Author: Damn Ugly Photography

Song of the Day



GABRIELLE AIMEE
I Know Better

DOWNLOAD: I Know Better

Maybe you’ve read about our album cover shoot, but now you can hear what all the fuss is about. Gabrielle Aimée has a new album coming out and stylistically it’s a huge departure from her earlier work. Some of that might have to do with teaming up with Leo Sidran who produced, arranged and played all the instruments, and Hector Coulon handling the recording and mixing, but from the first few chords on ‘I Know Better’, her vocals slide into a warm, comfortable place that instantly draw you into the song. Check out her new facebook Band Page, and make sure you listen to the bluesy ‘Have You Ever’, a song she penned with Song of the Day favorite Nadia Ackerman. And for you New Yorkers looking for something to do over the Thanksgiving weekend, Gabrielle will be playing at Rockwood Music Hall, Stage 1 on Saturday November 26 at 5:00PM

Keeping It Simple With Gabrielle Aimée

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When my friend Gabrielle Aimée asked me to shoot her new CD cover, she was very specific. She wanted to keep it very simple, but very direct. She wanted an intimate connection with the viewer, with minimal styling…maybe just a white t-shirt. Oh yeah…and we had to keep it dirt cheap, ‘cuz in case you forgot, my indie friends aren’t exactly rolling in GaGa Money to throw at their self promotion!

Now one of the things that always impresses people when they first arrive at Damn Ugly Photography is the giant 17 foot by 9 foot high South-facing window that greets them, and on the day Gibbles came up to my place to go over a few ideas, I had her stand up against the wall next to that window and popped off a few quick frames, just to see how she looked on camera with no styling and just a big wash of soft light…I was kinda blown away with the results…

So blown away, in fact, that I told her maybe we should just shoot here, and use the same big, soft lighting. I had an idea to include some rough hewn wood planks and maybe a painters canvas drop as backgrounds, but the real focus had to be her expressions. With that in mind, here’s a bit of what we did…

We started with a few seated poses on my new plank floor…

After a quick wardrobe change we did a few close-ups, but amped-up the window lighting to brighten things up a bit…

Then I turned our plank floor into a wall and we moved in this direction…

And even though we were diggin’ the window light, I figured I would fire up a couple of lights and do a few moodier variations…

And then, just when we thought we might be done, I messed her hair up, cranked up the ringlight, and things took on a totally different look…

Finally, Gibbles told me she wanted to do something fun for her boyfriend, Brendan Brown, the driving force behind the cult alt-rock group, Wheatus. That ‘something’ involved her brand new guitar…and not much else…

Gabrielle is set to release ‘I Know Better’…the first single off the album…and all you have to do is go to today’s Song of the Day to download it.

Why You Should Upgrade To An iPhone 4S Now…

Siri tells jokes!!!

Up On The Roof, Playing Soccer With A Billionaire

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Normally when you get the call to shoot a Billionaire industrialist, you can pretty much bet you’re gonna have five minutes in a stark boardroom and there won’t be a whole lotta fun involved. This was exactly what Jeff Beasley…the Picture Editor at FourFourTwo magazine…hoped wouldn’t happen when he asked me to shoot Bob Rich, the Chairman of Rich Products Corporation, for a feature on unlikely soccer club owners. Rich had recently gotten involved with the Bedlington Terriers F.C.…a small football club playing in the Northern League based in Bedlington, England…after tracing his family tree back to the area and after his wife purchased the title of Lord Bedlington for him as a gift. Jeff wanted a portrait that would show Rich’s Big City American roots…something that might mimic a photograph I did of Howard Sontag high above Madison Avenue…while still tying in the Soccer aspect of the story. It turned out the Buffalo-based billionaire was going to be in New York City for a couple of days, but his schedule was extremely tight. We had a tiny window of opportunity to shoot him at his hotel…the Peninsula New York…but while extremely nice, was not exactly a soccer pitch in midtown. I called the hotel and their P/R person told me they that since it was Mr. Rich, they would gladly make the roof bar area available to us and that it has a “lovely view” of Central Park. Feeling buoyed by that news, I headed uptown (in the rain) to scout it out. This was the “lovely view” of the Park…

It wasn’t exactly the pastoral oasis amongst the concrete I had envisioned, but panning the roof I figured I could make something with what I had to work with…

The next morning the rain had stopped and Kaz and I arrived at the (extremely humid) crack of dawn and went about moving the 50 or so tables out of the way to turn the Salon de Ning Rooftop Lounge into our studio for the day…

With the sun out, lighting was super simple…all we needed was the Mola Setti on a boom and the backlighting did the rest…

We even broke out the tried & true ‘Ball Juggling’ routine…

Bob approves…

…and FourFourTwo liked it, too…

Cartoon of the Day

Saw this Photography Job Interview over on Endless Origami…

Funny…but kinda true at the same time!

Song of the Day


CAMERAS
June

DOWNLOAD: June

It’s been about 8 months since I gave you guys a taste of Cameras when I offered up ‘Polarise’ from their self-titled EP, but last week they finally released their first album, In Your Room, and I’ve had it locked on ‘repeat’ all day. I simply can’t get enough of Eleanor Dunlop’s beautiful, mystically dreamy voice and the way she can take the lyrics and swirl & spin them into her own shimmering, gossamer instrument. I dare you to decypher what she is singing on the first go-round, but once you figure it out you will melt…

I traded my heart
For a new one
I stole I stole I stole
Away away away…

If you know me at all, you know I’m a sucker for exactly this type of lush, layered, shoegazey Pop, but I’ve been jonesing for this record from the moment I first heard ‘Polarise’, and these guys really delivered! I strongly advise a trip to the iTunes Store to pick this one up and then head over to facebook and ‘Like’ Cameras.

And as a bonus, here’s the video for ‘June’…

Optical Illusions & Ice Cream Cones

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For Part Two of my story featuring Anthony “Superman” Scaramucci, Bloomberg Markets magazine had me head back up to SkyBridge Capital to photograph Managing Partner Ray Nolte and Senior Portfolio Manager and Managing Director Troy Gayeski. Since I had already shot their boss shadow boxing in his office surrounded by cartoon characters, I kinda had to think of something equally offbeat for their portrait, but the rest of the SkyBridge office was decidedly not offbeat. It was, quite frankly…pretty utilitarian…office cubicles and a rather small trading area. But as Kaz and I were walking the halls we passed a tiny little kitchen area that caught my eye…

Now, I’ve been shooting guys in their offices my entire professional life, but this was the first box of ice cream cones I’ve ever come across. And even though the space was barely big enough to swing a cat, ice cream cones in a financial office had to be a sign to stop and take a photograph! So we did…

…and when Troy…who is actually at least an inch taller than Ray…jumped off the counter and stood next to him, we pulled off this almost Funhouse Mirror-style image…

Even though they were standing next to each other, the combination of the super wide-angle lens I was using and Troy leaning back slightly on the counter made him look freakishly small! But it certainly makes you stop and look.

Next, we decided to shoot them in the Sea of Cubicles that made up the trading area, but add a little bit of surreality by dropping a white seamless behind them…

…and the final image…

Song of the Day

BIRD CALL
The Ballad Of New York

A few weeks ago the crew at Damn Ugly Photography took the ‘L’ Train out to Williamsburg for an impromptu cover shoot with Chiara Angelicola…Bird Call to the rest of you. She needed a photo for her jazzy new single and I’ve been dying to shoot her for a while, so was certainly willing to help out. That single…The Ballad Of New York…came out this week and I’m giving you guys an exclusive first listen here. Her smokey & souful vocal, backed up by the cascading piano and the oh-so-sad wail of the saxophone give me goosebumps every time I play this song. She co-produced ‘Ballad’ with Noah Hoffeld, and it will be featured on the new album she’s recording now. Unlike most Songs of the Day, I’m only attaching the mp3 player and not the usual full-download link (you folks on iPads will likely have to fire up the old desktop computer to listen), ‘cuz after all, Chiara is 100% indie and needs to make a few bucks every once and a while…if I go giving everything away for free she’ll be stuck eating pork ‘n beans, so please, head on over to her website (where you can also pick up her two earlier EP’s, “The Animals Know” & “Other Creatures”) or iTunes and show her some love ($) by downloading there!

Then head over to her facebook page and Like It!

Anthony Scaramucci is Superman!!!

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Even with the highly charged, Occupy Wall Street attitude that is gripping the country, you hafta look at Anthony Scaramucci as a pretty interesting guy. Besides being the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, an asset management fund with about $8 billion in the bank, at 47 he’s already written his autobiography…‘Goodbye, Gordon Gekko: How to Find Your Fortune Without Losing Your Soul’…had a cameo in Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps’, volunteers on the board of The Lymphoma Foundation and The Brain Tumor Foundation, is a rabid Mets fan who also hangs out with New York Jets head coach Rex Ryan, got nicknamed “Gucci Scaramucci” by former President George W. Bush, and he has enough jam to draw investment superstars like Steven Cohen, Leon Cooperman and Kenneth Griffin and political heavies like Colin Powell and Gordon Brown, to the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference, his annual symposium for hedge-fund managers and investors. But when I was sent to photograph him for Bloomberg Markets magazine, the one thing that jumped out at me was his unabashed love for all things Superman! Every wall and surface in his office has Superman memorabilia…posters, painting, games, sculptures…it was like I got sent to a 12 year-old kid’s room, and not the office of a Master of the Universe. But I quickly understood how this street-smart Harvard Law School graduate who wants “…to be the Peter Lynch of the hedge-fund industry!” held the Good vs. Evil metaphors that are at the center of every Superman cartoon close to heart, so we ran with it…

For once, Bo was the perfect height to act as a stand-in…

Our Barrel-Chested Financial Man of Steel…

…and the completed opening spread, with new creative director Siung Tjia’s Superman cape graphic that wraps the headline…

I Shot Mr. Post-It® Note For The London Sunday Times

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So I get a call from Andrew Mitchell, one of the photo editors at the London Sunday Times, and he needed me to hightail it to the Palace Hotel to shoot a feature on George Buckley, the Chairman & CEO of 3M. Now the Palace is a really nice hotel, but the idea of shooting a couple of portraits in his suite just kinda seemed flat, so after a bit of pleading with the hotel’s P/R people, they said if I was quick I could use the Gilt Bar as a studio. So Kaz and I packed up the van and made our way uptown, but not before making a stop at an Office Depot for some props. You see, 3M makes more than 55,000 products, including adhesives, abrasives, laminates, fire protection, dental products, electronic materials, medical products, polishes, waxes, car shampoo, car chassis rust protection, electronic circuits and optical films. But if you had to pick the one thing they make that everybody knows, it’s the Post-It® Note, and I bought almost every Post-It® Note on the shelf at that Office Depot! I had been to Gilt a few times and I had an idea to dress up the ultra-modern lounge area with a few (thousand) of the little paper stickies…

Kaz sits in for the first test…

…about half an hour later, after Post-It-ing the set…

…and the final image of George…

For a second photo, we turned 90 degrees to the left and set up a shot with George framed by a golden wall and warm lights…

The gold wall…

A nice start…

That was nice, George…but what do you say we try this…

Dont’cha just love it when the CEO of a HUGE multinational corporation has a sense of humor?!!

Your 5 Minutes with the CEO of Bayer begins…NOW!!!

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Here’s another from my ongoing series of CEO Spotlights from Barron’s…this time featuring Dr. Marijn Dekkers, the new CEO of Bayer AG. He was up at the Barron’s offices to be interviewed and I was told that because of his tight schedule, I would have precious little time with him for the portrait session. So we set up in the tiny video studio the magazine has tucked away down a back hallway and waited. Precisely on time, Dr. Dekkers and his publicist arrived and yes, they were already looking at their watches. Still, the five minutes was more than enough time to get off a couple of looks…without getting a headache!

Listen to a Jazzy Song of the Day AND Win an iPad 2 !!!

THE HIPSTONES
Spread It All Around

DOWNLOAD: Spread It All Around

When you listen to The Hipstones, you get transported back to an era where jazzy horns, buttery guitar licks and smooth vocal harmonies ruled the day. Mark Palmer and Anthea White play off each other backed by a swirl of Steely Dan-like horn arrangements and the result is a loving wet kiss homage to 60’s soul and R&B. And next Monday, October 17th , they’ll be bringing the full 8 piece band…including a 3 piece horn section…for a special show (no door charge!) at the Rockwood Music Hall where they’re giving away an iPad 2 to the person who brings the most friends to the show! That’s right…you bring a bunch of your little pals out for a night of cool jazz and go home with an iPad! How do I get in on this deal, you ask? All you hafta do is pre-register a minimum of five (5) friends names and email addresses by 1:00PM Monday on the Hipstones Website and make sure they plant their asses in chairs at Rockwood for the show. Obviously, you wanna get as many of your friends as possible to turn up, but since the club only has 160 seats, your chances of walking away with a shiny new iPad are pretty good! So what are you waiting for?!! You can either drop them an E-mail or click HERE to enter, then jump over to their Facebook Page and hit the ‘LIKE’ button, and if ‘Spread It All Around’ makes you smile, you can pick up the album Dreamers on iTunes.

Song of the Day

photo ©2011 Marshall Burnette

K+NIKKU
The Search

DOWNLOAD: The Search

When Kate Tucker and Nic Danielson were little kids, they lived down the street from each other in middle-of-nowhere Ohio. Nic played the piano and Kate sang songs, but they were just far enough away that they never heard each other. They both dreamed of being rockstars, but Nic left Ohio before they could ever meet and form a plan. However, in a wonderful bit of cosmic kismet they found each other years later in far-away Seattle, when they both rented an apartment in the same building. Kate had teamed up with three local guys and formed Kate Tucker and the Sons of Sweden and for five years Nic was the driving force behind The Kindness Kind. And even when Kate moved to Nashville and cut off her hair and Nic folded up the tents on The Kindness Kind earlier this year, there was still a burning need to work together, so for the past months they have been collaborating remotely on new music. This week they released a few new songs as K+Nikku. The music has decidedly more electronic touches than anything Kate has ever done and it’s more Pop-driven than Nic’s work with TKK, but it perfectly showcases their songwriting abilities, along with Kate’s sweet, high-register vocals and Nic’s musical mastery. They call the new collection of songs ‘Antarctica’ and you can download all four for free over on their website…then head on over to their facebook friends and hit the ‘LIKE’ button.

Song of the Day

WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS
Act On Impulse

DOWNLOAD: Act On Impulse

OK…I gotta admit that until about twenty minutes ago I had never heard of the Scottish four-piece We Were Promised Jetpacks, but I was stumbling around the KEXP website looking for some new stuff to fill up my iTunes folder and how could I not give a listen to a song from a band with a name like that?!! And sometimes that’s all it takes…and it often proves to be great. These guys played their first gig at their High School’s ‘Battle of the Bands’ competition…and they won. Then they get signed to the Indie Power Label Fat Cat Records (Sigur Rós…they recorded their new album at Sigur Ros’ Sundlaugin Studios in Iceland, The Twilight Sad, Vetiver, Animal Collective…). ‘Act On Impluse’ is from their just-released second album, In the Pit of the Stomach. It slowly winds itself up with a thumping drum beat into a wonderfully grandiose anthem to disaffected youth…“…The smell of sweat really helps me sleep…we die alone…”. Check out We Were Promised Jetpacks on their website

Song of the Day

THE RADIO DEPT.
The New Improved Hypocrisy

DOWNLOAD: The New Improved Hypocrisy

I love The Radio Dept., so the news that they have canceled their tour of North America has me kinda bummin’ today. I was looking forward to catching them at the Bowery Ballroom in November, but “family related matters” have shut everything down. I’ve had Passive Aggressive: Singles 2002-2010…their compilation from earlier this year…on ‘repeat’ all day. Here’s hoping they reschedule, but in the meantime listen to ‘The New Improved Hypocrisy’, slide into a mournful groove and then check ’em out on their website.

It’s My Birfday…

Other birthdays of note today:
Hilary Duff (24)

Bam Margera (32)

Young Jeezy (34)
Dita Von Teese (39)

Carré Otis (43)

Naomi Watts (43)

Mira Sorvino (44)

Moon Unit Zappa (44)

Janeane Garofolo (47)

John Sayles (61)

Brigitte Bardot (77)

Jim Grant For Barron’s

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Jim Grant, the publisher of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, is one of Wall Streets greatest critics, and Adrian Delucca had me head downtown to shoot him for a recent Barron’s feature. Jim’s office was pretty small, but an institutional yellow wall behind a doorway…

…and his wall of books…

…gave me what I needed for a couple of nice portraits…

Song of the Day

LINDSEY BUCKINGHAM
Seeds We Sow

DOWNLOAD: Seeds We Sow

I never would have thought I’d see the day when I would include Lindsey Buckingham among the ranks of ‘indie’ musicians, but even though he’s a gazillionaire and still tours with Fleetwood Mac, with the self-release of his sixth album as a solo artist, he apparently now falls into that genre as well. ‘Seeds We Sow’ is the title track of Buckingham’s new record and besides some pretty high-toned lyrics…‘Sweet things pretty things are dying/In the penny arcade of Edgar Allan Poe’…it’s really a showcase of his acoustic guitar-picking technique. ‘Seeds We Sow’ is available as an Amazon MP3 Exclusive for only $4.99 (or you can pay full price on iTunes) and you can check out Mr. Buckingham on his website.