital camera, it wont auto focus, it needs a light meter, you cant plug it into photoshop and make them right, you get what you give it, and I got a lot of love to give. The only negatives this thing has are the film kind and lets face it in a world of digital, if you can slow down enough to use them, negatives are a positive. Like reading a newspaper or reading the news online, you get the same thing, but the experience, the ink on your fingers, the dry rustle of the paper, the coffee stains, there is something very right about it all.

From the road

2009-11-07T21:25:00.001-05:00

From the road

2009-11-07T21:23:00.000-05:00

On my way to dinner last night managed to shoot some pics of Melbourne
harbour.

Ohh Baby

2009-10-17T21:43:00.002-04:00

here they are as promised about a month after I took them Sydney, only this time its the baby and not the city. in other news, Rossen photography has been experiencing a boom of free lance work, the only problem being it all is coming out of Washington DC.

However I am currently ramping up to do some photography workshops in Melbourne and I have attached the newly revised flyer. Thanks for tuning in and hopefully Ill get blogging over the next couple days and get up to date with the posts.

Little fairies

2009-10-07T03:41:00.002-04:00

hello Rossen photography is now coming to you live from australia. I am adjusting to the change way better than last time, the toilets still flush backwards, everyone is still way too concerned with the strenth of their coffee, and sadly to this dyslexic kid (me) they are still driving on the wrong side, except now where it used to feel foreign, it only seems slightly weird..... and i kinda like the coffee. Also just a little fyi, no cream, or artificial sweetener, people will laugh, you wont get the joke.

Spending a lot of time with new Australian family and took pictures of my niece to be's fairy birthday party, which was about as much pink and pastels as well anyone could want. I made the mistake of letting them jump on my back where I showed them I could do a push up with both of my nieces hanging on, now Im regurlary doing pushups with a 3 year old and 5 year old on my back, who think its really fun, dont understand that after doing 10 Im pretty puffed, and who make fun of my accent constantly, but they seem to enjoy it, and I get two miniature personal trainers.

Crazy times

2009-09-25T01:13:00.003-04:00

things are a bit out of control. I am leaving on saturday for Australia take 2. Ive sold half of my worldly possessions on craigslist, and gave the other half to goodwill, and if you do the math that should be everything, however I keep finding more and more stuff, so the packing took way longer than expected, plus we are moving across the world so there has been lots of shipping and its a long story. On top of that I covered another beautiful wedding, did a shoot for a newly engaged couple, submitted an entry to DC photoweek competition and took some pics of a beautiful newborn girl. Sadly I am so disorganized those pics arnt ready but I will be posting them soon.

Also to all my friends I really meant to call of you but somehow I just ran out of time. Please keep in touch and stay tuned for pics from the past few projects and developments down under. until next time....

Rossen out.

Amsterdam

2009-08-28T15:43:00.002-04:00

Where to begin. This trip was the culmination of some bizarre sequence of events, that unfolded to one of my more memorable if not strangest travels to date. It all began with a friend of mine, who works for United. In his benefits package he was given special flying privileges, and further he was able to assign one person as a companion, who as fate would have it was me. This companion pass entitled me to travel for the same rate as the employees, so he and I planned a trip to Amsterdam. The first set of dates fell through. Another one of my friends heard about the trip and wanted to come, so now it was three of us. We were to leave on the 18th and he would be meeting us there a few days after.

Here is where things get interesting, when you fly on these companion passes, you are flying standby only, I had never done this before. So I am all packed up and ready to go I get my buddy we get to the airport go through security get to the gate, and then it hits me, after all this we may just be going home. I am getting anxious, and just then my name is called, I go to the desk where I am informed that I will be sitting in first class and my buddy would be in business. Things are looking good. It was by far the best flight of my life, and I cringe thinking about my approaching flight to Australia in coach. Small seat, big guy, long flight, are we having fun yet?

We arrive in Amsterdam at 7 am go to our hotel, the town seams quiet, even the train to Amsterdam central is silent. We get off the train and immediately get lost, we get directions, we get lost again, we consult the map, somehow happen to find the hotel/hostel/drug den.

People are already sitting in the lobby smoking. We try to check in, but cannot until 4. We quickly stash our bags in the luggage room and head out. I am already nervous about my ride back. As we are walking down the canals we realize that we are lost again, this is a prominent topic of the trip. I start taking pictures, remarking at how quiet the city is. 9 am, I was very wrong, the city is deafening with the sound of bikes and bells, its like a real life game of frogger. I begin taking pictures of all the people on bikes, I get hit by a bike, I stop taking pictures. I start to have irrationally fear of bike bells, jumping out of the street whenever they ring, which is all the time.

I ask for directions, I get yelled at. I make my buddy ask, he gets yelled at, we stop asking for directions, we got lost more but it bothers us less.

There is a surprising lack of chairs.

We did some tourist things, and got lost some more. It was a trip that was spotted some of the funniest, weirdest, stressful things I could imagine.

The Search is Over

2009-08-02T14:45:00.002-04:00

Pretty much since the first day I heard about it I wanted a 5D mkII. I was positive the second they hit the market Id have one, that was months ago. I just couldnt bring myself to pre pay, I called everywhere, and they all said the same thing, we dont have any, we dont know when we will have any, and if you want to pay up front, we can put your name on the list.

Not for me, If i walk in a store and give them close to 3 grand, I expect to leave with something. So I wait, and wait, and I call, and call, and no one has one, and I call less, I think people were starting to recognize my voice. All the while the cameras 21 mega pixels and full frame sensor eluded me. I wanted them, I didnt need them.

Then the shutter on my 50D started acting up, and the job with surrounds landscaping booked. Now I didnt need it, I had to have it. The job booked friday afternoon, for that coming monday, roughly two days to track down something I havnt been able to find in several months. I call penn camera, bc I feel obligated to give them all the business I can for as often as I call and drop by to get them to track down equiptment for me. They dont have any. I get on the computer to look up the best buy closest to me phone number, I have penn camera on speed dial. As I am looking for the number I see check availability in stores. I type in what I want and my zip code the five closest stores pop up, all with the sad gray text UNAVAILABLE. I think about it for a second and enter a zip code a bit further out of the city, Im thinking maybe its a bit more popular of an item in DC and Arlington then it is a bit further off the beltway. I search for Fairfax and still it is unavailable, then I search for Sterling Va, and now two stores say available. I call them and they say they got it and they will hold it up front for me, I ask if they will transfer it to a store in the city, they wont, which now that I think about it is probably the only reason they had one. I drive out to Sterling, it takes a while. I walk in the place is nearly empty and they are closing in 5 min, and I am late to a party that I was on my way to, three hours ago. My friends keep calling me, I tell them im at best buy in Sterling, they dont understand.

I tell the guy behind the counter my name and what I am here to pick up.

He says "your the baller, we didnt think you were gonna show". He pulls out the camera and starts ringing me up when I remember the little card that I havnt touched since the last time I was in best buy buying a camera. I give it to him, he scans it, and I remember that I was sopposed to get gift certificates for 5 bucks for every hundred I spend and the old camera was over a grand, so we are talking about a little bit of coin. He cant give me the credits but calls the hot line and says then can, I talk to them for a while, they ask to talk to him, and then ask to talk to me again, and then him one final time to which he hangs up and moves over to the computer and pulls up my account which is still wrong. He calls the hot line again, and I dont really care anymore I just want to leave. I tell him thanks for trying but dont worry about it, the store is already closed. He says sorry and asks if it is ok if he gives me 15% off I say sure not completely understanding the situation. The price was 3200 or so with the protection and tax now it was 2600. He was a very nice guy. Im not sure why or how, but I am grateful.

HDR

2009-07-16T16:17:00.004-04:00

Ive finally started to play around with some HDR images, which means high dynamic range, which means, it makes images look cool. Its a mildly new trend that has been popping up more and more across the portfolios of many photographers, and whats that old expression about when your friends jump off a bridge?

I use photomatix its pretty straight forward and after a short learning curve I produced a few HDR that at worst look mildly interesting.

HDR images work by combining three or more photos to capture tones not normally seen, essentially taking the best exposed parts of several images and making one image.

Its Wedding Season and whole lot of thanks are in order

2009-06-17T20:06:00.004-04:00

First off a lot of thank yous are in order the Askin's, the bride and groom Hannah and Matt, the Tetlows for your support and putting this thing in motion. I had a blast photographing your wedding, it was truly a beautiful evening. You have a great network of friends and family and I was so happy to be a part of it

Second a big thank you to Alison at Results for Development in DC. I am so appreciative of you and everyone who goes out of their way to refer me. It has really played such an important role in the development and growth of my company, you guys are the best. Thank you.

And third a I gotta thank my brother, for always being behind me on my photography even before it was profitable. He recently made it possible for me to have a piece of equipment that really will help, a canon 70-200 2.8L, its nice, just trust me. Pics from this lens will be coming soon.

Fourth, Karyn, my muse, my model, my love, you are the granter of dreams, when this car breaks down you get out and push, you are everything I need, I love you, Ill take your picture forever.

I think thats it for now, tune back in later for some pics with the new lens, and to find out about what Im going to do about my camera miss firing, Canon will fix it......in 3 to 6 weeks for free, an upside. In the meantime Im gonna have to go back to my back up the xti and keep my fingers crossed it doesnt malfunction, or this guys gotta buy another new camera.

Celebrity Pics

2009-06-01T20:37:00.002-04:00

Well guys sorry the pictures have been a long time coming, but business is picking up and I havnt had time to blog which is great news. I have wedding coming up this weekend, and two proposals out at the moment, so things are staying on the up and up.

A few of the best shots have been posted now on my website for a while now and here are few of the others that didnt make the website but are definitely note worthy.

GI Film festival

2009-05-17T23:24:00.002-04:00

Just finished up a six day shoot for the GI Film festival in DC. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work and now that its over I can put some time in to seeing what images I brought home. No picks to post yet but please look forward to seeing some of the shots of Kelsey Grammer, Newt Gingrich, Stephen Baldwin, and John Mccain among others. Much thanks to all the people at the GI film festival you guys were great.

march for marijuana policy reform

2009-05-07T22:46:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday afternoon I covered a march on the streets of DC. The march started with a speaker in the park back behind the white house and then marched through NW DC to the Martin Luther King park, where a stage was set up and several bands played a free show. People witnessing the parade cheered, cars honked and everybody smiled. The march was composed of roughly about 70 people and about doubled at the park. The march was planned to coincide with hundreds of other marches happening at the same time around the globe. The mixture of people turning out for this was a lot of what you would expect, and then again it was quite a bit of things you wouldn't expect. Considering the march being in a city of white highly starched collars, its impressive in it self that people came out to support this cause.

Guerillas and jelly fish

2009-04-09T18:08:00.003-04:00

I was backing up some files the other day and found some pics that got lost in the digital mess that is my life. The pics were from Cancun Mexico where my fiance and I traveled about two months ago. I came back to DC got caught up in a few gigs and the images got misplaced. Then while backing up I found them again and oddly the best pics being of the FEPA which is the special forces police in Mexico. We were warned against our travel to Mexico but we figured its Cancun, how bad could it be. Well not that bad, but then again not that good.

In fact we did not see any guerrillas but we did see a lot of police, and not police in small cars with blue lights and two guys in expected uniforms. these guys were around too, but it was the FEPA cars that really grabbed you attention. If you didn't know there was scary stuff going on in Mexico you knew it by the time you left. We were staying on the strip of Cancun one road runs back and fourth on the coast delicately splitting the thin but long row of luxury hotels. It was on this road where every few minutes you could spot a convoy of these special police patrolling the beaches guns drawn covered head to toe in black. Ill tell you this it is an odd feeling picking up the camera and pointing it at someone whos holding a weapon and looking at you.

The other two pics are from this tiny aquarium that we found while we were walking down the road waiting for a convoy to pass by so I could get some up close shots. It was a nice enough place clearly made for tourists and complete with English signs poorly translated. "walking this way for shop of buys" and "thanking you for come". I still had the camera in my hand so I snapped a few shots of the jelly fish tank, which came out well.

light reading about light writing

2009-04-02T18:21:00.003-04:00

Spent about $15 bucks last week on some colored crayola flashlights that looked like big crayons. I was sick and picking up some tissues, and while I was debating buying the ones that have vic vapor in them vs the ones that have lotion in them I see these impulse buy toys hanging right in front of me. So I throw them in the cart with the kleenex with the built in vics vapo rub. The man at the check out asks me "sick kid huh?" Im afraid not, I say, then I think about explaining myself. But my nose is starting to run and so to must I. I get in my car rip into the kleenex, and the smell of the vics reminds me of being 12 years old and faking an illness to stay home from school. I go home and get more sic for a week all the while I'm thinking about these crayon flash lights and I know there is photograph there but I just cant figure it out, couldn't quite figure out the details, until last night. Use the crayon flashlights to draw a photograph, so with some string and some clever rigging I came up with these.

Also if you haven't checked out the website lately the contact and bio pages have been updated so check them out.

Tear Sheets

2009-03-16T13:02:00.003-04:00

I got the Tear sheets from cox today, well not today, I got them a few days ago, but I have been busy so I didnt get a chance to post them, well not exactly busy, lets say distracted, by what I cannot say. Last week, it came it went, I was there, I must have been doing something. I know one thing I wasnt blogging, its a common problem for me.

But here are the tear sheets which are a industry word for printed work, but you can still call them whatever you want. The vertical images were for the paper and the horizontal images were for highway billboards. If your in the hampton roads area check them out tell me how they look.

The Studio

2009-03-02T13:35:00.003-05:00

So here is a post where all of you who have been keeping up with my blog will be rewarded, remember my last post where I said I was building a studio, I built one, kinda, in the dining room of my apartment. Do you remember? Well much like I have found in dealing with my fiance, you probably dont remember, but it doesnt change the fact that I told you. Also I got engaged. Because when you find someone who will let you turn your dining room into a studio, well you marry them. So I got a studio and a fiance, and I have never had proper training for either. But Im figuring it out.

Photos are from my dining room studio consisting of two back drops, and light coming from one on camera speedlight 580exII that was the master to a second speed light 430 exII in a softbox camera left

Cox

2009-02-22T11:16:00.003-05:00

I finished up the Cox shoot, which was honestly four days long and honestly two of those days were the most challenging photographic days I have ever had. It was made clear to me that I was going to be shooting stills that matched the angle and layout of the video being shot, however, I would not know what the shot was going to be except for moments before I was to shoot it. It was a constant struggle of adaptation. Mainly the lights were a huge issue. Video uses "hot lights" which are lights that stay on and thus they get hot. Photographers use strobes, which is fancy word for big flashes. Photographers can use hot lights but video cannot use strobes so I used the lights the video crew set up. I had to balance them to the tungsten color spectrum and after the first day of using them I was able to predict them better. The second bigger problem I was having were lens issues. The more you use your zoom the more background blur (boka) your going to get which is typically a rather desirable affect. However I had to mirror the shots and sometimes too people one 5 ft from me and one 8 ft from me had to be in focus. I struggled with the depth of field to get them both in focus and came across a good trick for this problem. I stopped my aperture up to f/10 and manually focused on the further subject, then I focused to the closer subject. So given that the depth of focus is lets say 4 feet I had to get them both in the realm. The problem is when you focus on something you get about 2 feet in front in focus and 2 feet behind. So the method is to focus on the area between the two subjects and tightening up your aperture enough to get them both to fall into focus. Its a bit jarring at first but it works, and gives you a lot more versatility in dealing with your depth of field.

A bit of a serious post today but check back in soon I am going to be posting my version of how to build a studio in a tiny apartment, because the time has come I need to be able to do work from the comforts of my own studio/ dining room.

a touch of randomness

2009-02-08T21:14:00.003-05:00

So tomorrow I take on a new corporate client. Which is fantastic and thank you Lisee for the incredible opportunity I really appreciate it. Tomorrow I am shooting a new campaign headed by Studio Center in my home town of Virginia Beach for Cox Communications cable providers. However in my preparation for tomorrows shoot I came across a few gems from my trip to Australia, and they happen to be rather irrelevant to each other and have no particular order, I thank you for your forgiveness in this matter in advance. A couple are of the city at Sydney at night where I used long exposure in an attempt to capture the motion of the city, and few shots of Amber and Sienna and Karyn.

gritty graffiti embraced and dust the silent assailant

2009-01-27T20:32:00.005-05:00

These are some shots taken from down town Melbourne, a city full of street art. The main streets are as impressive as any large metropolis, however it is in its raw and cleverly painted underbelly where the city truly unwraps the duality of its persona. The streets are wide and confusing with cars doing hook turns (the American equivalent of turning left from the right only in Australia your turning right from the left lane), but why? Well I'm glad you asked, the city boasts an impressive bus system, and larger train station, and to inject the feeling of nostalgia directly into the veins of the modern city is the tram system. Think San Francisco trolleys in New York City, charming, slow, great if your on them, annoying if your stuck behind one, these things coursing through the city at a pace far slower than the beat of the city. And the trams come in a range of sizes and shapes, from looking like modern day speed trains, to and I apologize for making the same comparison again, but some look identical to what you would expect to see in ringing down the streets of San Fran. The buildings are large and impressive and spotted with street cafes and boutique stores, and just enough of the old dilapidation you need to grow on a building to give it an air of allure, or history, a mystique of the old surrounded by the new. And from here you delve deeper, to the grunge of the city, the lane ways and alleys. These pedestrian only lane ways, and filthy back alleys are in my opinion ( which typically is the only one that matters to me) where the city's personality is truly found. Like a city with a middle child syndrome, you have to get to know it to appreciate it. And I like this city, you could pass right through it and miss the best part, its simply mysterious. The tiny lane ways and off shooting alleys lead to art with the ability to rival any museum. Some times you find amazing vivid graffiti, other alleys I visited had a gigantic crystal chandelier wedged precariously between the two buildings over the alleyway. Some had a perfectly white set of stairs that were inaccessible and led to nowhere, just hanging over the street. The city a museum in its own right, and I only covered a fraction of the streets, but I promise, if you go looking and you want to find something new and different in Melbourne, hit the lane ways and back alleys, I promise you ll find something.

Now the bad news, while I am out there having a ball shooting off frames like crazy and switching lenses probably twice as often as necessary, dust infiltrated the perimeter of my camera. I was doing some jewelry photography on a white background, and the tiny blurry dark spots revealed themselves at any f/stop higher than f11. So I get my trusty blower with a brush head and start blowing, didn't help, so I do a light dusting of the camera chamber, avoiding the mirror, don't touch it, its bad. I touch it and freak out, a smudge.No....

I get a micro fiber cloth and the smudge comes off easier than I anticipated, however the dust is still there. A try to blow off the sensor, where I learned something I didn't know, its covered, you have to manually navigate the menu and set the camera to sensor clean, if you don't, than I hope you kept your box and receipt because your headed to the merchandise return isle. I set it to manual clean and debated actually wiping the sensor with the brush but I decide to just use the blower. The big fleck is removed and I finish the shoot and immediately start checking if I can clean the sensor with a blower/ brush, which you can, it just may ruin your sensor. My nervous nature pays off. I called my camera guy who recommended the Arctic Butterfly which is a funny looking brush that creates its own static to attract and remove dust from the sensor. So your going to get dust in your digital camera, it will bother you, it will really bother you when you see its on your image sensor, you ll never get it perfectly clean, and if you do it wont be clean for long, so you have to learn to deal with it, and that just a quick retouches in photo shop and all is again right in the world. However until then just knowing that the dust is there will bother you, bother you while your writing your blog, while your taking a shower, give you that spooky feeling while your laying bed that you should get up and clean your sensor, and then your bothered you cant stop thinking about it, so you get up and try to clean it at 3 in the morning only to get bummed that you still cant get the spot out, so you lay back down and lament dust, because what you gonna do, that stuff is everywhere.

Back home but way behind

2009-01-25T20:16:00.003-05:00

I am back in the United States. yay! And as usual I am behind and have lots of new news, for those of you who care, and I know that you do. Im lookin at you. Thanks for reading, your great.

So what you are going to see is that I am going to post some images from the trip, and Im going to talk about the trip, and you can pretend I am still on the trip, and I am blogging.

Greetings from Byron Bay everybody. Its a small town on the large side of the small spectrum. Situated on the east coast of Australia, it is the home to Australia Eastern most point, which will become import later. Its small its quaint its kinda hippie-ish, its kinda touristy, chairs are decorative and rarely have backs, everywhere you dine is outside and few places have air conditioning. People burn incense and walk barefoot, lots of back packers, hospitality staff laying about on grassy bluffs just skirting the line between palm-trees and the beach. Its an eccentric and eclectic place that most certainly embraces a lot of eastern and new age thinking.

And there is a lighthouse, sitting daftly up on a rocky cliff overlooking the beach. Everyone said you must climb it, so we did, it wasnt my idea.

The day looked cloudy, we ate breakfast and my girlfriend says,"we should climb it today, its cloudy and cool"

I agree to go without really realizing it, she is happy and surprised because at this point I have avoided this hike for three days.

We leave at 10:30am, the mountain looks nearby. We think we will be up and back before lunch, we actually think this.

We are taking my whole camera kit, all the lenses, all the batteries, a back up camera, everything. We walk, and walk and walk, its noon and we are nearing the base of the trail, hottest part of the day and we are hiking the mtn. We get lost, signs come and go sporadically

we ask directions, several times, we get passed on the trail by an older couple that look like a rather cool version of my grandparents, they advance out of my sight.

Its hot, I cant believe I got talked into this, and Im carrying this heavy camera with my biggest lens, the trail turns to stairs, wrapping up and away and out of sight. We climb them, naturally thinking the light house is at the top, its not. We come to a landing and better vantage point of the trail winding back down to the beach, at the beach we find another sign beckoning us further, we follow.

The path again turns to stairs, twice as long as the first, and I cant believe it, and I am ready to quit, but she really wants to continue, and two little kids with surf boards scurry past us on the thin trail. We keep going, at the top the kids with the surfboards are just getting to the bottom, and the old couple who blew by us earlier are turning back. They say they've seen it before and that its too hot, I couldn't agree more. We keep going, back down again, for a third and final accent, the whole way up all I am thinking about is the way back down how far we've come, how poor a decision sandals were. At the top is the eastern most point we stood there for a second longer than necessary to catch your breath and then headed back down.

Istock

2009-01-16T19:22:00.002-05:00

I got into Istockphoto, on my second attempt which is pretty great news as it lets me sell some of my work that is less than useful in my personal portfolio. I applied with the three images from my last post of the kangaroo, the giraffe, and the koala and I was accepted as a contributor. So then I try to submit those three images that were approved to be sold, and which were subsequently rejected due to a variety of technical issues. Totally bummed me out, especially as I had thought since they were approved that they would obviously be accepted again, apparently not so. So I spent a few days feeling sorry for my self and that Im an all around shitty photographer. 2 days later I decide Im not shitty, and that Im going to try again. I mean I was accepted to contribute so how bad can I be? So I start going through some of their rejection notes, pixel loss, image distortion, and I cant figure out why they are saying this because on my computer they look perfect. Except for one instance of purple fringing, that was my bad. Otherwise they look fine, no pixelation, no jagged edges, nothing that looks odd. So i chalk it a loss and pick some new images to submit. I begin to export the images and think hey Brandon how long has it been since you had a look at the export settings? Good question Brandon, I dont know when I last checked. So I check, and everything slowly starts making sense. I have the export quality at 10, 10 sounds good, but it goes to 12, 12 is better, why have I been exporting at 10? And while Im at it why have quality on a 1-12 scale, why not just adjust the scale and have 10 be 12? So I set it to 12, best image quality. Then I look at the next line dots per inch (dpi) which is at 72, which seems funny to me because that is what you use for web images, because its a vastly reduced image quality, and now Im really surprised I was even accepted, because the dpi should have been 300, which explains the data loss and the pixelation. So I had been sending in images with less than 33% of the possible pixels I could have, or another way to say it is I send them 1/3 of the image. It was amazing they accepted those images in the first place. So check your export settings, make sure what your looking at is the same thing your sending out.

Sydney

2009-01-07T23:06:00.002-05:00

A bit of lapse since my last post as I am now in byron bay and am just getting to post my picture from sydney. But the internet connections have been slow for days, so today I have a good signal so Im gonna try to get some shots posted before I lose the signal. Also about to try to submit some more pics to istockphoto and maybe this time I wont get rejected, keeping my fingers crossed.

Melbourne

2008-12-28T23:36:00.003-05:00

So I didn't really take any pictures the first day I was in Melbourne partly due to spending the better part of two days traveling half way around the world and partly due to not completely understanding what time of day it was and partly due that in my sleep deprived state I tried taking pictures on the plane with a little coke can I affixed with a toilet paper roll lens. Seemed inventive and cutting edge at the time, but now I cant fly Qantas anymore. Also fun fact Qantas, the only word Ive ever come across that has a Q without a U. However I got some rest, pulled out the camera, the one made in japan, not the one made at 30,ooo feet. Went to St.Kilda beach and got some shots of the street performers and and cafe lined streets leading up to the beach covered in graffiti that is the dream of any urban photographer, or anyone looking to find the bohemian trendiness of New york and the laid back lifestyle and shady palm-trees of California in one place. Also picked up a pretty nice sunburn, apparently there is a whole in the ozone, right over Australia, who knew? Al gore, never should have doubted you.

Family Shoot

2008-12-28T23:02:00.002-05:00

Here are a few of my favorites from my shoot with the Sauris. Which was a beautiful shoot with a beautiful family, in a beautiful house, and I like to think we ended up with some beautiful images. It is to date the most images I have taken in a hour, because when you are working with two albeit adorable yet easily bored children its tricky to get everyone looking the same way at the same time, so sadly the formal shots were a bit harder to capture perfectly but the more natural interaction shots at least in my opinion really looked wonderful.

Counting Down

2008-12-18T11:44:00.003-05:00

Im leaving the country in a few days off to Australia for three more weeks of Summer. So check back in here from time to time and Ill try to post some pics as the trip goes. However I was planning on taking lots of shots of aborigines, kangaroos and koalas and hopefully some bad point and shoot shots of me holding them (not the aborigines). But bad news, just found out. Koalas are mean, and dont really like Americans. So wear something Canadian or then again maybe it was people they didnt like.

More bad news, aborigines are to Australia as Indians (native americans) are to the US. Or in other words they both use to live freely, England came yada yada yada, the native people were all but wiped out. Crocodile Dundee movies have taught most of us what we know of the little country (actually pretty much the same size as the US.) tucked away in the far corner of the world. Crocodile Dundee goes off to the outback and has adventures with his aboriginal buddies. This is sadly an experience I will not be able to have, but can you imagine the pictures, I can and it makes me want to call Nat Geo.

Although Crocodile Dundee did get one thing right, kangaroos are around. Except what he didn't say is your most likely to see one seconds after you slam into it on the highway.

So I gotta work up a new gameplan. Back to the drawing boards.

JELL-0

2008-12-10T15:30:00.003-05:00

Well Jello everyone and thanks for tuning in. Had a project in mind for a while now that I really had no clue really how it would turn out. That project was clear Jell-o. My last run with the stuff was years ago when jigglers were the craze. Some of you will follow that, most of you wont, but they were delicious, google it now, thank me later. So I find some clear gelatin as jello clear does not seem to be a very popular item, or it is the most popular flavor, either way they always seem to be out of it. So I get a replacement from a company called Knox, never heard of it? me neither.

I get it home and it comes in little envelope the size of a sugar packet. It has directions, 2 recipes actually, one for cheese cake, one for frozen fruit pops, not a one for jello. So now im really deviating off course, how quickly the plans holes become apparent. So now I make a control with one packet to one cup of water, then I do one packet to two cups, and two packets to one cup, and im hoping that one of them comes out right. I heat the water, one of the recipes said it was necessary, the other did not, I seem to remember making jello with hot water, so I do it, if only to take advantage of the instantly hot water from the new coffee maker. I now realize that where I have spilled this mixture around my kitchen Ive begun to form very sticky and at the same time very slippery mix all over so I start cleaning it up, and realize the gelatin is setting and I didn't separate the egg yolks that were to be suspended, and it was starting to firm. I found some things around the house and threw them in, a broken bluetooth headset, some jewelry, and some change. And now I am not really sure what I am doing. Only one of the gelatin set clearly, the one with the jewelry, but it turned out pretty good. Looked like clear water, and moved the things around to give the look of motion even though there was none. Sadly in my haste I did not note which mixture worked Im assuming it was the one to one.

New Camera

2008-11-28T23:17:00.003-05:00

Its black Friday and I woke up knowing without a doubt I wasn't going shopping, hell I might not even leave the couch. I made myself a coffee on the new Keurig one cup coffee maker a machine a bought on wednesday after being enticed into Macy's by a "come check out whats already on sale" sign. So I checked it out, and bought a coffee maker for no reason, Ive done stranger things. I was at the mall to buy mario cart for my cousins birthday. So now Im walking around the mall in sweatpants and a hoodie and a needlessly large box containing said coffee maker. Now I have to go to the video game store to get the game in a very small box, should have bought the game first but its poor planning, but impulse buys they just suck you in. I go home wondering by what freak occurrence of nature that possessed me to go into Macys and furthermore proceeded to buy a coffee maker. Wow. I taste the coffee. Its amazing and back to the point at hand I was looking forward to spending the morning on the couch having a nice cup of coffee. I turn the machine on it spits out fresh murky brew, I take it to the couch, I have a sip, delicious, so far so good.

I grab my laptop and start rifling through emails and then I check the Penn Camera website. They have stuff on sale I start looking through it Canon 50D peaks my interest. I check the price against best buy, best buy has a better buy. Doesnt matter I leave the house and go to the gym with my girlfriend. But I am thinking about it, its a good deal, the 5d mk2 is delayed and it doesnt look like I will be able to get one before my trip, the 50D is the camera I would get instead, then when I get the 5d it could be my back up camera. We finish the workout, she can tell Im thinking about it. "you want to go check it out?" "yeah I guess" but in reality I really wanted to go but I just couldn't believe it, going to BestBuy on blackfriday, its crazy, they wont have it and its going to be mobbed, and the lines, and the parking, and I still want to go, and am amazed shes willing to go with me. We get a parking spot pretty quick and walk through the parking lot seeing lots of cars that have been searching for spots much longer than I had to. We get into bestbuy, it looks like a thrift store, a really popular thrift store. We find someone to help us, "I want a 50D" he shakes his head "sorry I think we just sold the last one" go figure. "Do any stores nearby have it?" I cant believe I said it, Im going to leave this madness and go to another bestbuy. Who are you.

He comes back from the pit of restless retail enthusiasts, I found some, we have three at the store, and he wades back through the throes that be. He emerges again this time with a box and instructs me to follow him to the improvised checkout, a new guy takes over. Would you be interested in the protection plan. Its 300 bones and if anything happens we fix or replace it. I already feel the peace of mind. And what about a new 4gig memory card, "of course how did I not think of that" and I pay. The idea that my current camera has never broken in anyway shape or form eludes me, but it could, and best buy knows that scares me. So I get it.

Somehow this weekend I bought a coffee maker and a camera on a relative whim, however for the first time ever in an impulse buy situation I am really impressed and satisfied with both purchases, and they are both good for business. And ya know Im doing my part to stimulate the economy. So get up and celebrate holiday consumerism with a nice individual cup coffee maker, you wont be dissapointed, I wasnt. Then if its your thing get a camera and take some pictures of the coffee and send them to your friends with holiday greetings on it, and save a few bucks on the starbucks giftcards that you cant afford and your friends wont be getting because you bought yourself a new camera, because hey you deserve it.

Shopping Cart

2008-11-18T15:02:00.003-05:00

So its Winter and the holidays are upon us and so on and what not. I have set up my shopping cart on the website making it possible to order prints directly from the website. At this point I am only selling original pieces from my still life collection excluding ones that were done for corporate clients which are not for sale. So log on have a look and buy yourself a present and while your at it why not buy one for everyone you know? Photos are printed on canvas approximately 3ft by 2ft and are gallery stretched (the canvas is stretched over a frame and secured behind it, the picture covers the front and edges). Looking great in the modern den or covering up a hole in the college apartment.

Retouching Workshop

2008-11-13T11:40:00.002-05:00

The other day while playing around at home after a shoot I took some pictures in my kitchen, they were framed and composed well but the lighting was horrible and the edges needed to be cropped. So the first thing I did was crop the image, removing the extras so it was just my subject and and a white background. Then i just raised the contrast and black point giving the image a dramatic feel instead of that washed out white/cream color. Second the focus was too sharp on the skin, making it look splotchy and uneven. This is easily corrected with the retouch tool. However go slowly, and set your opacity low. This will require you to do more strokes but your strokes will be less noticeable, combine many to make subtle changes. Now at this point I figured I was done as I dont really enjoy photoshopping to points where the pictures does not resemble the original yet with this image I found that it needed some color. I imported the image into photoshop and using the color replacement tool, I took her eye color which is blue but was muted by the general cream/white of the original image and I brought the blue back with and increased the blues saturation to make it really pop.

the three images are the original

the corrected

and then the corrected with color enhancements (eyes)

Egg

2008-10-31T16:56:00.002-04:00

I froze and Egg to take some creative shots with the type writer and then kinda ran away with it.

Typewriter

2008-10-31T16:50:00.002-04:00

Bought an antique type writer today from the thrift store for $20.00 a Hermes 3000, must have been a nice piece of equipment in its day, not its just kinda kitsch shabby chic decoration, but I thought it would be cool to use as a studio prop and to do some macro work with.

Cannon Design Shoot

2008-10-30T14:07:00.003-04:00

Here are some pics from the Cannon Design shoot I did this week. Thank you Debbie and everyone over at Cannon for being so cooperative on the candid shoot. You guys were great and I really appreciate it, I know it was hard to get work done with me sneaking up on you like a paparazzo.

Gigs

2008-10-27T00:26:00.003-04:00

Been swamped with work lately and traveling, but im back home in DC for shoot with Cannon design, which I did a proposal for a few weeks back, which is great. But while I was back in va beach visiting my folks, i spent some time with my cousin who was making a mess with some tempura paints, and after I cleaned up after him I got an idea for some shots and made a mess of my own. First just kinda splashing the paint around on paper and then noting as I was at my parents house I rummaged through the garage and found a unglazed chess set my brother never finished when he was 16. So as there is no time like present I set to painting it.

then a few days later I had a delicious pumello and couldn't help but take some pictures of it and play with it, and eat it, some of favorite hobbies right there.

Dub City Renegades

2008-10-19T13:47:00.002-04:00

Had a shoot out at Fat Tuesdays in Fairfax, for a band that wanted to get some live stage shots. The lighting was horrible in there especially the harsh red light that was pointing right at the drummer, my friend Andy. Also true to my stylistic roots I saw this beautiful microphone on the stage and got a couple shots of it that turned out to be my favorites.

New Mac

2008-10-18T15:16:00.003-04:00

Three Macs in a month. Yesterday Im surfing around the internet and I find to my dismay that the new mac book has been released. Immediately the salesmen's words repeat in my ears "15 days" I pull out my black berry. Its Oct 16, I searched through my old emails and found the receipt from the apple store that they emailed me, on Sept 15. I remark to myself how convenient a emailed receipt is. Fifteen days, I missed the return by 15 days, I call apple support. They know about the 15 day policy too, and reiterate it to me. "Thank you for calling apple" she said "if you purchased your computer at a apple store they may be able to help you, goodbye". I called the apple store asked if I could exchange, "well typically the return window is about" 15 days, I know. "Can I speak with a manager please" the phone goes into a holding pattern and I'm circling, waiting for my moment, my last chance at salvation. "Hello this is Charles" (actually he said his name is James but I swear he said Charles) he caught me by surprise as they always do when you've been on hold. I tell him the story, I tell him how much the new improved graphic card will impact my business needs. He says "Well typically 15 days in the amount of time we can do" and just as I'm seeking into the bowels of disappointment "but I think you are close enough, if you can come in, in the next few days well take care of you. I back up all my files put the old computer back in the box, and headed to the store. I walk up to the front desk "Hi I spoke with Charles earlier" they looks confused at me and reply "Do you mean James?" I shake my head no "I'm pretty sure his name is Charles." He looks at me funny " You Brandon?". I am clearly wrong. "You must be James". And with that he went to back got me a new mac and after paid the $100 restocking fee and the about $100 difference in price I had the new computer. He then offered to migrate my data for me, which after about a half hour I left with the new computer configured and ready to run with all my files, settings, and applications.

Apple, amazing.

Eli's Birthday

2008-10-12T19:38:00.003-04:00

Just got back home from one of the most fun shoots I have done recently. Eli got a birthday party and I got to take pictures jumping around a moon bounce. Also, for those of you, like myself included who havnt been in a moon bounce since the early 80s, rest assured they have been much improved. This moon bounce of the future had ladders and slides and tunnels and Im not going to lie, if you havnt been in one lately, do yourself a favor, and make a day of it. These are a couple of my favorites from the day. Happy Birthday Eli and my sincere thanks to all the wonderful people there, for letting me document your party, It was truly a pleasure.

Website

2008-10-10T14:51:00.002-04:00

The website has launched. And aside from some minor tweaks to the bio I think it looks great. Sorry still no photos today as Im working as fast as I can to get the portfolio images loaded on the website. But please check it out and let me know what you think Brandon Rossen Photography. Thanks to everyone who helped make the website possible, I really appreciate the work you were all great.

email

2008-10-08T13:26:00.002-04:00

The new company email is up brandon@brandonrossen.com which once you own a domain (and I already did) can be set up for free at Google apps. Thanks to my buddy and VP of Technology Anand. Also while im handing out thank yous, Karyn@brandonrossen.com my graphic designer has been doing great work. After all her work creating a logo which I still love, we ended up tossing it for the logo displayed on the website. So she came up with some new and improved cards and letterhead and they really look great.

On the website front, things are improving however, still behind. The websites look is done and Im really happy with it, however it got hung up in the creation phase of the home page and bio page images. The designers at Livebooks really impressed with me with the site design and aesthetic, however the page design the home page in particular felt rushed and short sighted.

Moustache

2008-09-30T18:09:00.003-04:00

After letting my facial hair grow for a while and after significant nagging from the gf. I shaved, as I agreed I would, however the details of said shaving were unclear. So became the VanBuren, or anti-goatee. So I got the camera in her hands and with some coaching got some pretty cool images/self portraits. And by pretty cool I mean hilarious.

birthdayparty part 2

2008-09-27T12:43:00.002-04:00

Here are some more of the birthday pics. Kinda behind schedule with somethings right now, especially the web site. Livebooks, who I've been generally happy with has kinda dropped the ball lately and the quick site progress that was being made seems to have slowed to a near halt. I wanted to launch the website this coming Monday and it doesn't look like its going to happen. In the up and up Canon released the new 5d mk2 which is what I have been eagerly anticipating and from the specs its an incredible piece of hardware. Now to come up with 3500 for the camera and lens, because using any of the glass I have right now on the 5dmk2, it would be like putting a honda engine in a ferrari, not good.

pics as promised

2008-09-25T12:22:00.003-04:00

got the pics from the birthday posted was a fun thing to shoot as it was indoor and outdoor and carried through day light to dusk. I made a poor choice of lens opting for a 50mm prime which didnt give me so much versatility so the portraits seemed to come out better than the rest.

falling behind

2008-09-22T19:32:00.002-04:00

sorry guys things have been a bit crazy lately, the website is growing and coming together day by day and im trying to back up my old computer and get the new one organized which i am slowly, very slowly. Also this weekend I had some friends intown for my brothers 30th birthday where i got some cool shots that I hope to download tomorrow and hopefully get them posted soon there after. So i apologize it is my fault and I am sorry, however i promise once i get the website populated and set up Ill start blogging and getting some daily photos up. if you want to be part of the beta testers for the website let me know.

write me back.....please

2008-09-17T20:04:00.002-04:00

Whats the deal with photographers? I dont get them and I am one. I have noticed this strange phenomenon where as no matter which photographers I contact for help follows this same precedent. I search the web, a lot. Looking at all sorts of different photographers and styles, and occasionally I send them an email, telling them how much I appreciate their work. They all respond to this email, 100%. They say they appreciate it, they say they are busy, and they say I can write them at date so and so when they will have time to respond more thoughtfully. Now writing it out like this I see clearly that at this point they all have done exactly what they said they would do and nothing more. I always waited the appropriate time, and wrote them back clear emails with questions that could be simply answered. They dont write back not once. But I guess they never said they would.

Pics are of me, i did some self portraits the other day when the lenses fell out of my shades.

Aperture 2.0

2008-09-17T19:54:00.004-04:00

So my new mac book continues to blow my mind and in conjunction with Aperture 2 it really has so much more versatility and power than a pc. Trying to grow the portfolio still and took some pictures of some caviar appetizers.

Bad News

2008-09-16T15:28:00.004-04:00

So not such a good couple days. First I got a new computer that was broken, although it was easily replaced and this one is amazing. Then I hear back about the Gilbert Randolph job which was supposed to be a shoe in. Not so. Followed immediately by an email from the gallery I was trying to get in, which kindly rejected me.

The upside is as I was backing up my files to transfer to the new computer I came across some old images from Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The first two are the same image but one I enhanced using Aperture 2, which is an amazing program, and twice as easy as photoshop. The pictures of the kids in the water with the horse is on lake Nicaragua the others are pretty much from Costa Rica.

New Computer

2008-09-14T21:15:00.002-04:00

Got a mac today. Totally stoked all pretty and new and first thing out of the box it starts making the sounds of a dyeing hippo. So looks like I will be getting another new mac tomorrow. Which is too bad because Im kinda digging this one and I have customized it and all that. It was a huge moment though I was so optimistic about getting a mac bc they arnt supposed to have problems like this and first thing out of the box its already messing up. My previous pc's always worked hard for the first year and then started slowly slacking off, and then kinda all of the sudden didnt do any work at all, but did do a good job of making doing nothing look tough. But not my first mac, this one is kinda lazy, didnt show up for the first day ready to roll. It showed up with a hangover. But it looked good while it was doing it.

Goodnews

2008-09-11T23:41:00.002-04:00

The new website mock up is here, and Im really happy with it so we are moving forward with it. Also on the jobs front, the people over at Gilbert Randolph got in touch with me today about doing some more work for them. Looks like head shots for around 38. So organizing to rent a light set up and backdrop and more excitingly I get my hands on a 50mm L series which is around a 1.8 so I hope to get some cool shots with that when Im off the clock. Well that is if I get the job.

simple colors 2

2008-09-10T19:12:00.002-04:00

Did some more macro work today, had some requests from a friend to do some shots of their cubic zirconia earrings. cubics and diamonds are difficult to shoot due to their ability to reflect and then refract light, so they have a tendency to have lots of glare or look transparent, I thought these came out nice but not quite where I want them to be.

Website

2008-09-09T22:55:00.002-04:00

here is a sneak peak of the website, this is the mock up from live books, I am pretty happy with it but as it turns out we are going to lose the logo for my name in a script type font let me know what you think

Simple Colors

2008-09-08T16:19:00.003-04:00

I got a bag of rasberry and blackberry candy at lunch today, they had this rich color with a clear center that dispersed light really well. So I dumped a few out and took a few shots, an hour later I was really experimenting with them up close with their unique texture.

Bio

2008-09-07T21:55:00.005-04:00

Starting to work up content for the website, particularly the bio, which is hard because I have changed jobs more times then I care to remember. But I don't want it to be this dry impersonal bio I want it to have some character, something that identifies me and is uniquely mine as much as my pictures.

Raised in Virginia Beach Va. Went to VCU in Richmond, left, went to ODU in Norfolk, left, went to GMU in Fairfax. Made some movies, learned Spanish, went to Nicaragua and Costa Rica, took a lot of pictures. Graduated. All the kids were doing it. Got a degree in Communications with concentration in public relations. Don't know what that means. Got a real job in DC. Reluctantly. Got my own cube. Lived in it for 14 months. Got to make another movie. I won a award but not a raise. Got a box. Put my cube in it. Picked up a new camera, and a new job. Got in touch with some good people. Built a portfolio contrasting urban landscapes against trendy fashion, and the intricate nature of simple things up close. Showed my pictures to whoever would look at them. People liked them. Was surprised.

hopefully Ill be able to add something about getting the gallery show that I prepared a proposal for a few months ago. Photographers that are selected are supposed to hear if they are in or out at the end of September.

also here are some pics I took the other day while my buddy was smoking in the rain, sorry for all the smoking pictures, they are a filthy habbit, dont do it kids.

Give the People what they want

2008-09-06T13:36:00.003-04:00

Well the hurricane is pushing through DC today so doesn't look like I'm going to be getting much photography done today. And yesterday I had some requests for more images and a little less yammering. So here you go.

late night photo session

2008-09-05T14:29:00.004-04:00

Shot pictures out in DC last night near DuPont circle while at a friends birthday party. Which I was very proud of myself for bringing my camera along. I love having it in my hand but usually the annoyance of carrying it around all night is enough to make me leave it at home. But as I have said for years I need to bring my camera with me everywhere, however only recently have a practiced the advice. Some of the pics came out pretty good and I have attached some. The street portrait I had to lighten and brighten quickly and honestly kinda poorly. Im awaiting to hear if my friends mind if I post the others. But the real disappointment of the night was the performance of my XTi auto focus in low light, its so slow and has a tendency to focus on light sources instead of what your trying to shoot. Ive been holding out for a 5D for a while now but the camera is over 5 years old now and Im sure the new version has to be coming soon, my buddy at the camera shop says he heard December. So Im trying to hold out but Ill be getting antsy come December because I got a big trip lined up to Australia and big plans for shooting there. So if the new one hasn't come out by then I may have to take a big mature step toward Nikon, but I don't want to talk about it, I get emotional.

Website and other shananigans

2008-09-04T14:54:00.002-04:00

So I started picking out images for the new website and Im stoked about seeing the mock up which I expect early next week. Unfortunately I didnt hear back from Cannon yet on the proposal which is too bad but hopefully that will come through next week. Interestingly I did hear back from the aquarium store which was an interesting story. So a few days ago I said I took some pictures at this aquarium store and true to my word I sent them the images afterwards. Well they wrote me back, and they had some things to say to me. She went into detail of the legal ramifications of using the images and obtaining photo releases. I took pictures of only fish, no people, no trademarks, no copyrights, just fish and coral, and I think she wanted me to obtain their release. Should I make the release out to blue coral, isle four, second tank from the end? Any way I asked if I could come back to obtain whatever release she wants, honestly Im not sure she knows. She didn't write back, yet. What I found most interesting is regardless of my intentions to sell them, publish them, or simply to gain a client, I contacted them. I wrote in, showed them what I got, they gave me lecture about how its wrong to take the money and run (figuratively there was no money). I could have just kept the pictures to my self and no one would have been the wiser, but I did the right thing, but you wouldn't know it from talking to them. Anyway whats the saying "the best laid plans of mice and men"? I guess thats karma for ya, sometimes she goes your way, and sometimes shes like the random person you meet at a cocktail party that you didn't really want to go to, but you have to because you promised insert name here who left you to fend for yourself at the bar leaving you to this stranger who also doesn't know anyone but is happy to meet you and tell you just about anything you don't care about and they need a breath mint, bad. And you would do anything to get your hands on a, camera or a cigarette or a breath mint.

Cannon Design growing the company one by one

2008-09-03T13:50:00.005-04:00

Worked up a proposal for Cannon design today. A job that came way from just chatting by business up with some friends at the bar one night. Concurrently when I learned that I need to have business cards on me all the time. It was the second time that week that someone asked me for one and I reached in my back pocket and pulled out my wallet and then immediately put it back because I didnt have any on me. I tell them I just ran out but the truth is I probably ran out a week ago and just have forgotten to put some more in, if i have ever told you this lie I'm sorry, it was only to save face. However Ive learned my lesson and luckily this didn't cost me the gig. She got my email from our mutual friend and asked for a proposal. And its not necessarily the work I want to be doing but its growing my company its getting my name out there if only to one more person. And for now I'm just stoked that the business is continuing to grow. Also my my pics are up from a gig I did last month for Gilbert and Randolph I did pretty much all the site imagery and none of the head shots although I am hoping to work out a contract to do them soon.

Trying to help

2008-09-02T14:53:00.004-04:00

Recently while on a shoot for my brothers company Rossen Landscape he and I got side tracked at a local aquarium store in Reston Va. My brother starts searching the isles of tanks of fish. the tanks were amazing, beautiful live corals and the common mix of exotic fish. Very expensive fish, you could feed a family for the price of some of these fish, but you couldn't feed them with the fish its far too small. So as I am still the type pf person who only buys fish for sustenance I do not need to shop here. They sell a shrimp for 20 bucks, one shrimp, don't they know you can go to the store and get 2 pounds of shrimp for that price, and this ones not even cooked. I don't like killing my food but I like taking pictures so I start to shoot and stop myself. I should ask if they mind. I find the young lady I ask if I can shoot and that Id be happy to send them the images afterwards. She says its ok and gives me a card. This is one of the ways I try to generate business, give some of your photography away for free if it means someone who might not normally see it will look. So I go to work and get some pretty great images. I leave and true to my word I take the time to email the pics over to the store.

Im always late

2008-09-01T23:33:00.002-04:00

Blogging, every bodies doing it, so here I come jumping off the very same bridge. I dont know whats down there if anything at all but Im on my way there, late as usual. Taking as many pictures as I can the whole way down. Now today Im a blogger,among other things, and the title makes me feel like I should update my resume. Somewhere between conversational ability in spanish and strong understanding of adobe premiere pro editing software I can add proficient in blogging. But I dont use resumes so much anymore, except maybe right before I meet with a client and I find one of them floating around with the random papers in my organizer. It always gives me a good laugh, I note that i left out mr.lees school of taekwondo orange belt 1988 under my education section. Because as i delve deeper and deeper into the shallows of the photography business I have learnt this, noone wants to see your resume. Ive never been asked for one not once. Its all about the portfolio, which is good, bc a portfolio is way easier to update, and you dont have to embellish (lie) the things you did. But thus far I have created portfolios for the client, with the photos carefully chosen for the job I wanted. Which brings me to whats coming next the website, much like as i mentioned before with blogging and graduating college I got to it a few years later than everyone else. I have contracted with livebooks to build my site and hopefully we will be online by early October. Untill then its all about the portfolio, growing it, putting it together, and getting them resized. Hopefuly I get some pictures up here on the flip side.