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I received an email from a representative of the New York State Museum about an upcoming exhibit they’re hosting of landscape photos of New York State asking if I’d help spread the word.  The text of the presser is copied below.  My only caveat would be; if you want to, to verify what rights you may be signing away by submitting images.  There’s a Terms of Use on the submission link but you may want to check that there is nothing additional that you may be granting them.

State Education Department/University of the State of New York/Office of Cultural Education

New York State Museum   News

MADISON AVENUE, ALBANY, NY  12230

FAX:  518/486-3696

Contact:

Joanne Guilmette

518/474-8730

Jguilmet@mail.nysed.gov

NYS MUSEUM INVITES PHOTO SUBMISSIONS FOR UPCOMING EXHIBIT

ALBANY, NY — The New York State Museum is inviting the public to submit their digital photographs of scenic New York State landscapes, the best of which will be showcased in an upcoming Museum exhibition and displayed on the Museum website and Flickr page.

Scenic landscapes exist in every corner of New York State and are often found on picture perfect postcards that read “wish you were here.” The State Museum’s exhibition, Wish You Were Here! New York State Photographed by You will open in the State Museum’s West Hall Corridor on September 3, featuring a selection of the best landscape photographs submitted by the public. These can be photographs of a beloved vacation spot or even the backyard, neighborhood street or other favorite place. Images chosen for the exhibition, as well as others that are submitted, will also appear on the Museum’s website. Photographs will still be accepted after September 3, since new ones will continually be added to both the gallery and website.

Wish You Were Here will complement another exhibition in the Museum’s adjacent West

Gallery –   Not Just Another Pretty Place: The Landscape of New York. Also opening on September 3, this will be the first exhibition of landscape art to be culled from the Museum’s vast collections.

Those wishing to submit photos for Wish You Were Here will find further information at

www.nysm.nysed.gov/wishyouwerehere.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Founded in 1836, the museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the U.S. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

Digital photography – which includes digital printing via high quality inkjet printers – has made a wider variety of printing surfaces available as like never before.

We have glossy and matte, warm and cool, smooth and textured, as we had in the past in the darkroom and these surfaces are getting better and better all the time, particuarly with the introduction of the fibre-based papers that have come on the market recently. Aside from the standard glossy and matte, we also have specialised surfaces like canvas and even metal. If you’ve not seen a print on metal, they really can be quite striking.

With all these choices available, it makes choosing the right surface to print a photo on even more important. There are lots of opinions out there on how to choose the right paper for the image and what follows is mine.

Right now, canvas is the hot item. It’s new. It’s cool. It’s different. Well, maybe not so different anymore. It seems like canvas is being used by a lot of photographers for a lot of images that would look better on another surface.  It’s almost become cliché, which is unfortunate.

When it comes to printing, I categorise media into two types – hard and soft. Hard are those surfaces that hold finer detail better, provide a crisp appearance, generally have a better colour gamut, more vibrant colours, better DMax and are typically harder to the touch. Gloss, semi-gloss, lustre would fit into this category. As would metal, obviously. Soft are the papers that offer, generally, more muted colours (albeit only slightly in some cases), a lower DMax, provide a more painterly look, a softer look and are softer to the touch. Pretty much just the opposite of hard papers. Things like Velvet Fine Art, watercolour, museum rag, textured rag and canvas are these types of media. A paper like Epson’s Ultrasmooth Fine Art can fit into both but in general the printing media available on the market will fit into one of those two categories.

Choosing the right paper for the photo being printed is as key, in my opinion, to making it look good as the editing of the image in the digital darkroom and the presentation of the printed piece afterward (framing, matting).

Choose hard papers for those images where you have lots of fine detail, where you want to retain as much sharpness as possible, where you have brighter, more vibrant colours.  Images like this would be the majority of landscapes, architecture, wildlife, nature, macro.  What could be termed as ‘hard’ images.

Soft papers would be used for those images with less fine detail, a more ethereal look, soft light, where ultimate detail and sharpness is less important, where a more muted colour palette may be desired.  These types of images would be things like soft florals, impressionistic images, softer landscape/nature (i.e., a fog covered field of spring wildflowers in early morning).  Or, in other words ‘soft’ images.

Portait/people images are a bit of a mixed bag and could fit into either category depending on the person/people and the intent of the image.  If the image is a portrait and the intent is to be more flattering then a softer paper may be in order; but not a heavily textured paper like an etching or watercolour.  If it’s an image of a person that’s intended to show grit, a weather-worn face of someone who’s spent a lifetime working outdoors in the elements then a harder paper would probably be better.  This is where a paper like Ultrasmooth Fine Art could come into play since it can often work in both situations.

In the end, it’s your choice what you print on.  It’s your photography and you can present it any way you like.  Thinking about the different media available and choosing the media based on the type of image can; however, have a big impact on how the print is perceived by the viewer.  And probably the last thing any of us want is to be seen as being cliché.

I’ve enjoyed using Lightroom since v1.  With the improvements and new editing tools introduced in v2, it’s vastly improved.   And now with v3 on the horizon, the story should only get better.  Lightroom is now my main editing application and I typically only use PS for things that can’t be done in LR (e.g., perspective correction, more complex layer work).

As good a tool as it is for organising your photography database, I think there are a good number of people using LR who still don’t know how powerful an editing tool it is. Everything I did with the photos below can be done in PS and probably PSE and other editing applications. In most cases I find the result is better with the tools in LR and the workflow is faster and more natural. In addition, to do the same things in PS would require, in most cases, using layers to maintain the integrity of the original image which increases file sizes and chews up hard drive space.  First I’m going to show 4 images in a before and after comparison.  You may not like the photos, you may not like how I approached the editing.  That’s all fine.  I think they do show the power of the tools in LR for editing; however.  In all but one case, the only tools used were the Adjustment Brushes, Spot Removal and the Clarity slider.  In one, a slight Tone Curve adjustment was made and in the last a crop was applied.  I wanted to do a couple things with these.  I wanted to highlight the bits of colour in the surrounding evergreen trees.  Second, I wanted to bring out the texture of the Precambrian rock of the Canadian Shield.  Beyond that, I wanted to enhance contrast by darkening certain parts of the water and existing shadow areas without completely losing texture or detail.  In the last, I also wanted to brighten the waterfall itself which was hidden in fairly deep shadow and crop to create a near perfect mirrored symmetry with the reflection.

Primarily the Brightness adjustment brush was used as a Dodge/Burn tool and the Sharpening brush was used to selectively sharpen or de-sharpen specific areas of the photos.  The Saturation brush was used to ‘pop’ the bits of fall colour from the surrounding evergreens.  The Saturation brush was also used to desaturate some colour in parts of the water and in the last image to reduce saturation of parts of the cloud reflection.  The Brightness brush as a Dodge/Burn tool is superior to any method I’ve tried in PS, including the use of a separate Dodge/Burn layer (which is a very good method).  The ability to selectively sharpen (or de-sharpen) areas with the Sharpening adjustment brush is simpler than doing it in PS – although I still like the High Pass method in PS for global sharpening quite a lot.  The Spot Removal tool (Clone/Heal) is terrific and particularly with respect to healing, is superior to the Healing Brush in Photoshop.  The ability to very finely match the source and destination with both the Clone and Healing features of the Spot Removal tool is terrific.

When you use any Adjustment brush in LR it puts a control point on the image.  The screen captures below show the various control points for these 4 images.

These control points make it very simple to go back and change prior edits without affecting the edit history on the left.  If you hover your cursor over a control point, a mask will be placed in the image to show the area that has been affected by the specific adjustment (image below is an example).

Hover over different control points till you see the mask covering the area you want to go back and work on.  If you then click on that control point, it will become active, the specific adjustment you made (e.g., Brightness, Sharpening, Contrast, etc.) will become active and you can edit the adjustment to your liking – all without having to backtrack in the History.  If you do go back in the History and make a change, you then lose all of the subsequent adjustments (unless you save a Snapshot).  By activating individual control points, the integrity of the History is maintained yet you can still change previous edit adjustments.  It’s somewhat like using the non-linear editing feature in PS (only better and easier).

Using the tools available in Lightroom entails a different workflow than using Photoshop.  But I think taking some time to become comfortable with Lightroom and the editing tools it offers would be time well spent.  Happy editing!

I recently decided to try using HDR for some, what might be considered, less conventional applications. I was doing some shooting for a local café before Christmas. In one session, I was actually working in the café while it was open. This was kind of cool; customers could see what was going on, people were asking questions and it was a nice interactive environment. In the other session I was shooting in the kitchen in the back of the shop. In both cases space was quite limited and bringing in accessory lighting wasn’t on. What do I do? How do I work around this? How do I get more control of the lighting? HDR? Maybe.  I also thought the detail enhancing aspects of HDR would be beneficial too.

I decided to try shooting the project using HDR. My rationale was that by shooting in HDR and tonemapping with a very light hand I could generate fairly flat, low contrast starting point images that would then allow me to have a bit more control of shadows and light/dark contrast via the digital darkroom.

The bracketed sequences were 7 shots at 1 stop intervals for a -3 to +3 bracket. RAW files were imported into Lightroom. I use Photomatix and the Lightroom plugin for most of my HDR work. I like most of what PM offers and how it works.  One thing I’d like to see the folks at HDRSoft do is add the ability to tag multi-shot, tonemapped HDRs with a colour space.  (They allow it for single-shot, pseudo-HDR conversions but not multi-shot.  Depending on how you have your preferences set up in Lightroom/Photoshop you may end up with your tonemapped TIFFs tagged with a colour space you don’t want.)  Photomatix works faster if you create your 32 bit files from TIFFs rather than RAW files.  The conversion to RAW, particularly out of the LR plugin just takes a little longer.  So after importing my RAW files, the only thing I might adjust is the white balance – nothing else.  The RAW files then get batch exported to 16 bit TIFF files and these TIFF files are what get exported to Photomatix.  You can also use the PM batch function to import the files and process them to 32 bit files or to fully tonemapped LDR files.  Since we’re discussing an HDR workflow I’m not going to go into a discussion of backing up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer.  But you do back up your RAW files right after loading them onto your computer, right?  Don’t you?  30 lashes with a wet noodle if you don’t.

[Some HDR applications work better/faster with RAW files.  HDR PhotoStudio is one of those.  So if you're using something other than PM, find out what file types work best and adjust your workflow accordingly.]

Once the tonemapping is done, the files get imported back into LR where additional work is done as needed.  If more complex work is needed such as perspective correction, I’ll right-click and choose the Edit In>Photoshop, Edit a Copy and Render using LR to open the image in PS for additional editing that can’t be done in LR.  This way I still have my original TIFF file if I want to go back to it for some reason.  This approach does chew up hard drive space but storage is pretty inexpensive these days so leaving that added flexibility is, I think,  a positive.  Once the work in PS is done, the file gets saved and LR updates the image automatically.

Once all the editing is done, I’ll output for specific purposes.  In most cases this is going to be smaller JPEG files for web use or full rez JPEG files for printing.

How’d the HDR experiment work out?  Well, not badly I think.  The owner of the café is happy with the results, which is the most important thing.

Now, I’m no food stylist (yeah, I know, some would say I’m no photographer either) but I think the end results weren’t too bad.  These small JPEGs don’t show the full detail that is captured in the full size files, unfortunately.  Higher quality versions can be seen on my Facebook Page or my Flickr portfolio.

The Finger Lakes area of New York State is a treasure trove for photographers. The many state parks and forests that sit in what is the heart of New York wine country are definitely underrated gems, particularly so for those interested in waterfalls.  In the fall of 2008, I visited the area for a week, hiking in 5 state parks and checking out numerous local wineries.

The main towns in the area are Watkins Glen, Corning and Ithaca.  Watkins Glen may be better known for its world famous road racing coarse, Corning of course is the home of Corning Glass and Ithaca is where the Ivy League’s Cornell University is located.  The drive from Toronto to Watkins Glen is about 5 hours and from New York City it’s about the same.  The town of Watkins Glen sits at the south end of Seneca Lake.  Corning and Ithaca are both roughly 40 to 50 minute drives from Watkin’s Glen.   I’m referencing other points to Watkins Glen because that’s where I stayed.

Right in Watkin’s Glen on Rt 14 is Watkins Glen State Park.  Unquestionably the best maintained of all the parks I visited, WGSP offers a cornucopia of possibilities for landscape/nature photographers.  The Gorge Trail is roughly 2 miles long, has over 800 stairs and rises 500 vertical feet.  The trail is extremely well maintained.  There are garbage cans along the trail (most of the parks are carry in/carry out).  The hike is not difficult except for the climbing and you will do a lot of climbing.  Particularly at the end of the hike up the trail, the stairway out of the gorge is going to hurt a little.  The footing is sound due to the stairs and maintenance of the trail.  You’ll cross over the gorge a few times on the hike.  There are rest stops at both top and bottom, a gift shop at the bottom and vending machines to get a cold drink at both ends.  There are a few places along the trail you can rest as well.  At some points during the year, shuttles are available to take you from top to bottom or vice versa so you can choose to hike in just one direction if you choose.  The shuttles mainly operate during the summer season and on weekends in the spring and fall.  Check with the park for more information on the shuttles.

With nearly 20 individual falls along the trail, plan to spend a couple hours going each way.  The trail and the falls look very different going down than going up and you’ll get some different and interesting framing in both directions.  The trail map shows the main sections of the route.

Spiral Gorge is particularly interesting and there are plenty of different opportunities within this section of the trail.

The Rainbow Falls area is also one where there are lots of opportunities both from above and below.

In this photo below, you can see how the glacial erosion over thousands of years has cut and carved through the bedrock.

The park is open year round but the Gorge Trail is closed in winter.  The colours in autumn are spectacular.  If you want greater volumes of water then going soon after the trail opens in May would be the best bet.

Robert H. Treman State Park is another in the area with some terrific views and waterfalls.  A little southwest of Ithaca, Treman SP is about a 40 to 45 minute drive from Watkins Glen.  The best attraction in Treman is Lucifer Falls which is at the top of the Gorge Trail.  The Gorge Trail runs for a little over 2 miles and rises 600 feet vertically.  The hike would be classed as moderate to difficult.  Difficult because some areas of the trail aren’t well maintained.  Stairs are heaved in some places making climbing on them more difficult.  If you want to forego the walk up from the bottom entrance, you can enter at the top end and make the short walk down the trail, perhaps half a mile, to the falls then walk back out.  Whichever way you go, make sure you take note of sunset and plan your time accordingly.  Trying to walk down the trail in darkness isn’t overly easy (don’t ask me how I know that).  Timex Indiglo watches do provide a surprising amount of light; however.

Just a little above Lucifer Falls is Upper Falls.  It’s difficult to get a good shot of this one unless you’re willing to climb down into the gorge and walk along the riverbed.  This isn’t, I don’t believe, generally permitted so do so at your own risk.

If you’re walking down from the top, as you make your way down into the gorge and begin walking the trail, the light may be right to get some good shots from the top of Upper Falls as well.

At the top of the trail you’ll find an old mill that’s been preserved.  Inside this building are public washrooms.  To the river side of the mill is another small cascade that zigzags down the rocks and you can get some interesting interplay between light and shadow depending on the time of day.

For a change of pace and a much easier walk, Taughannock Falls State Park is the desired destination.  The Gorge Trail here is flat and only 3/4 of a mile long.  The easy walk along a wide, well groomed trail brings you to Taughannock Falls.  Walking into this waterfall is like walking into a giant amphitheatre made out of rock.  Taughannock Falls itself is over 200 feet high.  The rock walls leading out from the falls rise over 400 feet from the river’s bed.  The flow of water over the cliff will vary greatly depending on time of year and amount of rainfall.  It had been a fairly dry late summer when I visited so there was little more than a tiny ribbon of water flowing over the edge.  In spring after the melt or in rainier times, the flow of water is much greater.

Further up river, there is another falls – Upper Falls.  You can’t get to it from the Gorge Trail but can from either the North Rim or South Rim trails.  Unfortunately, the Gorge Trail doesn’t meet up with either of these so you’ll need to walk back out and back in again if you want to get to Upper Falls.  Or you can drive out and park at the upper end of the trail and walk back the short distance to Upper Falls.

Buttermilk Falls State Park is about 2 miles from Treman SP and both could be visited on the same day if you wanted.  Of the five parks I visited, Buttermilk was the most disappointing and if one had to be left out, this would be the one.  Buttermilk Falls itself is a long, sloping cascade that almost looks like it’d make a decent toboggan hill.  It’s accessible from the parking lot at the lower entrance to the park and there isn’t a lot of reason to go much further except for the walk, unfortunately.  The vertical drop overall from top to bottom is about 400 to 500 feet.  The Gorge Trail is a little under a mile but it is steep, climbing 500 feet in that distance.  You can cross Buttermilk Creek near the top of the Gorge Trail at Pinnacle Rock or right at the top of the trail and connect back with the Rim Trail for a different route back down.  The trail is steep in places with little to no stairs to help the climb.  In other places, there are stairs.  A good, sturdy walking staff will help and you’ll be grabbing onto trees and roots in places to help pull yourself up. Due to the steep climbs and lack of stairs in places, I’d rate this trail as moderate to difficult.

There are some potentially interesting shots of some other falls on the way up the trail but sadly, these are largely obscured by trees.

While it’s called the Gorge Trail, and while the gorge is visible on many parts of the trail, unlike the other parks, you’re not often very close to the gorge or the creek.  In many places, the trail really is more of a rim trail, taking you along the top of the gorge.  The roughness of the ground make setting up a tripod very difficult in places and the placement of a chest high fence along the trail impedes camera angles.

Pinnacle Rock, near the top of the trail is an interesting natural formation.  It’s a lone outcropping of rock that has been created by the erosion of water between it and the wall of the gorge.  Getting a good photo of it is difficult.  On the day I visited, the light wasn’t great and any direction I tried to shoot from I was getting a lot of flare.  You have to be fairly close to the formation to frame it as well which makes apparent perspective distortion an unpleasant side effect.

In the upper half of the Gorge Trail, you begin to get closer to the water, walking right beside the creek bed at points.  It’s in this area that some better photo opportunities are available.  Stupidly, I left my spare batteries in the motel room on this morning so didn’t get some of the better shots at the upper end of the trail.

Allow an hour to 75 minutes for the hike up and a similar time for the walk back down.  There’s not a lot of difference in time to get back down whether you come back down the Gorge Trail or cross over the creek to the Rim Trail.

There’s also the Larch Meadow Trail which is across the creek from the lower parking area and beyond the baseball fields which are visible upon crossing the creek on the roadway.  This trail is supposed to be very good for wildlife and birds.  I didn’t hike it myself but am relating what was told to me by locals.  Locals know.

The last park I visited on the trek was Letchworth State Park.  I only had a day to visit this one but if you can spend a few days, it’s well worth it.  Nicknamed “The Grand Canyon of the East”, the reason for the moniker becomes readily apparent when you start walking the trails.  Deep, wide canyons have been cut by the water and wind through the park.  Letchworth SP is about 60 miles from Watkins Glen and it takes 90 minutes to 2 hours to drive there depending on traffic, route taken and construction.  You can enter from the north or south end.  If you want to hike the Gorge Trail, entering from the south, at the Portageville entrance and parking in the small lot near the railroad trestle would be optimal because this is also near the head of the Gorge Trail.  This lot is pretty close to the south end of the park.  If you drive in from the north, it’s about a 10 mile drive through the park to this lot at the south.

The Gorge Trail is roughly 7 miles long.  There are three main waterfalls on this trail with numerous others that can be seen as well.  The three main ones are Upper, Middle and Lower Falls.  Lower Falls is roughly half way along the trail.  I’m not certain of the exact vertical but it is several hundred feet from the head of the trail to Lower Falls.  The trail is fairly well marked.  It’s well maintained in some places but not so well maintained in others.  There are some steep climbs.  In places, stairs have heaved or are missing entirely.  Some steep climbs don’t have stairs at all and in some places, the height of the individual stairs is significant.  Overall, I’d rate this trail as moderate and difficult in places.  At times during the year, the part of the trail that leads to Lower Falls may be impassable due to wet conditions.  When I visited, despite it having been a fairly dry autumn, this part of the trail was quite wet which made walking difficult in places.  The climb in and out of the gorge to and from the Lower Falls is long and steady with little break from the slope.  Be prepared.  The trail does pass through some forested areas which provide shade and a respite from the climbs.  At Lower Falls, there’s a bridge over the river which allows you to connect to the Portage or Footbridge trails.

One of the most popular spots to view Middle Falls is from Inspiration Point.  If you get the right angle, you can get Upper Falls in the shot as well.

Where to Stay:  There are numerous hotels, motels and inns in the area.  I stayed at the Golden Knight Inn on Rt 14 just outside of Watkins Glen.  It was clean and the owners were very friendly and helpful.  The decor is dated but that’s fine.  The water gets hot in the shower very quickly and you don’t get scalded or frozen when someone in another unit turns on their water nor does the pressure change markedly (something a lot of high end hotels can’t even say).  Wireless internet access is available.  When I was there you needed to be close to the office to use it so if you need it, make sure to ask for a room within the range of their router.

Where to Eat:  Montage Restaurant – Avoid.  The carpet is dirty and grungy.  The food is awful.  Rooster Fish Brewing/Wildflower Cafe – Excellent brewpub.  Very nice selection of beers brewed on site.  Food is good.  Comes to the table hot.  Bread is home made and very tasty.  Hours are bit odd.  I went to eat at about 9:00 on a Saturday night (admittedly not in high tourist season) and was told they were closing the dining room but I could get food in  the pub.  Closing at 9:00 on a Saturday?  Still, good food and friendly staff.  Jerlando’s Pizza – decent food.  Probably a 3 to 3 1/2 stars out of 5.  The food is hot.  My pasta was cooked a little past al dente but it wasn’t mush.  The meatballs had good flavour.  The pizza is OK.  It’s hard to find good pizza though.  On another trip to the area, I’d eat there again.  Seneca Harbor Station – not a pleasant experience.  Waited at the entrance for 10 minutes before anyone asked if I wanted a table.  Maybe they figured I was waiting for someone else but they should have asked.  It was busy the night I was there.  Maybe that says something, maybe not.  It’s passable seafood but that’s about all.  Not spectacular, not even really good.  The service is very fast.  Too fast.  Courses followed on each other before the previous course was finished.  If you’re looking for a somewhat leisurely dining experience, this isn’t it.  Overpriced for what you get.  I wouldn’t go back.  On the upside, their bread is quite good is served hot and has nice flavour.  The staff were very indifferent.  It felt as though my being there was an inconvenience and that they were doing me a favour by serving me.  Not a pleasant experience.  Savard’s Family Restaurant – good place for breakfast.  Typical diner type fare.  Served hot.  Lots of food.  Good prices.

What Else to Do:  There are many wineries in the area and maps are available at most accommodations with information on the routes.  Corning has the Corning Glass Museum which includes glass blowing demonstrations.  There are numerous other state parks and nature areas in the region including Finger Lakes National Forest, Cayuga Nature Centre and on the campus at Cornell University are Sapsucker Woods Sanctuary and the Cornell Plantations.

Collaboration is something a lot of people talk about but I don’t think many have the good fortune to be a part of a true collaborative effort. I have recently been that fortunate.

I’d had an idea for several years for a studio shoot I wanted to do with a wardrobe made of film. A fair number of photographers have done things like wrap a model in film but I’d never seen an actual piece of clothing made of film. Not being a designer or tailor I couldn’t make the outfit myself and hadn’t been successful in finding someone else to make it for me – until this past February. I was headed to Trinidad to visit a good friend (and photographer) and to attend Carnival. My friend asked if there was anything in particular I wanted to shoot while I was there. Brendan Bhagan is well connected in the studio/fashion market in Trinidad so I asked if he knew of anyone who could do the film wardrobe idea. He made some inquiries and after a few days told me to ship some film down. He’d lined up a local designer to make the piece, had a studio location to shoot it, an MUA to do the makeup and a model to wear the piece. All of these folks are established professionals in the industry in Trinidad and the Caribbean but all generously gave of their time and skills freely for this project. After talking concepts with Brendan we decided he’d shoot the stills and I’d do a ‘behind the scenes’ style video. The wardrobe turned out amazingly. Jewel Lewis, the designer took my concept, made it her own and made it reality. ReneeLiza Seeramlal came up with a very creative makeup style, echoing the idea of frames of film. Serala Ramlogan, the model, put up with the edges of the film scratching and cutting her legs for over two hours and made the piece look fantastic. Brendan’s stills are, as usual, excellent. And James at TriniPulse has a great space to shoot in.

On getting back to Canada, I set to work cutting the video together and decided to sync it to Def Leppard’s “Photograph”. Seems logical, right? Unfortunately, even though the video wasn’t for commercial purposes, we couldn’t use the song because we didn’t have a sync license. I play a bit of guitar so thought I might write a song myself. I might have something workable a year or two from now. Then in early summer an old friend from Calgary contacted me out of the blue after we hadn’t talked for a few years. Aside from it being great to reconnect with an old friend, Gerry’s an extremely good guitar player, has a blues/RnB band of his own called Borderline and knows many others in the industry. He put me in touch with some friends of his in Chicago from the band Finneus who have just released a new CD and they were willing to let us use one of the songs off their new disc in our video. How cool is THAT?!? They’ve got a very cool sound and I highly recommend checking them out.

Toronto and Calgary, Canada, Port of Spain and Arima, T&T and Chicago USA. Four countries, 5 cities, 11 people. In some cases people who’ve only met once and in some cases people who’ve never actually met except via email. If that’s not collaboration I don’t know what is. We’re all professionals and while we obviously want to be paid for our efforts, sometimes there’s more to the game than money.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people who were involved in this project and helped turn nothing but a concept into reality. I hope none of them regret being involved.

There’s one other person who needs to be mentioned as well. That’s a very talented woman named Orchid Alli. Jewel made two pieces with the film; the dress in the video and a swimsuit. We did a shoot with the film swimsuit at one of the beaches in Trinidad. Just as Serala did in the studio, Orchid put up with the edges of the film scratching and cutting her. I did the stills on that shoot and did not come close to doing Orchid justice so those won’t see the light of day. Thanks Orchid for your patience and professionalism.

A 720p version of the video can be seen on Vimeo and a standard def version is below.