Taking portraits further...

A few days ago I received two copies of this beautiful German magazine Dogs.
I might be biased though... They had found the cover image (taken by yours truly) via the stock site trunk archive. I am super happy about the cover: The printing looks great and the magazine gives lots of play to photos in general.

About the image: It was taken a while ago... In photo school I had been taught that portraiture is about the image of a human. After years I wanted to see what else could be done inside or outside those parameters... I mean for me it was always more about trying to capture the characteristics of who I encountered than just reproducing the outward shapes of what was presented. I was trying to transport my emotions as well. After I felt that this was possible in the normal settings, I tried to see where else I could take this... Dogs to me show a lot emotion and characteristics on the faces. So they were my first targets...

I like this image because it touches me. Yes, it might be just my imagination or interpretation, but to me there is a lot of stuff going on there!

Well... An artist for another one...

I wanted to post something yesterday about an artist I portrayed recently for the German magazine Der Spiegel.
Unfortunately none of my images made the issue... They used material from her shows to more explain who the artist is and what she does... Well, in any case I was disappointed... When I used to work with a sports photographer to do portraits on someone but that person didn't perform well, the stuff didn't get published... I always felt that was unfair... I mean, we did our job, so we deserved to get published, no? And I was happy that this was not the case with my clients... I guess you never stop learning!
Looking beyond my bruised artist's ego I have to say though that my images wouldn't have made that much sense with the other images selected for that story, so I cannot really fault them... Those images will be posted another time.



So I decided to post an image of another artist I portrayed with writer Mona Eltahawy a little while ago: Shirin Neshat.
We met her in her NYC loft just after the launch of her movie "Women without Men" (which is fabulous by the way!).
She was very welcoming and we got to meet her partner Shoja Azari, their dog Lara and their cat (I didn't catch its name but was informed (after I pet it for a while) not to touch, as it apparently bit other guests before.) The cat was super intrigued by my equipment cases and I had a somewhat hard time to get access to them after it settled right on top of them... Well, I was a little more careful as well, as I just had been told the anecdote about the biting incident...

The image was taken during the interview. I usually try to take images during the interview and do some more formal shots after the writers are done with their stuff... This seems to give me the chance to capture more animated sides of the subject as they are not that aware of the camera. What I like about it is that it shows Shirin's spirit, the natural elegance of her posture and the way she uses her hands to communicate.

Not much else to report other than that one of my HMI ballasts broke, so I had to improvise regarding my lighting set up.

First image post... Yeah!

I shot this self portrait last week while trying to figure out a modified lighting set up for an assignment for the German magazine Der Spiegel... In times of digital cameras and low budgets I find this a very good way of figuring out what works and what doesn't so much in way of lighting someone: Setting up the lights and taking an image of myself as a stand in... Repeat the process until satisfied. In this case the end results were very different than what this looks like...
The article in Der Spiegel is scheduled to come out on Monday. Regarding the way I look: This is after 4 hours of aikido training. ;)

Who, what and why...

My name is Dirk Eusterbrock and I'm a professional photographer / photo journalist in New York.
I decided to start this blog to show images that I'm excited about, but do not quite fit the format of my website www.eusterbrock.com may it be for style, form, format or because I haven't found the right place for it there yet... As well this is to share some "behind the scene" info or just general ramblings...