New Blog Address, Mobile Site And Store

----- ATTENTION! THIS IS THE LAST POST AT THIS ADDRESS! -----


All posts, old and new, are now at http://www.jeffreyscottfrench.com/blog and feed://jeffreyscottfrench.com/blog/feed/


You will be automatically redirected to the new blog. If not, just click the link above!



Update those bookmarks and RSS feeds: all posts from now on will be found at http://www.jeffreyscottfrench.com/blog. If you need to update your RSS reader there is a handy button just to the right there that will hook you up. I've kept the same look and feel for the most part, but I've moved the whole blog over to the WordPress platform so that I can do more fun things here in the future, and also to have more control over where my images are being stored. Thanks Blogger for helping me thus far!



You may have noticed already (since its been up for about a week or so off the main portfolio site) that I also now have a store. There are currently only two items available but more are coming. You can pick up a Hidden Lake composite print or, for the first time ever "Condensation Trails" as a 40x20 inch canvas gallery wrap. As always, you can still just contact me directly if you have questions or want to purchase anything.



I also just built and launched a mobile compatible version of www.jeffreyscottfrench.com so if you browse to my site on the go you should be automatically redirected there. If you have an iPhone, Android phone or any other mobile device let me know how you like it via the comments here.

Another "Portrait Sessions" post is coming up shortly. Hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Portrait Session: Casey de Pont

This will be a quick one, lots of things to do this week. More on that later, once I've actually finished it!



Casey and I spent a rainy afternoon together in Brooklyn while she was getting ready for a party that evening. We kept the atmosphere casual and I just worked around her as she prepared some delicious mushroom bruschetta that I would unfortunately not get to taste, as I had elsewhere to be that night. Casey was wonderful to work with, all smiley and happy all the time. It actually took us quite a few attempts to get the above no nonsense expression. Kept the main light - my Lastolite Ezybox mentioned in the last post - about head level to push the light in to her face better and popped another flash in the back to use as either fill for the room or a highlight as I saw fit.



Shot both of these with the camera on manual and speedlights on TTL. I can't really decide if I like using the flashes in TTL or not. It is nice when the subject is moving and the light levels need to change, but other times I really just want the steadiness of "this-is-exactly-how-much-light-you'll-get" manual mode. It was interesting to play with nonetheless, and changing it all from the menu in the D700 makes it super easy to try it out when I have the time.

Good things coming later this week!

Portrait Session: Mari de Monte

I have some pretty nice friends, perhaps the best. It's true, really. Case in point: On my recent trip to New York and back I asked several friends to allow me to make their portraits and not one of them declined. And honestly, I don't remember any of them protesting the notion more than "Me? Are you sure?" if they objected at all. My good friend Mari agreed to sit for a session with me the day after I got to Brooklyn. These are the images that we made:









Now, if you're a nerd like me, you might like to know that I shot this session, and the next three sessions that I'll be posting over the next week, with a new toy. I ventured to the B&H store in Manhattan to stare in wonder and then to eventually buy this Lastolite Easybox Hotshoe 24" speedlight softbox. It's a mouthful of a name but it's a wonderful little accessory for off-camera, small flash photography. First saw one in action while in Montana for school when my buddy Thomas picked one up. I was envious ever since and have just now caved and bought one. For me at least, it is well worth owning one. I shoot a lot with speedlights and up till now was making do with umbrellas for portrait scenarios. This light modifier has already become my staple for enlarging and softening my light, especially when lighting people. My only gripe with it was that in order to use it with an umbrella adapter/moveable angle adapter you need a double spigot - envision a double sided threaded bit at the business end of a lightstand - which would be a nice include in their kit, even if they bump the price of the kit $5. Basically if you want to angle this thing at all other than 90 degrees using a straight stand, you need one.

Check back for the next installment of Portrait Session in a few days. If I'm feeling artsy-fartsy I may draw up a basic lighting diagram for how most of these sessions went. Be warned though, it really is pretty basic, both in technique and in my ability to draw.

Teaching Little Fingers To Play...

Here's one last photo from Central Park. Jaclyn and I, like countless others that afternoon, spread a blanket out under the warm sun on the crest of a knoll in the lawn known as Sheep Meadow, unpacked our lunch and gazed up at the beauty that was around us. Sundays are about her only days off, so we were both glad the weather was gorgeous. I told myself to make more portraits this trip, or at least make more images of people if candid moments presented themselves. So trying to keep that goal I proceeded to annoy almost every one of my friends I visited. Whats more, I put the results up on the internet - lucky them! Below is another frame of Paula on the beach in "deluxe-bury" just a few miles from her Marshfield, Mass home.



And here are a few from an afternoon at my sister's home. I'm not entirely convinced that she lets her kids play on the piano as readily as they explained to us they could, so when she had stepped out for the afternoon and it was just Uncle Jeff and Gramma left, they made sure to enjoy themselves. As you might imagine, all of their musical selections were played forté, especially the pieces that required all six of their hands. Adaline stayed the longest at the keys, teaching the glow-in-the-dark bats she received for Halloween how to play. I'm glad I will soon be living a lot closer to them.







Incidentally, the title of this post is the name of a record - a pretty good one at that - and you can hear a song from that band (The Creature Comforts) right here: Showboat

To Everything There Is A Season

In the last post, I had just left the shores of Maine to drive through the turning foliage back to my hometown near Syracuse, NY. Driving through New England in the Fall was also one of my life goals, and Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont did not disappoint. Most of the woods through which I piloted my car were at peak color, or at least looked it to me, and I stopped a few times to make some images. The real intent however, was just to enjoy the drive; the colors streaming by on the backroads that climbed and dipped and swung through the rural towns, most of which had seen three centuries or more of Autumns and have still managed to not be overrun with strip malls or giant box stores.



It's amazing how much I took for granted the cycles of nature when I was living in them, especially the changing of the seasons. Part of that may have been that Spring, Summer and Autumn always seemed so short compared to the lengthy, harsh winters of my hometown in Central New York, and thus I felt like the actual transitions took too little time to go from Summer to Fall to Winter and too much time to go from Winter to Spring to Summer. Or maybe it was completely average compared to other cities in that latitude and I was just feeling slighted for no reason. Either way, now that I have lived in Florida and am subject to what is basically - to me at least - "nice Summer" from October to April and "sweltering Summer" from April to October, visiting the Northeast in October reminded me how much I missed actual seasons. Don't get me wrong, I'm fairly certain I will not be spending my years in the snow belt of Upstate New York any more, but I am definitely longing for a little more variety, as well as the opportunity to wear a sweater now and again.



After a couple nights in Syracuse I climbed aboard a rail car and watched the world wash by outside the window while I was taken to NYC. Traveling by train was yet another of my life long goals, and Im not sure I could have picked a better time to do it. We followed the Mohawk River east to Albany and then turned south along the Hudson and followed that all the way to Penn Station, in the heart of midtown.



For me, the best part of riding the train was being able to just sit and stare as the scenery blurred by on the other side of those tinted glass portals - something which is not easy (or safe) to do while driving. As we descended with the water through the Hudson River Valley the colors deepened with us. These trees, having been spared the frosts that a lot of New England had seen, had not yet had their leaves bitten by the cold morning air, browning and robbing them of their full glory until finally letting them go to drift down to the earth. These leaves glimmered with their full, radiant hues.



I spent an afternoon in Central Park with my good friend Jaclyn (a few pictures of her next time) on what might have been the last warm Autumn Sunday of the year. The entire park was adorned in it's seasonal colors and it seemed as though most everyone who could come out to enjoy them were there. Late afternoon sun poked through golden branches and dappled the sheltered grasses that were now littered red and orange and crunched as you wandered through them.



Of all my memories of fall colors, from my time in the Northeast, in Montana and in countless other places, Central Park held its ground with the best of them, which made me all the more grateful to have witnessed it.

48 Down, 2 To Go

I am currently in New York, New York - "the town so nice they named it twice" - Chelsea, Manhattan to be specific. I left the southwest shores of Florida two weeks ago for an adventure and am currently in the middle of it. With a quick stop in Myrtle Beach to grab Steve Stockin, some beers and a nights worth of sleep, the two of us shot up to Philadelphia to grab friend Mike, more beers and 1 hour and a half performance by Them Crooked Vultures at the Electric Factory, which yes, was amazing. And then my real adventure began...



I have traveled the contiguous 48 States many, many times, but a few had evaded me. Maine was the last on my list (other than Alaska and Hawaii of course) and I got to check her off my list on a crisp October morning, in perhaps the most perfect of scenarios.





I had driven from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts to stay a few days, visit some old friends and experience the heart of New England in Autumn. My old friend Paula and her man Matt were lovely enough to put me up for a night, and Paula showed me around the next day and graciously tolerated my camera in her face as we explored her neighboring beach towns. The coast was exactly as I had expected it, except better in every way. Sunny with a stiff breeze, wet sand and a blueish hue that seemed to saturate everything with a cold, sad flavor of a deserted New England beach in the Fall. After a day at the edge of the Atlantic I headed to "Boston proper" - as Kaleena had put it - to meet her for food and drinks. Then I made the late night drive up 95 into Vacationland and nestled into a rented room a few miles off the highway.



In the morning I found my way down to the coast to brave the thirty-some-odd degree weather plus wind for a glance at the North Atlantic. I can understand why so many have been drawn to a life out there past the horizon, on the cold and rolling waves of a seafaring vocation. I then turned abruptly and drove off into the woods of Maine to be surrounded by the gloriousness of a New England forest in Autumn. More on that next time.

A Sad Post

This is rather sad for me, so it will be short.

As many of you know, UPS Freight damaged my installation piece, Hidden Lake, on it's return trip from Montana after the Day 231 show in Missoula. Somehow during transit they managed to puncture and break open the (custom built) shipping crate. The piece was insured and after some lengthy discussions (about a month's worth) UPS Freight agreed to settle the claim in full. Unfortunately their policy is that if they settle for the full amount, they own the damaged cargo. UPS Freight came and picked up Hidden Lake, I said my silent goodbyes to the project, and now it's gone, more than likely to be destroyed. It was not an easy decision, but having to choose between keeping a damaged piece I had worked on for over a year or letting it go and moving on, I chose the latter.

If you saw the piece in Montana, then consider yourself lucky. Hidden Lake was shown only once and was available for viewing for 56 days in June and July of 2009. The piece was and always will be a one of a kind original work, so I will not be re-making it.



In addition to the original installation, there was a total of 17 composite prints made at 30x10 inches that represent the piece. Four have been sold already, and I am of course now keeping one for posterity, which leaves 12 signed prints remaining. The remaining prints bear the title "Hidden Lake" in printed form and my signature in archival ink, which I signed on Friday June 6th, 2009 shortly before the opening reception for Day 231 in Missoula, MT. I did not number them when I signed them, so they are not numbered now, and there will not be any further composite prints made once these are gone. The remaining 12 prints are available for $125 USD plus shipping and handling to your location. To purchase a print you can contact me through the blog via a comment or via my contact info on my portfolio site.