Day 322 - Ten Tips for Photographing Women by Michael "Mikey" C. Gross

Michael C Gross is an award winning art director: National Lampoon, Esquire, Heavy Metal, as well a freelance designer for The Rolling Stones, John Lennon, The Muppets, and the Mexican Olympics (1968). He has his art and design displayed in 5 museums around the world.
He was a film producer for 15 years producing such movies as: Heavy Metal, Ghostbusters (1and 2) Twins, Dave and six others as well as three TV shows. He has 4 Emmy nominations. His photography is published world wide and his personal site has examples of his art, design and photography.

Here are his tips for photographing women:

1: Concentrate. Good photos don’t happen by casually snapping away...pay attention to every detail as you shoot.
2: Shoot a lot. Remember, the photos are free, now that digital has replaced film. You may find it weird to throw out 9 out of 10 photos, but even the best pros only use one out of ten shots. In the end, no one needs to know what it took to get to those 15 great photos.
3: Be prepared to lead or be lead by your model. A shoot can go either way and you have decide early on. A tough call… you have to see if she can take direction from you or just go wild, while you try to keep up and capture the action. Just like sex.
4: NEVER show her the photos as you shoot… NEVER. Show her the first test shot maybe... (she may insist)... but after that it’s like letting her look in the mirror… and she’ll get very uptight. YOU have to be in control of the photoshoot.
5: Don’t confuse the photo-shoot with sex. Be professional, leave your clothes on, don’t touch without asking. If it’s your girlfriend or wife, save the sex for after… you’ll be plenty hot.
6: Be flexible under changing circumstances. You may start with one idea, but as you start shooting, things can take on a life of their own… go with the flow.
7: Shoot fast… don’t stop for long. If’s she’s getting into it, you don’t want to break the mood.
8: Review the photos calmly in the light of day… (the next day). You’ll be more objective after a few hours. After you’ve edited and found the best ones, make a few nice prints for your model.
9: Cover your ass. Be sure you have a signed photo release. Don’t have one?… Google “photo releases” and print one. Be sure you record the age of your model, and have a copy of two forms of I.D. showing her age. Take a photo of her holding the I.D. next to her face, br sure you can read the birthdate and name. Be sure she signs the release before she leaves the studio (house, location, whatever). If you have to get one later in the mail, it may never happen, and you will NOT have the rights to use those photos, regardless of any verbal agreement. Yes, this includes your wife or best friend!
10: Study other photographers. Start with mine. Look at the galleries found on MikeyandMandy and you can see a pattern, the above notes will become obvious. Don't like my photos?... look hard at someone else's work, (Bob Coulter, for instance) and see if you can spot a consistant, useable approach to apply to you work.
BONUS Tip: Keep it fun!

Well, he is very right. Especially regarding the points 5 "Don’t confuse the photo-shoot with sex" and 9 - "Cover your ass".

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Day 322 - Clean

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Day 321 - Night near my house

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Day 320 - Mary-Louise Parker & WEEDS series

Last night, accidentaly, I saw on TV some scenes from a series with Mary Louise Parker. After 1 minute I was absolutely fascinated. It was the HBO series WEEDS. I couldn't move away from the TV for about 2 hours and a half - they played first 5 episodes. Simply brilliant TV series. And Mary-Louise Parker is FANTASTIC. And Elisabeth Perkins is also very, very good.
Here are a poster of the series and a portrait of Mary found on Internet.

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Day 320 - An interview with the Italian designer Gaetano Pesce

Published in ICON Magazine - September 2004
words: Justin McGuirk

Italian designer and architect Gaetano Pesce was in London recently to relaunch his 1969 UP chair. He met up with icon for a few frank words on meaningful design, boring architecture and the beauty of the badly made.

In the 1960s, when you started out, the Italian design industry was a closed shop. Now Italian manufacturers still dominate but the designers are more likely to be British, Dutch, French … what do you think about Italian design today?
Italian design is losing a little bit of energy. But on the other hand, Italian design is not made only by creative people, it is also made by the manufacturers – without them there was no Italian design, so if they can allow English designers to express themselves, or Dutch or whoever, it means that Italian design is still a force. Dutch designers still go to Italy. I welcome the day when Dutch manufacturers become curious, or English manufacturers. Where are they?

The UP chair is extremely suggestive. Can you explain the design?
Well, first of all it was a time to experiment because Italian manufacturers were competing to see who was the most advanced. So I came up with the idea of using a resin sponge. But there was also something more private: a chair was just functional, for sitting. If it’s broken then we just throw it out. But a chair is a document of its time. It can express other things than just form and function, like a political point of view. I wanted to express an important issue: the difference between men and women. Women have always been victims of what the masculine world thinks of them. So I made a chair that was a female body chained to a ball – a prisoner. And it was interesting because some people interpreted it as the mother and child, or as a sex symbol. But what was important to me was to see that people were ready to receive a message and to make an interpretation, for people to see that industrial designers had the right to express themselves and that these objects can carry meaning.

Your work is often compared to Pop art. How close to it were you?
Pop art was the most advanced expression in art at that time and for sure there was a connection but really they were working for other reasons. Me, I was convinced that the art of our times was closer to the factory, to industry and technology. The expression was much more complex than my making a piece of art in my studio: that is very limited, very romantic. Pop art was the last romantic art movement.
It took a while, though, for you to make explicitly figurative works like the spaghetti lamp and Sunset in New York sofa. We were coming from an abstract tradition and in architecture it’s still like that. But our time is using more and more images, the universal language. I thought “we have to use the image, and the image if possible has to be ordinary”. We always think that art is very important, that the subject of art is up there but we forget that Mozart made music for people to dance to. We shouldn’t let things get too complicated; let’s talk about a lamp that reminds you of spaghetti, let’s stay simple.

You were also working during the Radical Architecture movement in Italy, which was against functionalism and high modernism. Was this your agenda too?
We had something in common. Today architecture is very monolithic and totalitarian. It is standardised, and the standard is a fact – facts are for movements like Marxism or Communism, where they try to say everybody has to think in the same way. In politics that way of looking at the world is over but in architecture the International Style is more or less still there. The modern movement, which became a kind of minimalist movement, is unthinkable for representing the complexity of our time. The message you receive from these buildings is that there is no room in society for difference. And we call our age pluralistic.

Your work is anti-minimalist, it’s playful, and there’s a strain in design today that is very clever, baroque even. You must like that.
Well, perhaps things are changing. After Le Corbusier and Mies the real expression of that minimalist movement was over. So when I see a Dutch designer making a vase that is soft, it means that there is still curiosity. There isn’t only the sense of vision, you have to have emotion through touching, smelling even. I want to make a chair that has a certain smell that I can remember. I want a chair to give me sound, to connect with me at another level.

Many of your pieces are furniture disguised as art, or vice versa. Do you see any distinction between art and design?
There is a funny new thing in Manhattan, a Museum of Arts and Design – that’s like saying a museum of art and art. This is a very important subject. Art was always a functional product. If someone in the Middle Ages wanted a portrait of their mother they asked a painter but they didn’t ask for an artistic masterpiece, just a portrait, a product. Only later did this become “art”. So, if art was functional then what is the art of our time? Clothing, advertising, objects...

Everyday products?
I am more and more convinced that products are super important. We are taught that consuming is superficial, but it’s not, because I consume books, I consume music, or shoes. All these things tell me that this is my time; I wear my time. There’s more culture in a supermarket than there is in a museum. If I visit a museum in Sau Paolo I can probably see what they have in Paris or London. But a supermarket is more reliable. If I drink a cup of coffee, that cup is full of knowledge, in the taste, in the materials and design of that cup. Culture is not just about going to a concert and being able to recognise Brahms. Fuck Brahms. Recognise your own time. The designer’s function is to make people’s lives better, more joyful, more colourful. The other side of things is dogmatism, rigidity, fuck that.

Some see your work as rejecting good taste. Is that fair?
I offend good taste? Sure, because I am against old taste.

The materials and processes you use mean most of your works are effectively limited editions. Do you feel that mass production stifles creativity?
Well, my work is not numbered but it’s true that some objects amount to only ten pieces. We’re coming from the idea of standardisation, and that was very important but it’s over. Today, each object should be similar but not the same, like we are. Thirty years ago communist papers attacked me as an idiot, but today you can see car companies thinking like this. This is the time of non-homogeneous production. And it doesn’t only make economic sense but political sense also – democracy is a system that guarantees to maintain difference. When you say my work is ugly, yes, because in the human being there is beauty and ugliness, and large and small, but what is really beautiful is what is different.

On your website some of your works are listed under a category called “poorly made”. What are you trying to say?
This is another important point in my work. This idea of perfection that we still have is, I think, wrong. In Japan, if you have ten tea cups, the perfect one is the least expensive, then the second one with a little fault is more expensive until you get to the tenth, which is rough and totally imperfect – that one is for the emperor. To me that means that human error is a quality. Perfection is for God. If we can accept that even the imperfect is good then not only can we have originals instead of just copies, but we can make things less expensive. Because economically speaking when I see a mistake and I throw out that object, I’m throwing away money. So the badly made is a valuable expression. This could be a position for young people today.

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Day 320 - Voyeur

You cannot shoot women if you don't awake the voyeur inside.
If there is any...

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Day 319 - Words of Helmut Newton

I found this short - but very interesting - interview with Helmut Newton
on www.designboom.com.

"we met helmut newton on september 20, 2001
during a presentation of giugiaro design at the milan triennale
(we did not publish the interview, because it was not complete
and we thought we would be able to update it).

what is the best moment of the day?
working under lights at night.

certainly you notice how women are dressing,
do you have any preferences?
it depends - my tastes change with the times.
every decade women’s bodies seem to be different.
I like haute couture,
today everybody looks the same around the world
... in sneakers and jeans.

what kind of clothes do you avoid wearing?
stilettos (laughs).

when you were a child, did you want to become
a photographer?
in 1936 I arranged to have myself thrown out of school
as a hopeless pupil.
I wanted to be a paparazzo.

do you prefer shooting indoors or outdoors?
everywhere, but not in a studio.

describe your style, like a good friend of yours would
describe it.
if I have really nothing to do,
I start spinning a tale for myself, which is one of
the most pleasant ways of spending time.
my pictures are like a story that has no beginning,
no middle, and no end.

do you prefer black and white photography?
I shoot both color and black-and-white film.
you never know.

can you describe an evolution in your work from your
first projects to the present day?
to have taboos, then to get around them - that's interesting.
looking back at my old fashion photographs I wonder :
how the hell did I have the courage to go through all these
complications ?

over the course of your artistic career,
you've been called a lot of things: sexist, visionary...
did you ever worked for a porno magazine?
I was a contributor for playboy for about twenty years.
my work was even too risky for playboy.
they asked me - please do something for us
… but nothing as kinky as what you do for french vogue'.

any advice for the young?
there are two dirty words in photography; one is 'art',
and the other is 'good taste'.
beauty is intellect.
and glamour has nothing to do with money.

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