Brad Trent

Saying Goodbye to Sam Palmisano

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I’ve been shooting Sam Palmisano since he was named CEO of IBM back in 2002, and as CEO’s go, I always found him to be a very honorable, straightforward guy. But I also knew that since he had reached IBM’s mandatory retirement age of 60 he would be stepping down, so when I got the call to photograph him a couple of weeks ago for what would probably be his last hurrah at the helm of the largest IT company in the World, it was a little bittersweet. I did three covers with him and made a lot of connections with IBM in the process. But connections aside, I was still ‘warned’ by the P/R person that Sam didn’t like being photographed and that he would only have five minutes. I assured her that I knew the drill and that Sam and I went way back…we would be ready to rock-n-roll the second he walked through the door. We were taken to the Board Room and went about turning an area that could easily double as the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise into a white studio, then we quickly set up a second shot, ‘cuz I didn’t wanna come away with just just one since this might be the last time I got to bother Sam with my camera. And when Sam arrived, true to form, he warmly greeted us and asked how we had been doing since the last time I had to put him through a photo torture session. And then with the P/R person looking at her wrist, our five minute clock began to tick down…

The IBM Boardroom…

You can see how we set up both situations side-by-side, mostly because I knew if I had to walk Sam more than 50 feet a second shot just wasn’t gonna happen!

The simply ridiculous area we dropped our white background…

…how it looked on camera…

…and the final spread in the magazine…

The second shot was deceptively simple…I planned to work with the ambient light in the room and drop him against the stainless steel wall that I had lit with only two of my DIY Kino-Flo lights…

And the final image…

I just checked the metadata on the files. The first shot was at 17:06:54…the last frame was at 17:14:55…..Sam must have enjoyed our last session together ‘cuz he let me go over by three minutes and one second.

Brad As Cat…

My wonderfully artistic friend, Laura Breen, fancies me as a cat…

Last-Minute Xmas Gift Suggestion & the Song of the Day


GABRIELLE AIMEE
Have You Ever

DOWNLOAD: Have You Ever

I know it’s only been a month since I told you guys about Gabrielle Aimée, but since then her self-titled debut album has been released and if you’re looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer, I can’t think of a better way to spend eight bucks! That’s right…it’s on Amazon as an mp3 download for only eight bucks (or $9.99 if you wanna get it from iTunes) and there is even an option that allows you to send the album directly to that special someone as a gift. The eleven tracks are so smart, so sexy, so tight and just so damn much fun, they had me movin’ my ass from the minute I put the record on. BUY THIS ALBUM !!! Then head over to her facebook Band Page and show Gibbles some love by clickin’ the ‘LIKE’ button.

Gettin’ Smart at the Museum of Math

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Not to get you guys thinking that I’m in a creative rut or anything, but hot on the heels of last weeks post about my Digitalman, here’s the series of photos I did of Glen Whitney…a Harvard-educated mathematician and former hedge fund manager…for a story on philanthropy in Barron’s Penta.

An unapologetic numbers geek, Whitney is pulling together about $30 million and building the Museum of Mathematics in a prime 20,000 square foot raw space on East 26th Street right on Madison Park in Manhattan. Since the construction hasn’t even begun on the museum, Adrian and I thought it might be kinda cool to inject some math into the portraits, and maybe using a projection technique would be one way to to pull it off. But the magazine budget wasn’t quite as lofty as the previous ad shoot, which meant spending the kind of money required to produce the job with the super-spendy toys I used on the Digitalman was not gonna be in the cards…so we went about as low-tech as possible, left the strobes at home and decided to work with the available light and use nothing but a digital projector. And it all ended up being not only a lotta fun, but we got some very cool portraits of Glen in the process.

I did a location scout, ‘cuz I really needed to get an idea of exactly what we had to work with…a dark, dirty cavern with lots of rough concrete walls and pipes was what I found…

After spending a few days making various Photoshop ‘slides’ using hundreds of real math equations, we rented the biggest digital projector the budget could afford, and Bo and I headed off to MoMath…

Any early test…

…and a couple of the final selects. We used the ambient light from the construction worklights to fill in the background areas, but the shot was essentially lit entirely by the digital projector…

Next, we moved to an area that was a bit cleaner and less cluttered for a cover image…

…and I broke out my home-made Kino-Flo florescent lights and we did this…

The Museum of Math is scheduled to be completed next year…check out the details on their website and make sure to take the kids when it opens!

Song of the Day


WYE OAK
Civilian

DOWNLOAD: Civilian

I have no meaningful excuse as for why I haven’t put anything from the latest Wye Oak album, Civilian, up on The List since it was released earlier this year, except my usual, “I’ve been lazy and neglecting my duties as your free pipeline to new music”…but I will try to rectify that today. I had been listening to a couple of early mixes from the album since late last year, but it wasn’t until this past weekend that I ponied up the cash to buy the record, and my God it’s good! Last on The List with ‘Take It In’ back in June of 2009, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have crafted a seductive lamentation of angst, apprehension, rebirth and redemption.On the title track, Wasner’s voice is carried steadily along by a chugging, locomotive-like beat that without warning turns into a wall of Neil Young-like reverb and noise that hits you like a punch on the face.

“I still keep my baby teeth
in the bedside table
with my jewelry…”

I don’t know why, but that lyric gives me chills.

And the other nine songs on the album are just as lush and tight and smartly written. Don’t let me go spending your hard earned cash for you, but if you like this song, then the album is a must-buy…head on over to the iTunes Store now! For you New Yorkers, Wye Oak is opening for The National on Thursday December 15th during their week-long stand at The Beacon and you can follow them on their website.

Finally, here’s a bonus video of them doing an acoustic version of ‘Civilian’ on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series…

Making a DigitalMan

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Sure…with a little Photoshop and a lotta time you could probably manufacture an image like the one above, but wouldn’t it a lot more fun to pull out a $10,000 lighting gizmo and do it all in-camera?!! That’s just what we did to illustrate the idea of the flow of a digital data stream. The hyper-priced toy was the Profoto ZoomSpot…

…the type of follow spot used to create stage lighting effects, but in this case it’s fitted with a 4800 w/s flash tube. All I had to do was make up a few transparencies of ‘zeroes’ and ‘ones’ to drop into the projector and then we could play around with color combinations and lighting ratios until I got the kind of dramatic image I had floating around in my head. The lighting diagram shows the setup wasn’t that complicated…

A large Chimera Super Pro and both skim lights were covered by two Full CTB gels to bathe the entire set in blue light. The background light…with a half-blue and a magenta gel…was aimed through a wooden Matthews cucoloris that created the shadows on the seamless. All that remained was to get the color and lighting ratio of the ZoomSpot just right so that the projected image popped at just the right intensity. Two full CTO gels and setting the spot about one stop brighter than all those blue lights was what we ended up with.

A Tiny Sofa and a Big Table for Barron’s…

My eclectic tour of the Nation’s boardrooms recently took me to the offices of Riverpark Capital, where I was to photograph Morty Schaja, Mitch Rubin and Conrad van Tienhoven for a Barron’s profile. Lest any of you think that the life of a photographer is all Supermodels and hangin’ with Diddy, I beg you to read on…

Riverpark’s midtown office would never be described using words such as ‘opulent’, ‘palatial’ or ‘ostentatious’. But they are hardly alone in this…most places I find myself having to shoot in are equally utilitarian…but it can rattle my bones when I keep seeing the same furniture, cubicles, lighting and paint used again and again and again. Still, after a quick tour of the space, I decided to begin in the reception area…

…sort of a mini-history of the financial markets as seen through the eyes of Time Magazine. I kinda thought it would be a good place to start, so we dropped Mitch and Morty onto the little couch and went to work…

But we also had to photograph a situation with Conrad, the third partner in the firm, and there was zero chance of him fitting on that couch. That part of the story brings us to this conference room…

The first thing you gotta do when faced with the dreaded White Board/Conference Table scenario is ignore how frightfully normal the situation is and try to envision it instead as a set piece that will only work because of the personality you can bring to it. That first means usually cleaning it up and add some tasty lighting…

Next, stir in the talent…

…but the whole serious/symmetrical thing wasn’t doin’ it for me, so I told the guys to just go about doing what they normally do…let loose and ignore me…and they did…

…and that kind of unguarded moment was exactly what Adrian wanted for the story…

The Future of Advertising

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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.

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…

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.