Corporate Photography - Portrait of Andy Grundberg

 This spring I've been shooting portraits of the department chairs at the Corcoran College of Art + Design.  I began shooting back in Febraury with Portraits of Susan Sterner and Kerry McAleer-Keeler with the hopes of getting images of each chair before the start of next school year. 

Last week I photographed Andy Grundberg, the Chair of Photography and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies.  Besides his work at the Corcoran, Andy is most known for his writing and criticism about photography. 

Andy Grundberg

More details and behind the scenes photos after the jump.

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Video - Time Lapse of the Corcoran Ball (Setup)

This coming Friday night is the Annual Corcoran Ball. The gallery (and parts of the college) shut down for Thursday and Friday to set up for the event. 

Yesterday evening I set up a video camera to  shoot a time lapse of the setup and ball.  The camera will shoot half a second of footage every thirty seconds, for 60 Hours.  The tape should be able to get the full two days of set up as well as the the ball itself. 

Below is an image of the setup, the video should stop at about 6:00am on Saturday morning, a few hours after the decorations for the ball are taken down. 

If all goes well, I'll be posting the completed time lapse next week. 

Time Lapse Setup for the Corcoran Ball

Remote Photography Revisited

Last week I spent some time with my family in Florida. The trip was fairly relaxed,and I had some free time to work on remote photography. 

For as long as I can remember, my grandfather has had bird feeders in his backyard. I set up my camera at sunrise and sunset to catch the birds when they would be at their most active, and the light would be the best.

Image of a Cardinal shot with a remote camera.  

Image of a Woodpecker on a bird feeder shot with a remote camera.

More about how I rigged the camera and images of the setup are after the jump.

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Corporate Photography - Portrait of a Photographer

The below portrait is of Susan Sterner, the head of the photojournalism program at The Corcoran college of Art + Design.  She was also my teacher when I was a student there. 

It can be nerve racking enough photographing other photographers, but I think it's even worse when that photographer is a former teacher. 

I started with two ideas for the portraits that would relate to Susan's involvement in Photography.  The first idea was to shoot her in a studio environment, and to include the strobes and seamless as part of the setting for the portrait.

The second setup was to use a 4x5 Crown Graphic to shoot a tight shot of her face with a very shallow depth of field.  I set up against a white stucco wall with a large window to the left of the camera.  The image on the bottom shows me focusing the 4x5 camera.

Susan Sterner

Behind the scenes image by Jacqulyn Maisonneuve

Update on Friday, March 5, 2010 at 8:00AM by Denny

More behind the scenes photos can be seen on Jacqulyn Maisonneuve's blog. 

Corporate Photography - Portrait of a Book Artist

As part of an ongoing effort to update their website and other collateral materials I have been shooting portraits of various staff and faculty members of The Corcoran. 

This portrait is of Kerry McAleer-Keeler, the woman who is in charge of the Corcoran's Art and the Book Master's program.  We shot the image in the Corcoran's letterpress studio in their Georgetown campus.  The studio is filled with racks of type setting pieces as well as presses to use them on.  All of the equipment in the room made for a nice backdrop, but makes it fairly cramped to set up lighting and shoot in. 

Chair of the Corcoran Bookarts department Kerry McAleer-Keeler

I set up two locations in the room to get different styles of portraits.  The picture below shows the setup used for the image above.  The setup was fairly simple, consisting of a bowens monolight in a medium softbox above the camera and a reflector underneath. I tried to maximize the space I had to work with, and ended up setting up some of my equipment over top the presses. 

Behind the scenes image by Jacqulyn Maisonneuve