I now have a portfolio up on ViisualPro.  ViisualPro (yes, there are two i’s) is a cool portfolio website with a great selection of photographers.  It’s not like other websites that accepts anyone who wants to put up a portfolio.  Here is their approach:

We take a curated approach. To better serve photographers on Viisual, we do not accept every artist who would like
to use our service. We look for work that is more creative and contemporary; and that has an advertising or editorial
focus. We also consider other factors to ensure a good match between your creative direction and ours.

And with my addition to the collection it clearly shows it’s possible to slip through the cracks.  Someone was clearly not paying attention when reviewing my work.

Here’s another Polaroid I took, this time of my mom at her condo in Aptos.

As I’m working on these Polaroid scans, I realize, to get these shots I’m carrying around this fairly cumbersome camera (Mamiya RZ67-II) and ending up with a scanned photo not much better resolution than that of a camera phone… in fact, I think my iPhone takes sharper pictures when comparing the scans.  But still, there’s something about the look of the Polaroid that I like.  I’ve always thought sharpness was overrated anyway.  One thing I don’t like about digital is that most images come out clinically sharp.  I like a little softness in images.

More Polaroids here.

Also, check out what’s going on over at The Impossible Project.

Here are a few more Polaroids taken over the last few days.

I’ve been shooting these Polaroids lately anytime I’m shooting for myself.  I’m not really sure where I’m going with them. They don’t really have a theme or pattern.  I guess I’m just shooting Polaroid to shoot Polaroid while it’s still available because I like the look.  I guess that’s good enough.  My friend and assistant Emily say’s to “think of it as a journal..they are personal and it doesn’t need to be consistent.  Photograph what you love when you shoot Polaroid and fuck worrying about the purpose.”

Sounds good to me (but watch your language Emily).

See more Polaroids here.

Confused:
clothed naked photography

Confrontational:
my singer can kick your singer’s ass

Disturbing:
my ass in medium format

Why would you want to?:
jeff in the nude
jeff nude
naked jeff pics

People who are to cheap to pay microstock fees:
how to remove an istockphoto watermark
photoshop remove istockphoto watermark
remove istockphoto watermark

People who want to steal from photographers directly:
how to remove a watermark from a photographer

Looking for love?:
is liz hatch a lesbian
emily merrill lesbian

What does it mean that my site comes up for this?:
dirty photographer

I hope not… So far, so good:
bad times for sf photographers

The restraining order is now active:
i hate jeff singer

And finally, whoever it was… call me*:
love of my life jeff singer

*maybe you should email first.

Screen grabs from the online version of Viv Magazine.  I did the editorial shoot for them a couple months ago at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco and the San Carlos Airport.  At the airport I was offered to hold up all take offs and landing traffic if we wanted to shoot on the runway.  Being someone who hates flying, I didn’t want to potentially hold anyone up from a safe landing, so I opted to shoot somewhere other than the runway.

The article starts on page 156 and pointless blathering by me in the “contributor bio” on page 12.  Hair & Makeup by Meaganne McCandess.

Bigger: A little
Better: That’s subjective (but I think so)
Faster:  Maybe
More:  Yep

The new website is up and running.

So, is this making life better or worse for photographers?

Better:  Possibly find unauthorized use of your images.
Better:  Possibly making it easier for someone to figure out who created the image (important for Orphan Works legislation)
Worse:  Someone doesn’t like what you are charging to license an image, find one exactly like it… I mean, not like mine… my images are solely unique.

Photo Editors, Art Directors and anyone with an email address at your magazine or agency (thanks for the feedback Bob the Janitor), get your SPAM filters ready!  Once my new website design is up I’ll be sending out my first promo for the new site.  My old Livebooks site has been upgraded and I now have larger images with the old design.  I’m still in the process of resizing my images for the new site so there’s a mixture of old and new.  The new design should be live sometime this week or early next week.

To date I’ve been doing my own design work, so I hope you like the new site (and promo piece).  I think for the next round of revisions and promos I’ll be seeking professional help… and a designer.

I’m in the process of a good sized website update.  It’ll be a mix of newer work and work I’ve done over the last year that I’ve been a bit too lazy… I mean, far too busy… to get prepped for the website.  I’m also in the process of doing a minor website re-design.  I posted a while back that I wanted to completely redesign my website… but that hasn’t happened yet due to indecisiveness on how I want the new site to look.  After all, it’s not like I want to redesign my site every few months, so I better be happy with it.  So, for the short term I’m upgrading my Livebooks site in order to add larger images and along with that I’ll make some minor changes to the look.

I will say, I think Livebooks maximum vertical pixel count of 562 (up from 500 for my current/old design) to be too small for my liking.  This is one of the reason I want a complete site redesign, so I can have larger images.  If you shoot a lot of 35mm aspect ratio horizontal images, the Livebooks image size works well.  But since most of my work is vertical, I don’t get the larger images.

The Livebooks upgrade should go into effect over the next 24-48 hours, so check back then.  I should have my existing images resized by then along with some new images.

The shot above will be one of the new additions to my website.  Its a shot I took of my friend Kellie a couple weeks ago.