Final Post Here...

i've really liked using blogger, but for various reasons i need to move my blogging onto my own domain at silverystars.com. i hope that this will both help to drive traffic to my site and allow me to have one unified place to post my thoughts.

so, if you've bookmarked this blog, please update you RSS feeds and bookmarks to the following address:

URL: www.silverystars.com/somanystars
RSS: feed://www.silverystars.com/somanystars/?feed=rss2

thanks,
scott

Correct Exposure

so i ordered the first copies of in the still air and will start selling signed and numbered copies immediately. i've taken an advertisement out in Black and White magazine to help promote the sales of this limited edition book. there will only be 50 copies ever printed. Black and White Magazine was kind enough to give me some space on their website to promote my work. along with the exposure advertisement that is in the October issue, i hope that this will help to make people aware of my work and possibly peak some interest in the book. you can see the gallery at BW mag here:

Black and White Magazine's Advertiser Galleries

several collectors have already ordered their own copy of the book and i suspect when the October issue hits the news stands, the remaining copies will go fast. if anyone would like to order a copy, i have a few in stock right now and i can ship them out almost immediately! details here:

silverystars.com

all the best,
scott

smilies needed

i've got to go help a friend today. his father passed away over the weekend and the funeral is today. he called me yesterday, very emotional and asked if i could help with the memorial service and funeral by capturing some video of the event. seems morbid in a way, but really there are so many people coming from overseas, they feel it is best to somehow capture this. i proposed the idea of filming some people who might be able to tell fond remembrances of his father and i just know that its going to be a rough day emotionally.

so if you know me well enough to have my number, text me a couple smilies if you're thinking about me through the day.

thanks,
scott

snap back to reality

so, i finally have my work hanging for all the public to see. the results of this weekend showed that i can organize and pull off a successful multi-artist gallery show. i just hope that my measure of success is the same as everyone else's. honestly, i don't really care if my works sell or not, its really just the thrill of having my work on public display for everyone to enjoy that brings me the biggest sense of accomplishment. photo at right © billy monday.

my parents attended, which made me very proud. i got to introduce them to so many of my friends which is a rarity since these circles don't often collide. i often worry that my parents might think i'm not happy because i'm not married, so having them see that i experience love when surrounded by my friends is very satisfying to me.

i also feel that, slowly, things are returning to a bit of normalcy. i've got a shoot coming up this weekend with a woman who is coming from out of town to work with me. i had the chance to go out yesterday afternoon and scout locations that we'll use for some of our shoots and now have visuals and spaces on which to anchor the formations of my creative visions for our collaboration together. i knocked out a corporate photography project that i shot last week and should be able to mail that off this morning as well.

so, yeah... things are getting back to normal, things are getting done, and there's a whole new weekend of creativity to look forward to coming up in just a few days.

oh yeah, and i even managed to convince stephanie anne and rael, who came down from new york city to see the show, to pose a little bit for me before they had to go back. as if it was ever difficult to talk them into it! interestingly enough, they hadn't met before saturday night but seemed to become fast friends over the course of the day spent together. i was amazed at how they worked so well together in the studio.


enjoy,
scott

the illuminated figure

i am very pleased to announce details of my first gallery show. i've worked really hard to find a venue that i thought would represent not only my work very well, but also the works for four of my dear friends and fellow photographers. if you live in the area, please come out to support the arts!

thanks,
scott

The Illuminated Figure
a gallery show featuring works by 5 contemporary photographers:

Bill Earle - showing selected works representing expression, emotion, beauty and passion.
Billy Monday - Frederick, MD based photographer showing work from his 2007-08 series Mannequins
Marcus Ranum - showing works from his series, Women on Pedestals
Scott Nichol - showing selected works from the summer 2007 series in the still air
Ken Volpe - showing works from his series, Rope Tricks

Artist's Reception: June 14, 2008, 8pm
Art-n-Soul Studios
516 West Hamilton Street
Allentown, PA
http://www.silverystars.com/photo/illuminated.html

art in real-time

so, we live in an interesting time. its bad enough that we blog in real time about events from hotel wifi connections while we nurse the sunburn and mosquito bites from earlier in the day. but when you're teasing your contemporaries with incredible shots like the one of Zinn here, its just plain abuse of technology!

zinn and i started planning this trip down to the Outer Banks in North Carolina a couple months ago and i really wanted another photographer, billy monday to come along with us. the chance to collaborate with other photographers always proves to be inspirational. and billy probably would have brought another model with him that i was really looking forward to working with. but alas, for various different reasons, billy couldn't make it and i was disappointed, to say the least.

however he asked us to keep him informed on how things were going and said he would have to experience the trip vicariously through us. so, we continued to goad him to come down by sending him shots like this:

his only response was, "Man, that hurts...those shots are beautiful! Have a beer for me, but don't stay up too late..." we laughed with the delight of getting such great stuff and rubbing it in without him. but the goal was really to encourage him to drop everything and join us, regardless of the obstacles. these photos are obviously fully edited on my laptop while sitting in our cozy efficiency in Cape Hatteras, NC. its a wonderful place, really, to shoot art nudes. you can find seclusion if you really look for it. and surrounding yourself with new environments really keeps the creativity flowing.

but the real-time feed back provided by all this technology is amazing. we're posting completely edited photos of our work here to community sites before we even get back. getting the satisfaction of sharing the amazing adventures we're on long before we even get back home. so, we'll see you all when we get back home, but you'll already know where we've been.

enjoy,
scott

Photographer's Forum Magazine!

yesterday when i left my alter-ego-day-job thingy, i checked my phone to see if there were any new emails. there was a new one from Julie at Serbin Communications. they are the publishers of a few, small, niche magazines, one of which i like in particular called Photographer's Forum its a magazine focused on photographers with layouts that showcase their works. the layouts are simple and uncluttered with single images per page. they don't talk about gear or software, they just present photos and allow their readers to absorb them as art.

well, a couple weeks ago i barely squeezed in to make the deadline for submissions for their portfolio issue where they feature several photographers and their portfolios. the email i received yesterday was to tell me that, "We have completed our annual portfolio review. After considering many excellent submissions, we are pleased to inform you that we have decided to publish your work in the portfolio section of the February 2009 issue of Photographer’s Forum magazine."

wow. i mean, WOW!! i was floored. i let out a hoot and yelled, "fuckin-a yeah!" then i realized i didn't believe it and had to re-read the email again to make sure i'd really read it right. it was true, but then i realized that i really shouldn't be driving and trying to read emails. i put down the phone, picked it back up again and called stephanie, candace, ken (voice mail), and olaf to share this great news.

i'm excited, really, for the models who will also have their works published. its not clear which photos they will use, i think i submitted 15. but hopefully they will tell me soon i will pass the information along here.

this is exciting!

Lehigh Valley Photo Club Talk

I will be giving a talk at the Lehigh Valley Photography Club on Thursday night. I will be discussing the production of my book, in the still air.

here's a press release that should be going out later on today...

Scott Nichol is a professional, published photographer whose works have appeared in American Photo and Photographer's Forum magazines and is a regular contributor to Lehigh Valley Living Magazine. Scott's fine art photography focuses on figurative work studied mostly in formal studio environments. Last summer, Scott took a step to move his figure photography into the great wide open. It was an adventure that found him in remote forests, lakes, and beaches seeking the seclusion of early mornings when the quality of light was good and onlookers were scarce.

From this series of photographs, Scott has produced a limited edition hard cover book of this work. The book will be produced in an edition of 50 signed and numbered copies. Pricing for this edition will be $125. Selected original signed prints from this series will also be available for $40 each. Orders for the book and prints are being taken at http://www.silverystars.com.

Scott will speak Thursday night about the process of producing the book from a photographer's point of view. He will discuss details of how the how the page layouts were created, how the printer was chosen, and show slides of selected plates from the book.

into the wild

The sea's only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don't know much about the sea, but I do know that that's the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once. To find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. Facing the blind death stone alone, with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head.
- Alexander Supertramp, Into The Wild

this morning and last night i was just simply racked with self doubt. i was so happy with last summer's series of outdoor work, so pleased that i actually made a book of the photographs. and i had scheduled a shoot this morning with a wonderful model named susie b and was planning to explore shooting in the falls at Glen Onoko up near Jim Thorpe, PA. but to be honest, i was looking for a lot of excuses to just shoot some safe studio work with Susie and not make the trip. the reason, i think, that i didn't want to do this was simply because i had gotten it in my mind that i wouldn't be able to find the killer locations and bring that level of emotion back again.

in a way, i pushed myself through and decided that it wasn't raining hard enough to justify another safe studio shoot. i kept hearing the voices of my friends Olaf and Rick encouraging, practically begging me to go up there. i think they knew with that location, i could create some real magic! i got lost on the way to the location, re-established my bearings, and we arrived to find some of the most beautiful waterfalls in PA. hiking in with susie was a treat. she's an avid hiker and was so thrilled after coming in from NYC to be out in the natural elements. the miles of hiking snapped my mind back to where it needed to be and we worked effortlessly to create some truly beautiful pieces. i felt like i was back in my element, back where i want to belong.

i think the key is that you need to trust in yourself. its always easy to say, i'll never be able to do that again. but you have to trust that you already know how. i couldn't have been more happy with the shots we came up with and i'm glad to share one of them here with you. leave a comment, let me know what you think. enjoy for now, but there will be more to come in the weeks ahead!

scott

print sales

i am making a growing selection of my prints available for sale now through my web site. if you're interested to purchase signed original prints, you can take a look right now at my gallery of collections.

the prints are all produced by me in my studio using an archival inkjet process. some people call this process a glicee process. this is really an invented term, but basically is a process of using archival fine art papers such as the cotton rag papers from Hahnemuehle, Crane, or Ilford combined with pigmented inkjet inks.

my weapons of choice for making my fine art prints are the Epson K3 inks in advanced black and white mode. this prints using pure carbon pigmented inks which have a longevity of 100+ years with no visible fading. the papers i use are Hahnemuehle Photo Rag for matte finish prints and Crane Museo Silver Rag for semi-gloss prints. the Photo Rag paper is 100% cotton rag and has a slightly textured almost watercolor-like paper look and feel to it. the Silver Rag has a semigloss finish that has more than a passing resemblance to traditional silver gelatin black and white prints. both papers produce excellent image quality and make a fine addition to any serious art collector's gallery.

two collections are available right now and more images and collections will be available as time goes on. if you're interested to purchase some of these prints, links to the collection are here:

White Series 2008
Summer Series 2007


thanks!
scott

ok, so i've been working on a book design of the series of images i made last summer. i decided to have azukabook.com print it because i thought their Laminate Matte paper and overall presentation of the book was superb. did my 40 page layouts and created my PDF. i uploaded everything and placed my order. my plan was to do a very limited edition of the book for collectors. the quality is outstanding and i'm very anxious to see how it looks.

however, today i got a call from a nice sounding woman at asuka book with some "concerns" over some of the images in my book. apparently, pages 11 and 27 contained photos of exposed women's genitalia. she had to inform me that this is a no-no in japan (where the asukabook headquarters is and where all their books are printed) and that there was a risk that the printers might reject it because of japanese indecency laws. here's a PDF of the book in question:

book.pdf

now, i don't know how many of you have seen japanese pr0n, but man its some seriously screwed up shit. as my pal marcus put it:


"I've seen shitloads of japanese pr0n. Have you noticed that they always block out the pubes?? You can do a video of a schoolgirl getting live eels stuck up her ass while being throat-fucked by a guy in a rubber space alien costume -- but you'd damn well better not show a single pubic hair or square millimeter of genital tissue. Anus tissue is just fine, though it's gotta be hairless.

God makes people move in mysterious ways, don't he?"

and if you want read more interesting stuff, there's actually a wikipedia entry on japanese pornography that might open your eyes. here's just a couple of entries from the sub-genres section of the page:

Broken Dolls This is a sub-genre of the popular 'medical fetish': young girls in hospital beds, covered in casts, splints, gauze, and fake 'bruises.' It usually involves rape and forced bondage.

Burusera - ("bloomers") Fans of this genre collect panties,urine, socks & uniforms of actual schoolgirls.

Chikan - ("pervert") It involves, usually males, who pay 'extras' to sit in a stage constructed to look like a train car and act submissive while being groped.

so, seriously folks... medical fetish, collecting urine, and groping submissive train passengers? that's OK! but a photo of a person in a pastoral setting where you might see a pubic hair... that's indecent!! i've always contended that what i'm doing here is not pornography, but rather photography with serious artistic merit. in the end, the nice lady at asukabook.com told me that they could submit it anyway and just see what happens. i politely told them that if they weren't able to print it that i would have to take my design and my business elsewhere. she politely understood.

Warehouses

i spent the day today riding around town looking at dilapidated spaces. warehouses, old factories, and abandoned garages. any place like that today caught my eye. i'm just thinking of the potential that any of these types of places might hold for hosting the group show. one place is actually not in a terribly bad part of town and... if rent was cheap enough, i might consider renting to form a studio. then i'd just have my own space to do as i please. i thought, "how cool would it be to just put the kind of art that i like on display whenever i want".

i mean, i walked around to some of these, "fine art galleries" that are established in downtown bethlehem, pa and if i see one more fucking painting of christmas time in bethlehem i think i will vomit. i would love to just turn my nose down at any one of those artists and say, "we don't show that kind of stuff here!

Exhibiting - Venues

well, the coffee shop/book store/gallery place decided to go with the original artist they had scheduled for june. this is actually the, "right thing to do". apparently, they had booked an artist for the space in june and were beginning to have doubts that she could pull it off. they wanted to know if i would be interested to take her place. of course. the hard part of prepping the artwork is all but finished. i would only need to make some prints and frame them up.

so, i started to get really excited about exhibiting in just a few months. but talking to them this week, they seem to think that she'll be able to pull off the show, so they want to know if i would be interested in their next available month which is January 2009. 2009?!? that's like... next year! i hate not having instant gratification anymore. the internet has decimated my patience. but i'll take it and it'll serve to give me focus over the next couple months, carefully planning out shots that i think will work well as a collection to show in january.

in the meantime, there is the Lehigh Valley Skin Industry Invitational. I'm thinking of reserving a booth there since i've goto so much tattoo themed work. for now, i'm thinking to concentrate on showing some fine art pieces along with some portrait work. the goal would be to sell some prints-only (unframed, in poly envelopes) cheap. framed prints at an affordable price. then try to sell some portrait bookings as well.

Exhibiting

I've been working with several local galleries here in the Lehigh Valley, trying to find a outlet for my work. The ultimate goal, of course, would be to sell some prints. But truth be told, I really just like to show people my work and get feedback from their reactions. However, it really seems to be a difficult sell, trying to exhibit fine art nudes in public galleries. One gallery owner I talked to explained it to me in a very rational sense. In his experience, exhibiting and selling photography as art is much more difficult than just about any other medium. The reason seems to be that everyone these days has a digital camera and "taking pictures" is easy, right? So why would I want to pay someone else $500 for a photograph of a nude woman crouching in a stream. "I could get my girlfriend to do that. She's hawt!" So, selling fine art nude photography as art tends to require a much more sophisticated art crowd. And I'm not sure the Lehigh Valley has this kind of crowd.

But right now there's one gallery with a high level of interest. When I sat down to show them my work, they seemed to be impressed. When they asked me if I would consider showing in their small book store/coffee shop/gallery I asked them if they were certain that they would have no problem showing nudes. Their reaction was simply, "controversy is always good for business!"

My kind of people.

Spinning Plates

while you make pretty speeches
i'm being cut to shreds
you feed me to the lions
a delicate balance

and this just feels like spinning plates
our bodies floating down the muddy river

-radiohead, Like Spinning Plates

Aperture 2.0

i've recently become somewhat disenchanted with Aperture and the reasons why are in accordance with what has been widely discussed about Aperture across the web. i've got about 30,000 images cataloged and organized within the library and having all of these photo at my finger tips is a real joy.

however, there are some real annoyances, chief among them, speed. Aperture gets so tied down in loading images and loading sets of thumbnails where Adobe Bridge merely breezes through loading the same size RAW images. Apple needs to fix this. This is a tool for professional photographers and we don't have time to waste.

next, is overall RAW support for new cameras. the Aperture team needs to disconnect itself from OS updates that are tied to numerous other bugs unrelated to a select few applications' abilities to read and manipulate RAW file formats. Apple did it before with an off-cycle update that brought support for new cameras. why can't this be the norm? in a world where competition among photographers can be fierce, it can be sometimes damaging to wait on adopting new technologies. i recently purchased a new Nikon D300 camera body and it has a different RAW format that's not recognized by Aperture. Adobe Camera RAW and Bridge support it and have now for a few months. so for now, that's what i'm using. its an incredibly crippling workflow, with images spread across two different collections and locations. very unsettling.

the last thing i'll talk about is book printing. i recently attended the Photo Plus Expo in NYC and was astounded at the multitude of options and sizes for printing books. some of them looked way, way better than the few samples i'd printed from Aperture! my chief complaint here is that the books are too small and the printing process is not all it could be. we need matte finished paper, larger book sizes, and a better, more flexible layout engine. Apple's CoreImage technology builds Photoshop-style filters right into the OS for any application to take advantage of. why does Aperture not let me apply these filters to images in my book layout?

the thing is, i think that all these concerns will vanish and become a memory when Apple releases Aperture 2.0. at least, i hope it will address my concerns. i'm fairly certain that an upcoming release of Mac OS X 10.5.2 will include support for the D300. and PMA 2008, one of the larger professional photography expos is coming up. i would be surprised if Apple didn't use something like this to introduce a new version of Aperture. its long overdue for a v2.0 update and i could use it now more than ever!

Photography Is Social

on monday of this week i did three separate photo shoots in one day.  the first was with Nori, a really good friend of mine.  having her come to work as a figure model really is just hanging out with a good friend.  i wasn't sure what i wanted to shoot until just after i got up that morning.  when she showed up at 9:30 a.m. i was still working out the details.  but i really didn't have to worry about it at all because we've worked together so many times that when we can collaborate we usually find the voice for the shoot rather quickly.  

so while we were shooting, i was helping her install Leopard on her MacBook Pro, telling her how she should handle her recently burst battery, and having breakfast.  for me, i just feel a bit of confidence in my ability to create now that i didn't have a year ago.  and i can allow myself some of these distractions and still work out a good shoot. it comes down to trust in friends that you know will work well with you and help you execute your ideas.

later that day, i had a shoot set up for Lehigh Valley Living magazine.  i had to shoot with a woman who is trying to setup a center for performing arts in the area and we wanted to shoot around the location where the arts center will hopefully locate.  she immediately recognized me as someone who went to high school with her.  however, i couldn't place her at all.  but after talking more, it suddenly dawned on me that this was Irene's younger sister!  i always get thrilled when the connections start to fall into place.  and it started to dawn on me that photography is causing me to make many more social connections than i ever have in my adult life.

later that evening, i was supposed to shoot with Leah, another friend and local model that i collaborate with from time to time.  we hadn't shot together for a while and when she showed up to my New Year's Eve party we decided to get together to work on some art photography.  however, she thought that we were doing it next monday not this monday!  but knowing Leah as well as i do, it was easy enough for me to say, git yer butt over here and let's get started!  and again, it all really felt to me like just hanging out with a friend.  we were making jokes, laughing about the fact that she couldn't pinch an ounce of fat on her tummy, and i just rolled my eyes when she told me how awful her skin was... when she signed the model release, in the space for photo session description, she just put "f*@%'n around".  indeed.

New Friend, Same as the Old Friend

so, i had a chance this weekend to work again with carly erin who is just a load of fun to have around. we did some fine art figure work to round out her contribution to the black/white series. carly's work was really wonderful and i've had a chance to work on a few of the images, though i'm struggling through the workflow since the Aperture Team over at Apple hasn't seen fit to update their RAW processing engine to support the D300 i just picked up. so i'm using the much less familiar Adobe Bridge and having a tough time with the somewhat less capable workflow.

i was a little nervous when i started yesterday because i was faced with using a new camera in a professional situation where i was hiring a model. if i screwed everything up and couldn't work the machine, i would be wasting her time and more importantly, my money. in the end, though, it worked out quite well. Nikon did such a wonderful job maintaining the familiar controls and operation of the D200 in its successor. All the controls seemed to be right where they belong and the few controls they did add (like the directional pad on the vertical grip) provided amazing utility when switching orientations. there were moments when i had to tell myself, "use the directional pad on the grip now...", but that's just part of the familiarization process. in the end, i was quite pleased with the results.

Noisy Ninja Rabbits!

so, i just took delivery of my new Nikon D300. i've been listing lots of old junk on eBay that apparently someone likes! subsequently, i've raised enough money to offset the cost of buying the D300 and decided to take the plunge.

the D300 is a wonderful camera and i'm not going to post a D200 image here to taunt you with. instead you'll have to wait until later this week when i shoot with carly erin to see what it can really produce. low noise, 12 megapixels, and a really amazing 51-point autofocus system that will probably give me a lot more flexibility to choose where the camera focuses without having to move the AF areas to the eyes, then hold and recompose.

so, i spent the night tonight kicking the tires, so to speak. i use a Photoshop Plugin called Noise Ninja a lot to help smooth out some high-ISO shots and also, to eliminate some noise from the shadow areas of certain shots i do in the studio. Noise Ninja works best and fastest when you have the appropriate noise profiles for your camera. i assumed that the NN guys would have a set of profiles for the D300 at this point, but there wasn't a set available at their site. However, simple instructions on creating your own profiles are available at their site, so i thought i'd give it a shot. i printed the calibration sheet, set up the camera on a tripod and put a softbox directly behind and slightly above the camera. then i fired away, maintaining the same exposure for all the different ISOs that the camera can shoot at. This is a bit tricky especially at ISO 6400 where the studio light is at its lowest setting and the lens is stepped down to f/22!

in any event, i finally have profiles for each ISO setting and the results of reducing noise at ISO 3200 and above are really wonderful. i can absolutely shoot at ISO 1600, capture plenty of ambient light and still get low noise and really outstanding color rendition. this was not possible before a camera like this came along.

i've sent my profile images to the Noise Ninja folks, but if you want to download my noise profiles for the D300, i will make them available here:

Noise Ninja Profiles for Nikon D300

in order to install them, follow these instructions here and you'll be on your way!