So Many Stars

Albuquerque

Traveling to Albuquerque, NM was a chance to work with my dear friend Stephanie Anne on some art photography in a region of the southwest that I’ve not had the chance to work yet. The landscape in New Mexico is unique and along with the community of artists there, I knew I would be able to create some wonderful pieces. Everyone I met there was excited to share their wonderful work and ideas. The trip has spawned some new ideas which will hopefully allow me to enable other artists to explore creatively on regular basis. I’ll be talking more about this in the coming weeks as I solidify my plans.

The most unexpected joy that came out of the trip was having the chance to meet up with another model friend, Susie B. If you haven’t heard her story, she recently had a very bad accident while riding a horse. The accident resulted in her having a 9 inch branch embedded in her cheeck. It narrowly missed her eyeball and ran down, through her cheek, under the jaw muscle, and stopped just before her carotid artery. Yeah, no shit!! The accident resulted in a fairly serious infection and a lot of medical bills. Not unexpectedly, the fine art photography community came to her aid and helped to raise some of the money she needed to cover these bills. The generosity of everyone within the community was really touching to me (and certainly to Susie as well).

Susie walks around right now tethered to a fanny pack with an intravenous feed of antibiotics. But what really surprised me was Susie’s upbeat nature and unbounded positive energy. She was there at Stephanie’s home while we were working on some photos and after a few minutes of watching us, Susie asked me if I would care to make some photos with her. We decided that there wasn’t much hiding the I.V. And what emerged from our brief session were photos charged with emotion. Her strength and determination showed through clearly along with a bit of the weariness that comes with the ordeal of all she’s been through.

After we finished shooting, Susie was clearly tired, but truly full of pride for the work we’d done. Later that day I told Stephanie that I’d decided that even though I could, I wasn’t going to retouch the I.V. tubes out of any of the photographs. Stephanie told me that her and her boyfriend were just having a conversation recently about the “truth” in every photograph. And this conversation cemented the idea that these photos needed maintain the truth of everything that Susie is going through right now.

Later in the weekend when Susie and I were looking back on what we’d shot, I asked if she had shot with anyone else since the accident. And when she told me that I was the first, I was touched deeply and quite emotionally. Truly, we’re all here for together for a short time. So, any chance you have to share good times with friends, be sure to cherish and savor them.

Good always gets better.

scott

Review of our Contrasts Show at Monsoon

I was recently interviewed by Geoff Gehman, an arts writer for the Morning Call, our local daily news paper. Geoff spoke to me and Olaf Starorypinski about the pieces we have on exhibit right now at Monsoon Galleries as well as photography, influences, shooting nudes, and the tremendous creative contributions that the models provide in order to bring an art nude to life!

The interview was a lot of fun and we talked for almost 2 and a half hours! I think Geoff got it mostly right and I’m glad I had the chance to share some of my thoughts on my artwork. Interestingly, since the Morning Call is owned by the Tribune group of papers, these articles can also be found at the Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, and a host of other newspaper websites owned by the Tribune! Really, just a wonderful opportunity!

Full Interview

Review of the Exhibit

Gallery of Photos

Contrasts Exhibit at Monsoon Galleries

Two premier fine art photographers, Olaf Starorypinski and Scott Nichol share their very different visions of the female form as expressive subject. Each artist will show works from series that evoke the passionate and the pastoral, the industrial and the ephemeral.

I will be showing works from 3 very different collections of figurative photography. The first collection explores the female figure and its place within the natural landscape. The second collection, called Some Ghosts, is a series of motion studies emerging from the transcendent and ephemeral nature of feminine beauty. The third collection in this show sculpts the figure from a marble palette of white studio light.

Olaf Starorypinski was born in London to Polish parents. He has lived in the Lehigh Valley for nearly two decades, currently residing in Emmaus and working from a studio in Bethlehem’s Banana Factory. His background as a light designer influences his photography sharp, vivid work with intriguing subjects and flawless technique. He photographs models in his studio and in some surprising, and recognizable settings. Bethlehem Steel has been photographed many times, but Starorypinski contrasts the stark industrial backgrounds with the soft curves of nude models for a stunning result unlike anything you have ever seen.

Please plan to attend, or help to spread the word by sharing any one of these links with friends that would be interested in attending:

Contrasts Page at silverystars.com

Contrasts Event on facebook

thanks!

scott

Out Takes

i’ve found over the past year or so that when i choose to work with a given model, the characteristics i look for have changed significantly. as a young, inexperienced figure photographer, i tended to look only for beautiful features, great figures, and a certain kind of hair style that i might think would work well within a given project. now, having had more experience, there are definitely personality characteristics that i look for as well. i really tend to spend a lot more time talking, joking, and interacting with these people trying to figure out if our personalities mesh in some good way that lead to serendipity in the studio or at the chosen location. i really need to feel that we have connected at some personal level. and when i feel this connection, it is very clear to me that i will be able to produce a much more personal and introspective piece of artwork than if we were strangers, meeting for the first time under the studio lights.

the photos i wanted to feature in this posting are all out takes from sessions i’ve done with people with whom i share a much deeper personal connection. goofing off, eating the props, and making funny faces have all happened and usually lead to uncontrollable fits of laughter and this just makes an art photography session into what it should be… a lot of fun.

Leah - waiting for the photographer to figure out how to light a pikshure

Stephanie Anne - finding a tiny, tiny toad on a location shoot

Leah - funny thing is the photo on the left was the final shot and was taken after cracking up over the one on the right!

Leah - an out take from between shots, this actually became a favorite finished art piece for me.

Photographer’s Forum

Last April I submitted about 12 or 15 images for consideration to Photographer’s Forum magazine. I later found out that my submission had been accepted for publication in the magazine and that it would be appearing in the February issue. In the end, the decision came down to 4 candidate images from my submission and the magazine will publish “one or two” to feature my work.

The magazine will be on newsstands later this week and everyone should try to pick up a copy! I spoke to Julie, the editor at Photographer’s Forum today and she’s sending me some copies for my archives. So, hopefully, I will have them in a few days. I don’t actually know which images they decided to go with, but this image of Zinn is one of my hopefuls to be included. This is a very early work for me, taken almost 2 years ago and it was a simple lighting setup with one softbox on the floor only a few feet away from the model.

Silver

Dominique – Flight, Digital Negative

So, I got up at 6:00am yesterday morning. On a Saturday, no less. I was up pretty late the night before making final preparations for the fetish show for which I was a contributing artist. If you know me well, I am not an early riser.

So, what would get me up at such an absurd hour? In a word, silver. I had the opportunity to join one of my friends to work in a darkroom to make silver prints using traditional black and white darkroom processes. My friend Bill Earle arranged for us to visit with his friend Chris Miller and we had part of the morning and afternoon to use his wonderfully equipped darkroom to make some prints. I used to have my own wet darkroom a few years ago, but haven’t had it setup and well stocked in years. So to have the chance to print some of the negatives that I’ve been shooting with Bill’s Hasselblad was a rare treat.

I have also been researching a new technique of making negatives from digital files that can be printed onto Pictorico High-Gloss White Film with an inkjet printer and then contact printed onto 11×14″ sheets of black and white photo paper. I took some of these digial negatives with me and wanted to attempt making some prints from them as well.

It was an ambitious plan! For anyone who has attempted making traditional black and white prints, it can be a very time consuming process. And throwing in an unknown process of making digital silver prints, it was without doubt a tall order.

The digital negatives actually printed quite easily after a few glitches. The setup was to use a large piece of glass to hold down the negative on top of the photographic paper. We made a few test prints to determine exposure and when we tried to make the final prints, everything came out blurry. The reason was that for the test strips we used a half sheet of paper, but fir the final prints we used a full sheet and this difference in surface area left enough air betwen the negative and the paper to throw things out of focus. So once we got over this hurdle, by compressing the air out, we actually got some very interesting prints. They went into the print washer and we moved onto making some prints from one of my regular film negatives.

Bill was actually a big help in getting a good print by showing me a very interestig technique of making prints. It’s a split contrast method wherein, you make one test print with a contrast 0 filter to establish your highlight tones, then once you’ve established the correct exposure for the highlights, you make another test strip with a contrast 5 filter on top of the highlight exposure. This gives you your shadow details.

As Bill revealed this technique to me, it was apparent to me that this was very similar to a technique I discovered for processing digital images in photoshop. The technique involves duplicating the base layer and setting the blend mode to Screen. This establishes my highlights and I can lower the opacity of this layer or use masks to reduce this effect. Next, I duplicate the base and set the blend mode to Soft Light to bring up the shadow detail. Again, opacity and masks fine tune the effect.

I’ve encountered a lot of people who have issues with digital photography, claiming that the skill, technique or finesse. But in reality, any good digital photographer knows that an understanding of solid imaging and print making techniques can bring even a digital image to the level of fine art.

and then things got complicated

so, i’ve finally made the switch to the Canon 5D Mark II. this is a sea change for me since i’ve been shooting with Nikon gear for years now. buttons are in the wrong place and for my first shoot, it was very slow going. but i know that with continued use, everything will seem as familiar as an old glove. i made the change because this camera lets me shoot high definition video and i’ve always had a love for video as an expressive media. photography is still my #1 outlet, but in many ways the two can coexist in the creative hemispheres of my brain.

the complications arise when trying to work with video. really, with a still image, as long as it can be read with photoshop, you’re good to go. sometimes this requires software updates for things like RAW file decoding software, but in the end, the tools just work on pixels. but with video, there are frame rates, codecs, editing presets, real-time effects rendering, field dominance, delivery format, and a variety of devices and media hosting platforms.

right now i’m some transcoding 1080p high def footage to 60 frames per second using advanced frame rate conversions so that i can get high quality slow motion clips. its a lengthy process that can’t be done in real-time. but if i want to edit the footage the way i envisioned it, this is the way it should be done to look the best, visually. i guess i forgot how time consuming working with video is!

generally, i use Final Cut Pro and Motion to edit my video. for a while, i’d considered doing video as a semi-pro. i’ve shot event, know how to author a DVD and can edit a pretty powerful, emotional segment. but i have the original version of FCP Studio and its support for HD video is somewhat limited. and i’m considering a move to FCP Studio v.2 to facilitate the advanced types of edits i’d like to do. its a $400+ upgrade from what i’ve got, but it could be worth it, especially since the version i have is showing signs of age. it doesn’t seem to take full advantage of the 8-friggin-processor cores i have in my beastly tower, and some the the creative possibilities offered in the new version are just mind blowing.

so, is there an outlet for fine art video work? (i think i could produce some) is video too transcendent and ephemeral a media to be appreciated as fine art? (its hard to hang a video on a wall and video installations in galleries have never appealed to me that much) but since these questions veer way too far off the my original topic, i think i think we’ll leave this is a discussion for another posting.

making peace with ghosts

i had so many plans this week. working on web sites, looking into developing an iPhone application, getting some holiday cards out.

http://www.silverystars.com/photo/Media/Some%20Ghosts%20Promo-Web.mp4

but none of that has happened. i’ve spent almost every waking moment getting the artwork ready for the some ghosts show which i am opening on saturday january 3. some things didn’t go well (the press release got lost in the holiday rush, so the announcement won’t appear in the local paper). but other things have come together quite well (the photographs look fantastic and the words i’ve chosen to go with them bring the power and emotion i was looking for).

but now, i’m finishing the final images and should be heading over to start hanging my work later this afternoon. its been a lot of work preparing a solo show. a lot more than i’d imagined. i’m nervous and anxious to see people’s reactions. i hope it comes off as well as i envision and worry terribly that it won’t.

that sentimental feeling…

in a little more than an hour one of my beloved nikon cameras will sell to the highest bidder on eBay. and suddenly, i’m getting sentimental about having to give it up. its a wonderful piece of machinery and it is the instrument i’ve used to take some of my favorite photographs. we learned the ins and outs of photographing the nude and made some beautiful artwork together.

so, is it ridiculous to get sentimental about a camera? it doesn’t know what great pictures it took. its not even aware that it takes pictures. its just a specialized collection of metals and semiconductors wrapped in a magnesium and plastic shell. but yet, it seems like such a part of me, even if it has been sitting mostly unused in a corner of my camera bag for the past year or so. when i hold it in my hands, it seems to fit so well and when i turn it on, the controls are right where i expect them to be.

and the new camera that will replace it will be something different. a new girlfriend with longer hair and curvier hips! but the first time we try to make love with the light, it’ll seem all wrong. i’ll fumble for her buttons and she won’t respond the way i like. but eventually we’ll get to know better how each other works. i’ll learn what makes her squeal and she’ll come to know what makes me groan. in the long run, the perturbations caused by this shift will cause new neurons to connect, new possibilities will open up, and the creative flood will rush forth. so stay tuned! its sure to be an interesting ride!!

now… what’s high bid up to again?!?

exhibit in west chester

i will be showing a collection of both summer outdoor works along with selected studio pieces at Three Little Pigs in West Chester, PA. i have 11 pieces on display, mostly 11×14 with some landscape pieces printed slightly larger. if you’re in or around that area of Pennsylvania (just west of Philadelphia), stop by tonight.

also, for the opening week of the show, i’ll be offering the remaining copies of my 50-print edition of my book in the still air at a discounted rate of $100. if you’re interested, please contact me privately since the link on the website will charge you the normal rate of $150. i’m also offering specials on signed original prints, so if you’re interested to purchase one contact me and i’ll give you the details.

thanks, scott

venue info:
Three Little Pigs
131 North High Street
West Chester, PA
Artists’ Reception: 7-10pm