So I’ve got to do a portrait of my nephew tomorrow at the Iron Pigs baseball stadium and I really wanted to experiment with the whole overpowering the sun idea.  The concept is to underexpose the photo by about a stop or two and then fill in the exposure using a flash or studio strobe.  So I picked up an Alien Bees Vagabond (a battery power pack for my studio strobes) which gives me enough power to fill back in the underexposure of the foreground subject, almost totally eliminate all the harsh shadows made by the sun, and give you a brilliant, controlled exposure with rich deep blue skies.  Keep in mind that this was shot in full sunlight at 3pm.

Oh yeah, and then there’s my white trash girlie friend Lorna Doone, playin the part and doing her thang.

love it…

Lorna - WWJJD

feeling wonderfully gifted to have my friend stephanie anne around for a couple of days.

Stephanie Anne - Square 1

Stephanie Anne - Square 2

Stephanie Anne - Square 3

The Curator – Search for Outstanding and Undiscovered Fine Art Photography

keep your fingers crossed for me dear readers.  submitted the following pieces for this juried call for entries.  should know the results mid-April…

Keira - Talc

Dominique - Embryo

Brooke - Comfort

Brooke - My Dreams...

i worked a while back on setting up a shoot with a model that i found to be very expressive and we talked about working with some clay. the idea was to cover her head-to-toe and work the dried and cracked skin textures. it really came off much better than i’d expected. i’ve been sitting on these for quite a while and wanted to share them with you now.

model: miss anthrope

miss anthrope - clay study no.1

miss anthrope - clay study no.2

getting access to the Bethlehem Steel plant is always something i’ve wanted to do and with all apologies to Machina Infernus, i always thought it would be with a nude model much better looking than these guys.  but thanks to some friends, we were able to have escorted access to locked buildings within the quickly decaying plant site and try to capture something and unique for a friend’s band.

the day started cold and grey with most of my friends south of here reporting a healthy accumulation of snow.  the storm was predicted to start in the lehigh valley around 3:00pm, just shortly after the time we would be getting started.  and of course as we were pulling into the facility, the snow started to fall.  large parts of the ceiling are missing in the building known as Machine Shop No. 2.  the falling snow combined with the cavernous machine shop and Rich’s steely gaze just brings home everything i love about photographer as an expressive art.

it’s all serendipity and being lucky enough to have the weather cooperate in ways that make for something special.  but then again, i really believe that if you surround yourself with the right people, good things will always happen.

enjoy,
scott

Machina Infernus - Machine Shop No.2

The Argus 75

Who wants to set up a shoot?!? I got a new camera with a built-in-flash!!

I was digging around on line, reading a bit about polaroid, transfers, and basically doing some research on vintage cameras. I remembered that my folks at one time had an old Polaroid camera and wondered if they still had it. We talked about it over dinner tonight and my mother disappeared to go find it. (At this point, any old piece of junk she can get out of her house just makes her so happy.) But what she came up with was this old Argus Seventy-Five (Argus SF for short). It used to take 620 film which is the same width as today’s 120 film, but the 620 spools have a slightly smaller diameter.

Its a nice twin-lens reflex camera, so you look down into a viewfinder held at about chest height to compose your shot. There is one shutter speed that’s about 1/125th of a second. Not sure what the aperture is, usually they were around f/13 or so. The flash is actually detachable and there were several unused filament bulbs in the camera bag with it.

I’ve shot before with my friend George’s Brownie and got some interesting results. The next chance I get, I’ll be putting a roll of Ilford Delta through it and we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I’ll have to do some more research to try to find out what the aperture opening looks like.  For the moment, I’ve re-spooled a roll of Ilford Delta 400 based on the instructions at the brownie camera place web site.  I’ll wait until I’ve got a good subject and the right kind of light to guess might be correct exposure.

I am all alone this time around
Sometimes on the side I hear a sound
Places parallel I know it’s you
Feel the little pieces bleeding through

And all this goes on
And on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on
This goes on
And on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and on

– Trent Reznor Beside You In Time

Keira - Natural Light, Frame 1

Keira - Natural Light, Frame 2

Keira - Natural Light, Frame 4

Keira - Natural Light, Frame 10

Keira - Tutu, Frame 6

Every once in a while I google search on myself and my so-called studio name, silverystars just to see what pops up. Its interesting how bold people can be and often times I’ll see my photos posted to others’ blogs or filckr accounts. If they’re done with attribution, I generally won’t have a problem. But last night I found an account on flickr that had one of my photos posted to it and it was the only photo in this person’s gallery there.

So, appropriately, I contacted the Yahoo Copyright and Intellectual Property folks and said this:

Copyright for the the image in the link below is owned by me Scott Nichol and has been posted to your site by a user unknown to me and without my permission. The copyright data for this image is still embedded in the metadata of the JPG image file and viewable on your site. it still indicates the copyright holder to be me, Scott Nichol.

Please remove this image at your earliest convenience:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9097705@N05/574099858/

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly at:

Scott Nichol
[address, phone number, etc...]

You would think that this info along with the fact that the person had only one image in their flickr gallery and that my copyright info was still embedded in the photo’s metadata would be enough to satisfy a DMCA takedown.

Interestingly, though, Yahoo!’s response to me was as follows:

Yahoo! would like to help you with your request. However, in order for us to process your complaint, we require that you comply with Yahoo!’s Copyright/IP Policy at http://info.yahoo.com/copyright/details.html and the statutory requirements for a valid DMCA notice (set forth at 17 U.S.C. 512(c)(3)).

Specifically, in addition to the information you have provided below, please include in your notice:

• A statement that you have a *good faith belief* that the use of the content in question is unauthorized; and
• A statement by you, *made under penalty of perjury,* that the information provided in your notice is accurate.

Until we receive a complete and effective notice of infringement, Yahoo! will not be able to address your complaint.

Regards,

Copyright/IP Agent, Yahoo! Inc.

What’s really interesting to me is that a statement of good faith belief is more important than empirical evidence when it comes to intellectual property on-line. In the end, once I included these statements in another email, Yahoo! pulled the image.

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened to me with my artwork. And the bottom line is if you’re an artist posting your work on-line, its really important to send out these notices no matter how ridiculous some of the steps can turn out to be. If you don’t follow through, it sends the message that its OK to copy your work without your permission. And if there’s a really serious case of infringement its harder to defend in court if you haven’t already taken reasonable steps to protect your intellectual property in the past.

best,
scott