Less Is More: What did you do today?

What did you do today? -Soft Cell version from James Worrell on Vimeo.

Yesterday I was making photos from old circuit boards while listening to 80's alt/punk/pop. It was a partly cloudy day and we had a major thunderstorm roll through. I have multiple skylights in my studio and you can see the light change throughout the day because of this.

My dog Willa heads to her crate in the far corner where she will stay until she hears the monitors beep and shut off. I often shoot at rental studios in NYC, however much of the work I do is in my three car garage which I converted about five years ago. The commute is awesome.

Setting up the shot for today's brief. I have notebooks full of sketches and ideas that are in various forms of production. This weeks shots are interpretations of concepts by my art director at Getty Images, Bill Bon. Here I am mounting a dyna-lite studio head with a bare bulb to a c-stand. I have gravitated to these fantastic, if not a bit simplistic, workhorse lights after years of using Broncolor. First of all they are much more portable and they have beautiful light along the lines of a profoto flash head. Not nearly as fast but I am a still life photographer and they suit me. I have many Broncolor packs and heads for sale if anybody is interested, including an Opus A8 pack... 6400ws :)

Using a loupe to find stray hot glue strings on my circuit board creations. More often than not I use a prop person or designer to make things for me, but I dusted off my old glue gun and made most of this stuff myself.

Here I am focusing on a shifted and tilted plane, hard to do that with an SLR. One of the many reasons I love my Fuji GX 680. This particular system has a clunky analog to digital conversion box which allows me to attach a Phase One digital back. I do use Canon as well, especially when I travel but the old still lifer in me loves a big ass camera with movements. I still own a 4x5 and 8x10 cameras, although I haven't shot film in 6 years now.

I am old school in the sense that I do as much in camera as possible, that said I love technology that makes the workflow better and life easier. Here I am talking with my agent via my iPhone while triggering a shot with an iPad.

Editing the days images on my MacPro Tower with twin Eizo monitors. After making my selections and minor Photoshop fixes, the images will be emailed for approval and then ftp'd to my retoucher for finishing touches.

A special thanks to Soft Cell and all the other bands that made the soundtrack of my youth which sticks with me. Rock on with your bad selves.

Goodnight Studio.