Hump Day? Hump This...

It's Wednesday.... the last day of the month. How I loathe each month's end. Excise taxes from the previous month's business are due, there's a fine, high pile of bills to be paid, a smaller stack of checks to deposit, a flurry of calls to client accounting departments begging to be paid for work done & delivered months ago. There is a brief and fleeting moment of satisfaction almost bordering on heady elation when the checks are tallied up on the rusty old abacus and the balance sheet confirms that, indeed, the studio doors will remain open for another month. Then reality sets in as I open the checkbook and start writing those checks to the taxman, the electric company, the landlord... such is life in the glamorous world of the professional photographer.

I am in a mood to rant here for a moment. In fact, I have typed and deleted two vicious screeds already, one about a french client holding up payment, the other about the current state of the 24 hour news cycle here in the USofA. After proofreading them, I thought better of baring my fangs in public, at least here on this blog and dumped them. Perhaps another time, eh?

Making New Friends On the Road

London Schertzer is an amazing human being, an excellent photographer and all around cool gal who hails from the mountains of Colorado. London was at one time a photojournalist in the employ of Rueters and stationed in Turkey and Guatemala during her tenure with the bureau.

London first contacted me out of the blue nearly two years ago through photo.net where she had read several of my posting responding to queries about traveling to Bali. At the time, she was making preparations for a 3-4 month tour through South East Asia, with an extended stay in Bali. As fate would have it, I was planning to be in Bali about the same time as she. We were fortunate to hook up in the mountain village of Ubud where she spotted me as I dismounted a decrepit rented motorbike in front of the guest house where I was staying.

London and I immediately hit it off and spent a bit of time together drinking, dining and swapping photo biz lies. We have maintained contact ever since.

Below are several images London recently sent me from that trip. These images were all taken, I believe, in Cambodia during her visit to that country. As you can see, she is a Holga user and enthusiast. To see more of London's work, visit her website here.

On a side note, I spoke with London by phone earlier today (which prompted this blog entry). It seems she was reading my blog here and took interest in an earlier entry about photographer Chip Simons. In true London fashion, she emailed Chip after viewing his website, he responded and now they are having a dialog also. Well done London! Just goes to show you the value of the "internets" and all those millions of tubes when it comes to making connections of all kinds.

          All Photographs Above © London Schertzer/All Rights Reserved

Product Shooting in the Studio This Week

All photos @2008 Tony Novak-Clifford


Lots of products for a resort retail shops campaign. Shoes, toys, spa goods, jewelry... Hot weather, hot lights, good tunes on the stereo & pretty decent results.

Overcoming the Fear

       "If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time" -  Robert Doisneau

For the past several years... really, until quite recently, I have suffered from a form of photographer's stage fright. What I mean is - literally pulling out the camera in order to capture an image... even a personal image not intended for a client was an act that produced a very real and mild form of dread. Thinking about it now, I realize that this dread was an inner competition with myself. Would the picture be as good as what I was seeing in my head? Would it be as good as my last shot? Would I be disappointed with the results once I got the image back to the darkroom or computer to process it?  A lot of this fear has no doubt developed, in part, by my decision to immediately become a commercial photographer from the moment I first picked up a camera. Photography as a business is quite a competitive arena in the first place. Professional photographers are expected to produce, if not predictable, competent and technically well crafted images above and beyond what the average snapshooter makes. Add to that the pressure of delivering the goods, so to speak, each and every time out of the gate because your income depends on it, your client's budget and campaign depends upon it, the art buyer-photo editor-account executive depends on it and most of all, your reputation depends on it. There is a saying in this business is ... "...you're only as good as your last shot...".

What I've come to realize is that making images makes me happy and even more than that, it is no longer a job but a passion. Yes, I know that most photographers get their start in exactly the opposite way. I didn't and now most of the time, I come back with images that please me. Still, I struggle with attempting to anticipate what images might help further my career, increase my income, be recognized as artistic. The struggle has less urgency for me now. I've come to realize that as much as we learn, as much as we think we know, as much technical prowess we have developed, ever picture making opportunity is a brand new deal with it's own set of challenges and we do our best to figure it out on the fly and pray for a satisfactory result. Keeping that simple truth in mind has helped immensely in overcoming my fear. It's still there, but it no longer stops me from stopping, looking, capturing something. In terms of unassigned, personal work, there has been an even greater discovery in that what I think I had captured often tends to be completely different than what I had originally intended. It's as if my unconscious secretly takes over and operates the camera, revealing itself to me in quiet and subtle ways.

One of the goals of this blog is to be able to show work that is outside scope of what I can put up on my commercial website. As to whether or not anyone sees it is anybody's guess. Still, the effort is worthwhile in making me think about the images I make in a very different light and without the commercial pressures of the business end of photography. The blog, I have found, is also forcing me to create new content in order to have new images to post here. It is forcing me to reevaluate some of the things about photography that I previously took for granted. Whatever the motivating factors -  boredom, creative blocs, complacency - I am really enjoying what I'm doing now in a way that I never did before and this brings me great joy.

Today's Music News

                         Mick Fleetwood Blues Band Tour Poster Shoot 

                                                                   photo by: William Pie

                             Mick Fleetwood Blues Band Tour Poster Shoot

                              photo by: William Pie

              Dave Murray/ Houston, Texas ©2003 Tony Novak-Clifford

I received a call a couple of days ago from good friend and Iron Maiden guitarist Dave Murray. Dave is just back from several weeks of touring with his band. So far, Maiden has played India, Oz and South America. The first dates of the tour in India resulted in severe intestinal distress for the band members... to much curry, eh? South America, according to Dave, saw huge crowds and mob scenes at all venues, hotels, airports, etc... almost to the point where things got a little scary. I had the opportunity to join the band on the "Give "em Ed 'Till They're Dead" tour in 2003 to photograph several dates in Texas. Frankly, I was amazed at how well behaved the crowds at these shows were, given the fact that the two warm up bands were Lemmy Killmister/MotorHead and Ronnie James Dio. Neither of these acts took any prisoners and I do admit to moments of sinking into fear when Maiden finally would take the stage and 7000+ pairs of arms attached to all black clad youths would raise clenched fists and begin chanting in unison. 

For this tour, the band has it's own chartered jet with frontman Bruce Dickenson piloting the band from date to date. Bruce is a licensed commercial pilot and flies, or did fly for British Airlines when off duty from the band. 

Dave's home for a few weeks before heading back to Texas to launch the USA leg of the tour... then off to conquer Europe. "Up the Irons" as they say in Maidenland. So far, Dave says the tour has been great and the traveling the most comfortable of any previous tour. He looks forward to seeing all the fans on future tour dates in the US and Europe.

Over the last 7 years or so I have also had the priviledge of work for and getting to know Mick Fleetwood, the iconic drummer of legendary band Fleetwood Mac. Mick, also a Maui resident, has his hands in many pies, from wine making to music making. In addition to his work with Fleetwood Mac, Mick has developed a love of music from the islands and during the last couple of years has put together the "Island Rumours Band" teaming up with some of hawaii's best musicians, including Lenny Castellanos on bass, falsetto queen Riatea Helm, Guitarists/Songwriters Willie K. & Eric Gilliam, Fleetwood Guitarist Rick Vito Gretchen (I can't remember your last name at the moment, sorry) on vocals, Lopaka Colon, the incredible percussionist from Henry Kapono's Band, and Maila Gibson, also on vocals. IRB debuted at Oahu's Crater fest last summer and have had a steady booking of corporate gigs ever since.

Mick has also teamed up with longtime friend and bassist of Fleetwood Mac, the legendary John McVie, and Rick Vito to form the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band. Though the lineup changes from time to time with Lenny Castellanos subbing for John on bass for some dates. MFBB played it's first date in St. Louis a month or so ago and have several more mainland gigs in the works. This band is resurrecting the ball busting blues tunes of early FM member and guitarist Peter Green, dusting of classics like "Oh Well', " Rattlesnake Shake" and other songs from the catalog of what many musicophiles consider to be the glory days of Fleetwood Mac. Rick V. is a Peter Green devotee and has that dirty guitar tone Peter was famous for down pat. I got to attend a couple of the band's rehearsals a few months ago and was blown away by both the sound and the material. There are a couple of shots above from tour poster shoots showing me working with the band (note that old Sinar P2 4x5 in one of the photos). Those "behind the scenes shoot" pics were taken by tour manager William (Bill) Pie (pronounced PeeAYY not Pi). Thanks for the pics, Bill. Look for the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band coming sometime to a theater near you. Also, look for another Fleetwood Mac tour (the whole band) sometime in the near future.

Chicago will be performing at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center this friday night in the outdoor amphitheater. Show starts at 7pm. Jason Mraz returns to Maui and performs in the Castle Theater on May 1st at 7:30pm. Boz Scaggs along with the Matt Catingub Orchestra in the Castle Theater on May 12 at 7:30pm. There's a lot of other stuff happening at the MACC . You can check out the coming events at their website here

Let's Give a Big Hand To...

                    "Hand Jive" ©2007 Tony Novak-Clifford

The photoblog world has been on fire the last couple of days over at APE after Rob posted an entry about a photographer who sent him an email promo. After clicking on the promo link, Rob claims that the photographer was able to use web tracking software to identify him and then had the audacity to immediately contact him to proclaim that he had, in fact, been tracked. APE's thoughts on the matter amount to his being creeped out that the photographer had admitted tracking him down and making direct contact as a result of that tracking.

The ensuing comments (over 100 of them as of this afternoon)  pretty much run the gamut of the hand gestures posted above... everything from "screw you" to "you tell him"!  One thing can be said of photographers, we are an opinionated bunch.  Reading the posted comments and opinions in that thread was much akin to watching an episode of tabloid TV. We know that we shouldn't watch, but in reality, we can't tear ourselves away from that screen and in the process, lots of dirty laundry gets aired in public.  It was both a sublime and an ugly experience rolled into one.

I, myself, use tracking software to determine where the traffic to my website originates and to try and get some handle on whether or not that traffic might generate future assignment work or stock sales. The tracking I use is, however, rather basic and not sophisticated enough to provide me with actual IP addresses of those that visit my website. And.... never, ever, would I initiate contact with a potential client and inform them that I had tracked them down via the use of such tracking devices. I attempt to conceal my own web surfing by turning off my browser's cookies and by immediately deleting cookies left behind when logging into protected sights that require cookies to be enabled. I do this not so much to conceal my web activities as to cut down on the SPAM and email solicitations I receive.

Where Does the Time Go?

I had hoped to add more entries to the blog this week but life got in the way.  The upside - a small avalanche of assignment work has come thru the door. The last couple of days spent doing all the preproduction and first shots for a new advertising campaign for the Grand Wailea Resort Shops, an account I had several years ago and has just returned for more. More scouting and preproduction meetings were also held this week for a new Ulupalakua Winery campaign. Today was spent shooting cover and additional images for a music CD package and tomorrow I have a grip & grin assignment with the annual golf tournament benefiting the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. In between this flurry of activity, I've managed to squeeze in a little more personal shooting, the results to be posted here at a later date and a senior portrait for the daughter of an old friend. 

All of this work should keep me very busy until the day I get on the plane for my two week trip to Bali. That's good news as gas prices here climbed another .10 cents/gal overnight, the average price of regular gas now standing at $4.18/gal. With the continued work coming in, I just might be able to afford to fill up the tank every now & then. Thank god I purchased that ScionXB a couple of years ago or I'd really be crying about gas prices. At 30-35 miles/gallon, I'm not feeling the pain quite as severely as many here.

The day has come to an end and it's time to fire up the Scion and make the trek up the volcano slope for home.