Category Archives: Just for Fun
Focus on Diversity
This month, I am participating in a really cool project with Wheelock College, photographing a diverse group of families for an exhibit on campus called “Families in Focus.” The project is part of a campus-wide diversity initiative and the goal is to highlight how different “families” can be; not just the typical husband-wife-2.5 children combination anymore. On our first day of sessions, we set up in a classroom on campus and photographed 5 families. We have 5 more families to photograph at a later date and then the final photos will be exhibited on campus.
I am so proud to be part of this campaign and so proud to be promoting the value of diversity. And, while I don’t talk about my personal life much on my blog or even with my clients, I am very happy to be including a self-portrait of my wife and I for the Wheelock exhibit. Below is a shot of our little family of 2. Stay tuned for the exhibit to open at Wheelock in April.
Also posted in Boston, Portraits
Tagged Activism, families, personal work, portraits
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The Power of Positive Thinking
I am going to stray from my usual blogging topic of…well…photography…and instead point you to a TED talk that I watched recently and that I really think is worth spreading around. For those of you not familiar with TED, these are short, online talks given by leaders in industries ranging from technology, design, entertainment, education, research and the like, all broadcast free online and available for the enrichment of our brains!
This TED talk by Shawn Achor, the CEO of Good Think, Inc. is called “The Happy Secret to Better Work.” To summarize, his research has found that the happier people are, the more successful they are in their work, businesses, and lives – NOT the other way around. Typically we think that if we work harder, we’ll be more successful, and then we’ll be happier. Shawn puts this idea on its head by explaining how happiness is actually a precursor to success, not a result of it.
You might think he is saying something that intellectually doesn’t make sense. How could you NOT be happier if you made more money, got a better job, or surpassed your sales goals? The reason, he explains, is because we are always raising the bar of what “success” means, and thus always struggling to reach it. For example, you’ll want to make MORE money, you’ll want an even BETTER job, you’ll raise your sales goals even HIGHER. And, therefore, success – and happiness – are always just out of reach.
Instead, he suggests, we should work to find happiness in our everyday and then success will come from that positive outlook. For example, if you wake up every morning and write down 3 things you are grateful for, then you’ll go through the day feeling more generous and appreciative. You’ll make new friends, solidify business relationships, please your clients. If every time you open your email program, you send one nice email to someone you know, you’ll start getting nice emails back. People will reach out to you, they’ll want to do business with you, they’ll refer to you to their colleagues and friends. In other words, the happiness and the kindness predicts the success.
According to Shawn Achor of Good Think, Inc., our success is created not by our reality, but by our perception of reality. In this down economy, when you turn on the news you see stories about war, unemployment, rising health care costs, crime and other unhappy things. That makes you feel unhappy; it makes you perceive your world negatively. How is one to feel successful with that kind of negativity brewing?
Shawn says the answer is not in working harder, spending less time with family, toiling away at the office, skipping vacations, and not sleeping. The answer is to embrace optimism and positive thinking – to find and create happiness around you so that your perception of reality is more positive. Positivity breeds success.
So why is a photographer blogging about positive thinking? Because in addition to being “just a photographer,” I am a small business person. And in my life, nothing has been so hard as being a small business owner trying to stay positive in a down economy. But luckily for me, a lot of things have happened in my life to contribute to my feeling happier. I won’t go into personal details, but suffice it to say that when I started feeling happier about my life, my relationships, and myself, business started improving. It really did! The last quarter of 2011 was my best quarter ever, and the only thing that changed is that I went into the fall feeling happier and more positive.
We all have our demons. True happiness is a process in and of itself. Shawn has a number of suggestions for how to approach each day with a little bit of positivity and I, for one, am going to try them. These last 6 months have proven to me that happiness does indeed breed success and this talk on TED is one more reason why I believe it.
Shawn’s talk is only 12 minutes long, so watch it when you can and let me know what you think!!
And now, just to be consistent, I’ll share an old photo with you that always makes me smile 
My Big Fat Restoration Project
Back in August, I told you how I was beginning to restore an old, faded and water-stained photo from the 1960s. My good friend had found it amongst her father’s belongings after his death and asked me what I could do with it. I replied, “Anything is possible when it comes to retouching!” and gladly took on the project. More than one month later, I finally accepted that I had done all I could do and presented her with a gleaming 5×7.
Here is the before:
And the after:
I really love how this photo looks. I had to darken her hair quite a bit, to compensate for all of the work that had to be done to it! The glass was sealed to the photo from water damage and years of neglect, so I had to retouch all of the cracks in the glass, which was a huge feat. She has darker hair in the photo than she had in real life, but besides that, I think it looks pretty dead-on!
Restoring old photos is something I love to do when I get the chance. It is bringing memories back to life! Seeing old photos anew brings my clients so much joy – how could I not love it?
Behind the Scenes
After many years of shooting, I finally brought a second shooter to a family portrait on Sunday so that I could get some “behind-the-scenes” shots of me at work. I have been meaning to do this for a very long time. After all, who doesn’t like going behind-the-scenes shots of photo shoots? I always love when magazines include these kinds of shots from fashion photo shoots so that I can compare and contrast what the setup looked like to what the final product is. I know I am not alone.
Alas, my setup on Sunday was not very intricate and, therefore, probably not too exciting. I arrived at the family’s home and began scouting for the perfect location and background. I had already briefed them on what to wear, what to expect and how much time we would need. We set up in the backyard and used lovely porch furniture and some potted flowers to create a set. Not only did I not need a complicated lighting setup – I didn’t need lights at all! On Sunday evening, we had beautiful natural light, tons of open shade with lovely sunlight in the background. I set the camera on a tripod for most of the shoot and relied almost entirely on natural light. Lucky for me; not having to worry about lights means that I can focus more on interacting with my subjects, posing them correctly and getting natural, relaxed expressions.
Here I am getting everyone setup, talking about the overall look of the shot and working with them to find the most natural poses.
Then back at the camera. Keeping the camera on a tripod means I can interact with them and keep shooting. Jokes, stories, funny expressions all keep people engaged and smiling naturally.
Here I am trying to be super entertaining. I can never stop smiling when I am working with families, kids and couples. After weddings, my face literally hurts from smiling!
After we got the whole group shot, we moved locations and did some smaller groups of the siblings and parents. With the smaller groups, because I had people behind me who could help be entertaining, I was able to go handheld and get some different compositions.
Here one of the final shots. So you can see how it all comes together!
Prints for Sale
Every once in awhile I am honored to have a prospective client call looking for a large print to hang in their home. As you probably know, fine art photography isn’t really my business – my work normally is shot and used for commercial purposes. But what you may not know is that I always maintain a collection of images that I would be proud to hang in my home (and often do) and offer for sale to others. I have a large collection of food-related photography, a body of work from my travels to Argentina in 2008, a collection of Black and White fine art photography and plenty of landscapes, most shot off-the-cuff while walking through the city of Boston. Many of these aren’t displayed on my website, so let me know if you’re interested in them!
Today, this particular prospective client is looking for 2 or 3 vertical food-related images to hang in her kitchen. The color scheme in the kitchen is gold, blue, tan and white. So I say, “Hmmmm…let me look through my collection and see what would be appropriate.” And then I send her some web links to a few options and we go from there.
I would venture to say that every photographer has a collection of work that is appropriate for the wall. If you like a photographer’s style, enjoy their subject matter and have some bare walls in your home or office, it doesn’t hurt to inquire!
Here are a few of my personal favorites. And yes, I have these and others hanging on my walls!
My Latest Retouching Project
I am so flattered and honored to have been assigned this latest retouching project. A dear friend of mine found this picture of her sister from her college days (1963? ’64?) in terrible disrepair. Water damage has the glass adhered right onto the photo and obviously it’s also torn and cracked and faded as well. She asked me what I could do and I gave my usual response: “Anything is possible with Photoshop.”
So she has entrusted it to me and this week I will set to work on restoring and retouching this beautiful photo. I told her I couldn’t promise a timeline; massive restorations like this can take a lot of time. But I will begin working on it right away and will post updated to my progress as I go. These photographs are so unique – someone somewhere may have the original negative, but at this point it would be nearly impossible to track them down. So not only is this photograph stunningly gorgeous, but it is also a piece of their family history.
First things first: make a high resolution scan preserving as much of the original information as possible. Done.
Now comes the fun part…stay tuned for updates.
Independence Day
Happy July 4th! Summer is finally in full swing. Wouldn’t you rather be here? In the pool, drink in hand, smile on your face, knowing you don’t have to go to the office for two more days? Thanks to Steph for letting me post a recent snapshot from our vacation last week. It was heavenly!
Tagged seasons, vacation
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A Camera to Love
Well, I finally bit the $2500 bullet and upgraded to a new, full-frame sensor camera: a Nikon D700. That means the photographs are much more sharp, much less noisy, much more versatile, and the image files are waaaay better quality. I can not put into words how excited I am! Took it out of the box and started playing around – in the limited time I had all I could do was walk around the house and try to make things look interesting. I am absolutely in love with the sharpness and crispness of these pictures. Of course I played with the colors and contrast in post-production, but really had very little to do. All of these were shot with a 24mm lens, which on a full frame camera is actually 24mm – much wider than I am used to!
Sigh…I am in love!! Can’t wait to start working with it and see how this changes my wedding, event, food and editorial photography. Stay tuned for more!
Leise’s Top 5 Environmental Organizations
In honor of Earth Day 2011, I am going to share with you my Top 5 Favorite Environmental Organizations (in no particular order). Please take some time to learn about these great groups and their amazing work. There is LOTS we can all do to help protect the Earth and make it safer and healthier for generations to come.
1. The Trustees of Reservations
This group preserves for public use and enjoyment beautiful and scenic properties throughout Massachusetts. They are doing the hard work to conserve precious open space and keep it available for us all to enjoy. The Trustees currently maintain nearly 25,000 acres of open space in Massachusetts, and I can assure you they are all beautiful and pristine – when we go camping we only stay at Trustees’ land! Visit their website to learn more about these spaces, and how you can help.
It may not sound like an environmental group, but since 1989, the Breast Cancer Fund has been leading the way in identifying and eliminating environmental causes of breast cancer. No one knows for sure what causes breast cancer, but we do know that genetics and family history play a role in only 5% of cases. So what causes the remaining 95%? Could it be the constant daily exposure to toxins in our air, water, cosmetics and consumer products? Breast Cancer Fund is unapologetic in their work pressuring national companies to use safer alternatives to toxic chemicals and protect our health and safety.
For those of you who like to see stuff get done, RAN is the group for you. Their tagline, “Environmentalism with Teeth” says it all. RAN uses hard-hitting tactics to pressure huge, multinational corporations to change their policies towards those that favor environmental protection. They are masters of the “market campaign” in which consumers use their power, and the power of their spending money, to force big companies to change their ways. With a long list of successes and a take-no-prisoners attitude, RAN is making some big time change for the better.
While paper companies are cutting down the rainforests and the coral reef is being depleted halfway around the world, communities like yours and mine are struggling with our own environmental fights – and we need help. Toxics Action Center works side-by-side with communities to provide the skills and resources they need to prevent and clean up pollution at the local level. According to their website, since 1987, Toxics Action has helped over 625 communities across New England put together the plans and strategies to effectively solve the problems they face.
The Sierra Club is the nation’s oldest grassroots environmental organization with staying power and winning power. Founded in 1892 by conservationist John Muir, the Sierra Club has grown from a group of committed hikers to a huge powerhouse of attorneys, researchers, lobbyists, organizers, volunteers, conservationists and activists. I am not sure any other group has its fingers in as many issues as the Sierra Club does – they are tireless in their advocacy and, with over 1 million members, are a grassroots force to be reckoned with.
Also posted in Non-Profit Groups, Resources
Tagged Activism, Environment, non-profit groups, Resources
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Nostalgic Family Photographs
I am not old. I know that at age 31 I still have more years ahead of me than behind. But sometimes I can’t help feeling old, especially when I take time to look through old family photos and remember all of those seemingly-lost childhood memories. How incredibly special that we have photographs to look back on, to help us remember every last detail. Thanks to my mother’s fastidious photo albums, my siblings and I have a treasure trove of memories, cataloged, dated and labeled. My mother is a photo album magician. She would save all of our family photos and once a month, or once every two months, or whenever she could find the time, all those pictures would be splayed out on the dining room table while she sorted and dated them and carefully assembled them in a book with handwritten notes about places, friends’ names, favorite outfits at the time, birthday cake flavors and Girl Scout troop leaders. She included so much detail in the albums that they are veritable encyclopedias of our family.
Now, as adults, our family is redefined, re-imagined and reorganized in a way that photo albums can no longer narrate. Divorces, marriages, births and deaths mean that one series of books isn’t enough to cover all of the lives intertwined in a large family. I try to live up to my mother’s standard of photo alubms, try to make the time to cull through pictures and put them in date order so that we, and our children, will have something to look back on. It’s hard work, but the value of these things is endless.
So here I share a few old family favorites. I love them for their imperfections as much as for the memories they conjure. On this particularly cold, nostalgic early spring New England day, something warm is in these photos. I can only hope that when I photograph other families and their memorable occasions, I provide them with as much warmth and happy memories as these snapshots provide me.
Tagged families, nostalgia
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