Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts
Showing posts with label photography. Show all posts

Monday, September 27, 2010

Homage to the Empire State


Homage to the Empire State
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

Yesterday, I had the great opportunity to trek all over the city in search for the best places to shoot great street and landscape photography with a representative of a major tech company that is launching a new location-based photo app soon in three cities including NYC, Seattle and San Francisco and they asked me to be the lead photography adviser for our great city.

Thus, all day yesterday, from 7 AM until 8 PM, we traversed as much of this magnificent metropolis as was possible before our soles ached and our memory cards were overflowing with pictures that prove that New York City is the absolute best pace for photography in the world.

If you are interested, I posted map of many of the spots we hit: Lorenzo’s List of the Top 25 Hot Spots for Photography in New York City.

Happy Photo Trekking,
Lorenzo

Check out the #1 Photo Essay on Amazon.com for 2010!
25 Lessons I’ve Learned about photography Life!

Friday, November 21, 2008

Give The Gift of Inspiration: Inspire Someone You Love


25 Lessons Book Launch Party: Mark Rapp & Paved Earth Music
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

A hearty thanks to Mark Rapp and Paved Earth Music once again for their generous support of my book launch party for 25 Lessons I’ve Learned (about photography) held on October 25.

PEM recently posted photos of Mark performing on their website. Check them out here: pavedearthmusic.com

25 Lessons is exclusively available online at blurb.com. It is sold at cost because I prefer that my work be read and inspire many, than to make a small profit off a mere few. Click HERE to visit my bookstore.

So, if you are looking to give a meaningful holiday gift this year, please consider giving those you love a copy of 25 Lessons.

The relaunched and retitled version of the book, contains the same great story as the original (25 Lessons: The Art of Living) and now also showcases the 25 prints from my first solo show in New York, 25 Decisive Moments. You can see a slideshow of these photos online at ARTslant.

To find out more about the book, the story and the author, please visit www.25Lessons.com

I’d also like to recommend purchasing my friend Mark Rapp’s debut album, soon to be released by Paved Earth, entitled Token Tales. For more information about Mark, his debut album and where to purchase it please check out:

www.markrapp.com
pavedearthmusic.com

And please tell them Lorenzo sent you…

Regards,
Lorenzo

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Henri and His Leica


I Leica Edit 14
Originally uploaded by lorenzodom

This series of photos is an example of the Decisive Moments that I mention in the following musing mulling over the evening I took these photos outside the Leica Gallery in Manhattan.

Henri and His Leica

Tonight, Mia took me to a reception at the Leica Gallery on Broadway in Manhattan. Hosted by the Hungarian Consulate, the show celebrated the work of Erich Lessing and focused on his photos from 1956, in remembrance of the Anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.

As you may already know, Oskar Barnack revolutionized photography with the invention of his small-format lightweight, 35 mm Leitz camera in 1914, offering unprecedented freedom to journalistic and artistic photographers. However, due to WWI the camera wasn’t introduced to the public for another ten years in 1924 as the first Leica.

One of the best-known and most-respected photographers of all time was Henri Cartier-Bresson, who, for practically 45 years, favored using the Leica camera for his work.

In my upcoming book, 25 Lessons (about photography; Cyan Books, Spring 2007) I elaborate a little on his work and technique. Following is an excerpt:

After I had settled in at the little church and was going out regularly into the city to take photos, I not only realized how pervasive beauty was, but I also realized that every once in a while I was able to capture these absolutely exquisite moments—moments when all the elements simply fell together and created a photo that was utterly a marvel to look at.

Eventually I would come to discover that my pursuit of this type of picture was quite akin to the art of a well known photographer by the name of Henri Cartier-Bresson, a Frenchman whose style eventually came to be known as one that captures “The Decisive Moment,” a term coined by Cardinal von Retz. The American publisher of Cartier-Bresson’s first English edition of his work, Dick Simon, used von Retz’s phrase as the title of Cartier-Bresson’s book (originally titled Images à la Sauvette), the first photodocumentary of decades of his work.

French poet Yves Bonnefoy aptly summarizes the magical quality of Bresson’s style in his description of his photograph Place de l’Europe in the Rain (1932): “How was he able to recognize the analogy between the man running across the plaza and the poster in the background so quickly, how could he compose a scene out of so many fleeting moments—a scene that is as perfect in detail as it is mysterious in its totality?”

Over the year following my stay at the Little Church I continued to hone my own style and art, and found that I too had a knack for capturing such decisive moments, especially as the occurred in the streets of New York City.

In retrospect, I also came to find out that Cartier-Bresson and I shared the same philosophy in regards to the equipment we used. The vast majority of his photos were taken via a 50mm lens, which is in a sense equivalent to the point-and-shoot I have used for all my photos.

This is especially true considering the much more powerful equipment that was eventually available to both us. Although fellow photographers and friends have encouraged me to upgrade to something like an “SLR,” I realized that these heavier, more conspicuous, much more expensive and higher-quality cameras were not suited to my off-the-cuff, hit-and-run, street style. Cartier-Bresson believed much the same thing as he felt that he needed to carry a minimal amount of equipment because it needed to serve him as a “sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously.”

With the aid of digital equipment though, I feel that I have been able to take this a step further by actually capturing a series of sequential “decisive moments,” in which I have documented a moment in time, much as someone might do with a video camera, but in a fashion that stops time, so that one can actually see how a moment evolves or tumbles or explodes with action, energy and color.

Oddly enough, a lot of people don’t see this though and complain that they do not understand why I post so many photos of the same thing.

“The same thing?” I often retort, if only to myself. To me, almost every photo has something new to offer that wasn’t in the previous or following shot—an emerging smile, a coincidental pairing of background and foreground elements, a sudden change in sunlight—all these things and so-so-so many more really do make each photo quite special to me.

Hence, despite the criticism I continued to post photos in this manner from one spring to another, until ultimately, after only a year on flickr I had posted more than 15,000 images.

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Here is a set of examples of some of the special moments I have been able to capture with my little Power Shot, Canon A50, point-and-shoot: The Decisive Moment

Unfortunately, they did not serve goulash (I'm sure I misspelled that) or any tasty Hungarian pastries at the reception—just crusty old cheese bread and wine.

Nonetheless, the photos were interesting and the president of Leica was at the reception passing out their new the digital rangefinder LEICA M8 cameras for people to try.

lorenzo

Monday, September 11, 2006

Masterpiece Portrait Theater (Il Teatro del Ritratto Capolavoro)

I Love You, Dominic

See Large

Masterpiece Portrait Theater (Il Teatro del Ritratto Capolavoro)

MelaPela (Raffa & Giulio) kindly commented "Lorenzo, è un capolavoro.” (Lorenzo, this is a masterpiece)

For a moment there, I simply took another look at the photo of Nicky, blinked, and thought, “Yes, it is a very nice photo.” But then again, I am wholly biased because not only did I take it, but I love our youngest son very much.

But then it occurred to me, that in a way, perhaps this is a “masterpiece,” primarily because I feel it captures his personality well.

About to turn 5 on October 4, Dominic was born in the shadow of 9.11 in the year 2001.

He was also born in the shadow of his older brother Enzo, who is two and a half years older than him.

As a result of these two ominous events, Dominic did not receive as much doting, affection and attention as his sibling. It does not mean that his mother, Domenica, or I love him any less.

It is however an acknowledgement that he was not born as an only child; that we moved from Brooklyn, New York to Bloomfield, New Jersey a mere four months after he was born; and that the turmoil of the catastrophic events that occurred four weeks before he was born changed everything.

And, as much as 9.11 moved many of us affected be the tragedy to appreciate our families more than ever before, it also duly preoccupied us in so many other ways that often our changed habits cut in to the time that could have been spent at home.

Moreover, although my recent marital separation with his mother has been fairly amicable, I recognize that the fact that his parents are no longer together and that his father is not around as often as he used to be, have likely affected him in countless ways as well. They certainly have affected me.

Thus, I think, that perhaps this photo is a masterpiece, because it does reflect his personality fairly well—he has never been
the aggressive go-getter that his brother seemingly has always been; and he has long seemed a tad more shy, less boisterous and much more reserved than Enzo.

Ironically enough, each child’s personality also seems to reflect that of their namesake parent, the one each also happens to look like most. Comparisons and comments have long been made about how Nicky’s complexion, eye and hair coloring closely match his mother’s, and how Enzo’s (Lorenzo, Jr.) likewise matches my own.

Thus, although during this photo session I encouraged Nicky to smile more, and I wanted him to move out of the shadows and into the sunshine more, much as his brother is apt to do, at a certain point it occurred to me that “This is Nicky,” and so I just let him be.

Albeit, I may not be proud that Nicky has received the short end of the stick when it comes to attention, I don’t feel guilty, I don’t regret our and my personal decisions. Both Domenica and I love our children equally and do our best to cater to and encourage each son’s idiosyncrasies, talents and qualities.

However, I definitely take pride in the notion that, seemingly, my portraiture skills have improved somewhat, so that many of the pictures of people that I’ve taken lately have actually captured a bit of the persona, along with the external beauty that I see in them all.


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MelaPela (Il Raffa & Giulio) ha commentato con bontà "Lorenzo, il capolavoro di un di è."

Per un momento lí, ho portato semplicemente un altro sguardo alla foto di Nicky, ammiccato, e ho pensato, "Sì, è una foto molto piacevole." Ma d'altra parte, sono completamente il biased perché ho fatto non solo lo porta, ma amo nostro più giovane figlio molto.

Ma poi è accaduto a me, ciò in una maniera, forse questo è un "il capolavoro," principalmente perché sento che esso cattura la sua personalità bene.

Di girare 5 il 4 ottobre, Dominic era nato all'ombra di 9,11 nell'anno 2001.

Era anche nato all'ombra del suo più vecchio Enzo di fratello, che è due ed uni semestri più vecchi di lui.

Come risultato di questi due avvenimenti sinistri, Dominic non ha ricevuto come molto stravedere, l'affetto e l'attenzione come il suo fratello. Non significa che sua madre, Domenica, o l'ami qualunque meno.

È comunque una conferma che non era nato come un solo bambino; che abbiamo mosso da Brooklyn, New York a Bloomfield, New Jersey un semplice quattro mesi dopo che era nato; e che l'agitazione degli avvenimenti catastrofici che è accaduto quattro settimane prima che era nato tutto ha cambiato.

E, tanto quanto 9,11 molti di noi hanno mosso ha riguardato è la tragedia apprezzare le nostre famiglie più che mai prima, debitamente ci è preoccupati anche in cosí molte altre maniere che spesso le nostre abitudini cambiate si è intrometsso al tempo che potrebbe essere stato speso alla casa.

Inoltre, sebbene la mia separazione recente coniugale con sua madre è stata giustamente amichevole, riconosco che il fatto che i suoi genitori non sono più insieme e che suo padre non è intorno come spesso come ha usato per essere, avere probabile l'ha riguardato nelle maniere innumerevoli.

Così, penso, ciò forse questa foto è un capolavoro, perché riflette la sua personalità giustamente bene—non è mai stato l'arrivista aggressivo che suo fratello sempre è stato apparentemente; e ha lungo sembrato un ragazzino più timido, Meno tumultuoso e molto più riservato di Enzo.

Ironicamente abbastanza, ogni personalità del bambino sembra riflettere anche che del loro genitore di omonimo, l'un succede somigliare anche a più. I paragoni ed i commenti hanno lungo è stato fatto di come la carnagione del Nicky, l'occhio ed i capelli colorando attentamente uguagliare sua madre, E come Enzo (Lorenzo, Jr.) uguaglia similmente mio proprio.

Così, sebbene durante questa sessione di foto ho incoraggiato Nicky a sorridere più, e l'ho voluto muovere fuori delle ombre e nel sole più, molto come suo fratello è adatto a fare, a un certo punto che è accaduto a me ciò "Questo è Nicky," e cosí io giusto ha lasciato è.

Quantunque, non posso essere orgoglioso che Nicky ha ricevuto la fine breve del bastone viene con questo all'attenzione, non sento colpevole, non mi rammarico il nostro e le mie decisioni personali. Entrambi il Domenica ed amo i nostri bambini e faccio ugualmente il nostro meglio approvvigionare a ed incoraggia ogni idiosincrasie del figlio, i talenti e le qualità.

Comunque, sono indubbiamente è orgoglioso della nozione che apparentemente le mie abilitì di portraiture hanno migliorato un poco, in modo che molti del le immagini di persone che ho portata ultimamente hanno catturato effettivamente un pezzetto del persona, con la bellezza esterna che vedo in tutti loro.


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Other portrait sets:

You Are My Sunshine

My Friend, Mia

Desiring, Courtney

The Sparkling Brooklyn Hilary

DJ Mixx Goes Boom

From Mud to Men

I'm always looking for extraordinary subjects to practice my portraiture on/with, so if you live in or are visiting the tri-state area of NYC and are interested in having me take your picture (or know of anyone who might be) send me a note.

Click HERE if you would like to receive e-mail updates whenever new lorenzodom photos are published.


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More stories, musings and poems about and written for my sons:

To Live A Life Uncommon

There’s Always Something (Ode for a Son)

Nicky The Brave (The Spine of Life)

Like Father, Like Son (a paternal self-fulfilling prophecy)

I Love You, Dominic

Three Familiar Faces (Lesson 6: If…)

I’m A Father (Designing My Little Architects

Just The Two of Us (Papa Loves You)

The Quiet One

The Boys (Collection of Photo Sets )