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I first photographed the annual Barron’s Roundtable cover story back in January of 2007, which makes this the sixth year I’ve had the privilege, and each year the team of Art Director Pamela Budz, Photo Editor Adrian Delucca and myself have stepped up our game to reinvent creative ways to show the gang of financial prognosticators. This year the three of us came up with the idea that centered around the entire group posing in front of a blackboard. I did a quick mockup using shots of the Roundtable members I had taken previously…

So we packed up our usual thousand pounds of lighting gear along with a blackboard and various other set pieces and headed uptown to The Harvard Club to make it work…

Our main prop…a 4′x6′ blackboard…

Now for those of you who haven’t read about some of the previous Roundtable shoot days, I’ll break down the schedule for you. We have roughly two hours to shoot everybody before the meeting begins at 10:00AM. In that two hours we have to come away with two cover shots (one for main January issue and one for the mid-year follow-up in June), three additional situations that will be used for openers in three January issues, an opener for the June issue and individual portraits of all ten Roundtable members that will get dropped into the copy of the June issue.

Ten People. Two Hours.

Oh yeah…we shoot everybody separately as they arrive at the Harvard Club and assemble those shots into the group photos for the cover and inside openers.

Simple.

Here’s what it looked like…

Adrian reminding me we have very little time…

And this is just from the Blackboard set. You can see the second white seamless setup behind me in one of the above photos, but I can’t show you any of that until it publishes in June.

Once we had finished with the people, we now had to shoot the blackboard, out of the rigging we used to suspend it for the portraits and back on its stand…

…and various elements on the blackboard that I could insert into the final compositions. Since Pam can freehand fonts way better than any of us, she got to draw the cover headline on the board…

Adrian was elected to do the ‘Charts & Graphs’…

And with all of the elements photographed, now it was up to me to push everything together in Photoshop and manufacture that group shot for the cover. The individual photos looked like this…

…so first I had to silhouette the images and paste them into a new Photoshop document…

…and then fill in the group with everybody else…

…do a rough mockup with the blackboard inserted behind the group…

…and after Pam and Adrian had approved the final composition, do a whole lotta fine-tuning…like erasing the rough edges around the silhouette, feathering the hair to blend naturally against the blackboard, add shadows in front and behind everybody and finally cook in my own special sauce of color and contrast adjustments…

With the cover outta the way, next up was the week one opener. I started by seriously stretching out that blackboard so that it would run over a two-page spread, then I added both the people and their names that I had them write on the board…

Using the same fine-tuning I did on the cover, this was the final image…

And here’s how it appeared in print…

And using the same basic technique, just on a smaller scale, here is the image that ran as the opener in this weeks issue…

Just like I said…simple!

My best Christmas gift this year, from my younger brother, Greg.

The other day, a friend pointed out that this past year the usual high output of songs that got put up on The List was decidedly less than past years, to which I replied, yes…the necessity to work from time to time had certainly put a crimp in my ability to give away my usual amount of free music, but what did get tossed up was of such high quality as they more than made up for the diminished quantity. And with that in mind, here are the best of the best…the Songs of the Year…

#1. LOW ROAR
Give Up

Ryan Karazija didn’t just come up with the best song this past year, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t also have the best album, too. I could have put any one of the twelve tracks from the album on the annual list…they are all that good…and it’s only a coincidence that ‘Give Up’ is the first track on the album. I’ve already yelled at you guys enough to BUY THIS RECORD, but if you haven’t, do it now! And mark your calenders kids, cuz Ryan’s gonna be taking a flight from Iceland over to New York to play a gig at Piano’s January 19 and MilkBoy in Philly on January 22nd.

#2. CAMERAS
Polarise

If not for Low Roar, Cameras would have certainly been sitting on the top of the heap this year. I’ve played ‘Polarise’ so often, I’m pretty sure even Camille is getting sick of it! Nothing like a wall of hard-to-understand, harmonic, atmospheric, shoegazey melodies to win my heart.

#3. WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS
Act On Impulse

We all should have a dose of sweaty, angst-ridden rock to wake us up from time to time. They’re almost unheard of over here, but these four Scottish lads are burning up the clubs in Great Britain. Powerful, lotsa fun and yes…very sweaty!

#4. BIRD CALL
The Ballad Of New York

#5. CASS McCOMBS
The Same Thing

There’s just something so comfortably reassuring about the way Cass McCombs sings. From the very first time I heard ‘The Same Thing’ I was won over. The melody, the slightly syncopated vocal style, the sad/lazy way it made me feel…it all works.

#6. WYE OAK
Civilian

Another strong contender for my favorite album this year was Civilian by the Baltimore duo, Wye Oak. It’s a noisy mashup filled with masterful guitar work, shoegazey distortion, wonderful storytelling and Jenn Wasner’s languid voice holding it all together. It’s another record that you should seriously consider buying!

#7. GABRIELLE AIMEE
Have You Ever

We’ve been friends for quite a while and I even shot her album cover earlier this year, but when Gabrielle Aimée sent me ‘Have You Ever’ I was knocked out. I had never heard her slide into such a bluesy place and be so damned sexy on a song before, and the vibrato from the Farfisa-like organ transported me back in time.

#8. K+NIKKU
The Search

Kate Tucker has been a staple on The List from the moment we first heard her with the Sons of Sweden and since then we’ve followed her from Seattle to Ohio to New York and now to Nashville, so when she recorded an EP with Nic Danielson as K+Nikku we were on board. I’ve been goofin’ on her…calling her Katemau5…because of the slightly electronic edge to the EP, but she knows I love her…

#9. THE PACK A.D.
Sirens

The Pack A.D. is Becky Black & Maya Miller and they’re a hard-hitting garage duo outta Vancouver B.C. that has released four albums of stripped-down, pissed-off, dirty punk rock…and they’re bloody great! ‘Sirens’ is off of their latest release, Unpersons.

#10. SHERLOCK’S DAUGHTER
Reprise

Going from the grungy goodness of The Pack A.D. to Sherlock’s Daughter shoegazing their way through ‘Reprise’ might be a bit jarring, but I’ve had their EP near the top of my iTunes folder all year and there was no chance it wasn’t making it on this list. Call it nonsensical aural wallpaper if you must, but Tanya Horo’s voice always has a calming effect on me…like a neural tranquilizer…I can feel any tension I’m feeling fall away as soon as she whispers in my ear…

#11. THE BOOZE
Hit Me Where It Hurts

We’ve come to the end, but I’ve turned it up to “11″ and hearing Chaz Tolliver channel Mick Jagger one more time seems like a perfect way to close out this years Best Of List. The Booze play boogie-rock that can’t help but make you think of the early Stones and The Kinks, and Tolliver seems to have mastered the fine art of Jagger-esque posing…in a good way!

Nothing makes Camille happier than unwrapping a new Sock Monkey and some fresh ribbon…

SHARON VAN ETTEN
Serpents

Sharon Van Etten has a new album coming out next year and to get us all jazzed up, she’s giving away ‘Serpents’, a rambunctious sizzler that has me picturing her swirling out of control, her arms flaying, totally enraptured by the song. Her plaintive vocal stays locked in the same mid-register throughout…a buzzing, pleading drone…set alongside a howling slide guitar, the constant beat of a snare drum and layer upon layer of trebly guitars. The new record, Tramp, is due out in February on the indie power label Jagjaguwar Records, and she’s playing with some serious folks…the Dessner twins, Aaron and Bryce of the National, Matt Barrick of The Walkmen and Jenn Wasner from Wye Oak on backup vocals. Go check out Sharon on her website

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SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS
The Night

When the news broke last year that Claudia Dehaza was going to be leaving the Brooklyn-based trio School of Seven Bells, my heart sank a little. It’s hardly a secret that I’m a big fan of their luxurious, shoegazey dream pop…they’ve been featured on The List three times before, HERE, HERE and HERE…and God knows I’ve pretty much worn out their albums, Disconnect From Desire and Alpinisms, so it’s understandable that I couldn’t imagine how the band could continue without the harmonic melodies Claudia and her twin Alejandra spun into their songs. But the new duo of Benjamin Curtis and Alejandra Dehaza have recently completed a new album, Ghostory, which is scheduled for a February release. With a bit of creative knob-twiddling, Alejandra is able to harmonize with herself while Benjamin stays at the top of his game assembling layer upon layer of guitars, synthesizers and frantic drumwork into what is unmistakably the SVIIB sound.

You can follow School of Seven Bells on their website and if you’re into planning ahead, the Album Release show is gonna be February 28th at The Mercury Lounge

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I’ve been shooting Sam Palmisano since he was named CEO of IBM back in 2002, and as CEO’s go, I always found him to be a very honorable, straightforward guy. But I also knew that since he had reached IBM’s mandatory retirement age of 60 he would be stepping down, so when I got the call to photograph him a couple of weeks ago for what would probably be his last hurrah at the helm of the largest IT company in the World, it was a little bittersweet. I did three covers with him and made a lot of connections with IBM in the process. But connections aside, I was still ‘warned’ by the P/R person that Sam didn’t like being photographed and that he would only have five minutes. I assured her that I knew the drill and that Sam and I went way back…we would be ready to rock-n-roll the second he walked through the door. We were taken to the Board Room and went about turning an area that could easily double as the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise into a white studio, then we quickly set up a second shot, ‘cuz I didn’t wanna come away with just just one since this might be the last time I got to bother Sam with my camera. And when Sam arrived, true to form, he warmly greeted us and asked how we had been doing since the last time I had to put him through a photo torture session. And then with the P/R person looking at her wrist, our five minute clock began to tick down…

The IBM Boardroom…

You can see how we set up both situations side-by-side, mostly because I knew if I had to walk Sam more than 50 feet a second shot just wasn’t gonna happen!

The simply ridiculous area we dropped our white background…

…how it looked on camera…

…and the final spread in the magazine…

The second shot was deceptively simple…I planned to work with the ambient light in the room and drop him against the stainless steel wall that I had lit with only two of my DIY Kino-Flo lights…

And the final image…

I just checked the metadata on the files. The first shot was at 17:06:54…the last frame was at 17:14:55…..Sam must have enjoyed our last session together ‘cuz he let me go over by three minutes and one second.

My wonderfully artistic friend, Laura Breen, fancies me as a cat…

I know it’s only been a month since I told you guys about Gabrielle Aimée, but since then her self-titled debut album has been released and if you’re looking for a last-minute stocking stuffer, I can’t think of a better way to spend eight bucks! That’s right…it’s on Amazon as an mp3 download for only eight bucks (or $9.99 if you wanna get it from iTunes) and there is even an option that allows you to send the album directly to that special someone as a gift. The eleven tracks are so smart, so sexy, so tight and just so damn much fun, they had me movin’ my ass from the minute I put the record on. BUY THIS ALBUM !!! Then head over to her facebook Band Page and show Gibbles some love by clickin’ the ‘LIKE’ button.

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Not to get you guys thinking that I’m in a creative rut or anything, but hot on the heels of last weeks post about my Digitalman, here’s the series of photos I did of Glen Whitney…a Harvard-educated mathematician and former hedge fund manager…for a story on philanthropy in Barron’s Penta.

An unapologetic numbers geek, Whitney is pulling together about $30 million and building the Museum of Mathematics in a prime 20,000 square foot raw space on East 26th Street right on Madison Park in Manhattan. Since the construction hasn’t even begun on the museum, Adrian and I thought it might be kinda cool to inject some math into the portraits, and maybe using a projection technique would be one way to to pull it off. But the magazine budget wasn’t quite as lofty as the previous ad shoot, which meant spending the kind of money required to produce the job with the super-spendy toys I used on the Digitalman was not gonna be in the cards…so we went about as low-tech as possible, left the strobes at home and decided to work with the available light and use nothing but a digital projector. And it all ended up being not only a lotta fun, but we got some very cool portraits of Glen in the process.

I did a location scout, ‘cuz I really needed to get an idea of exactly what we had to work with…a dark, dirty cavern with lots of rough concrete walls and pipes was what I found…

After spending a few days making various Photoshop ‘slides’ using hundreds of real math equations, we rented the biggest digital projector the budget could afford, and Bo and I headed off to MoMath…

Any early test…

…and a couple of the final selects. We used the ambient light from the construction worklights to fill in the background areas, but the shot was essentially lit entirely by the digital projector…

Next, we moved to an area that was a bit cleaner and less cluttered for a cover image…

…and I broke out my home-made Kino-Flo florescent lights and we did this…

The Museum of Math is scheduled to be completed next year…check out the details on their website and make sure to take the kids when it opens!

DOBIE GRAY
Drift Away

I cried when I heard Dobie Gray died today. Crazy, huh? But for some reason I can remember exactly when I first heard ‘Drift Away’, the song that would define his entire musical career, and what that time meant to me. I was only 14, but God…when I heard the twang of the guitar that opened the song and then his deep, buttery smooth voice, it just cut right through me. And 38 years later, if that song comes on I feel the same way I did on that summer day when it first played through my Dad’s car radio…

I have no meaningful excuse as for why I haven’t put anything from the latest Wye Oak album, Civilian, up on The List since it was released earlier this year, except my usual, “I’ve been lazy and neglecting my duties as your free pipeline to new music”…but I will try to rectify that today. I had been listening to a couple of early mixes from the album since late last year, but it wasn’t until this past weekend that I ponied up the cash to buy the record, and my God it’s good! Last on The List with ‘Take It In’ back in June of 2009, Jenn Wasner and Andy Stack have crafted a seductive lamentation of angst, apprehension, rebirth and redemption.On the title track, Wasner’s voice is carried steadily along by a chugging, locomotive-like beat that without warning turns into a wall of Neil Young-like reverb and noise that hits you like a punch on the face.

“I still keep my baby teeth
in the bedside table
with my jewelry…”

I don’t know why, but that lyric gives me chills.

And the other nine songs on the album are just as lush and tight and smartly written. Don’t let me go spending your hard earned cash for you, but if you like this song, then the album is a must-buy…head on over to the iTunes Store now! For you New Yorkers, Wye Oak is opening for The National on Thursday December 15th during their week-long stand at The Beacon and you can follow them on their website.

Finally, here’s a bonus video of them doing an acoustic version of ‘Civilian’ on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Series…

LOW ROAR
Give Up

I’ve been playing songs from the Low Roar album nonstop ever since Ryan Karazija began leaking them to me months ago, and today he debuts a hauntingly beautiful video for ‘Give Up’, directed by his friend Ali Silverstein and shot by Brian Fawcett.

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Sure…with a little Photoshop and a lotta time you could probably manufacture an image like the one above, but wouldn’t it a lot more fun to pull out a $10,000 lighting gizmo and do it all in-camera?!! That’s just what we did to illustrate the idea of the flow of a digital data stream. The hyper-priced toy was the Profoto ZoomSpot…

…the type of follow spot used to create stage lighting effects, but in this case it’s fitted with a 4800 w/s flash tube. All I had to do was make up a few transparencies of ‘zeroes’ and ‘ones’ to drop into the projector and then we could play around with color combinations and lighting ratios until I got the kind of dramatic image I had floating around in my head. The lighting diagram shows the setup wasn’t that complicated…

A large Chimera Super Pro and both skim lights were covered by two Full CTB gels to bathe the entire set in blue light. The background light…with a half-blue and a magenta gel…was aimed through a wooden Matthews cucoloris that created the shadows on the seamless. All that remained was to get the color and lighting ratio of the ZoomSpot just right so that the projected image popped at just the right intensity. Two full CTO gels and setting the spot about one stop brighter than all those blue lights was what we ended up with.

My eclectic tour of the Nation’s boardrooms recently took me to the offices of Riverpark Capital, where I was to photograph Morty Schaja, Mitch Rubin and Conrad van Tienhoven for a Barron’s profile. Lest any of you think that the life of a photographer is all Supermodels and hangin’ with Diddy, I beg you to read on…

Riverpark’s midtown office would never be described using words such as ‘opulent’, ‘palatial’ or ‘ostentatious’. But they are hardly alone in this…most places I find myself having to shoot in are equally utilitarian…but it can rattle my bones when I keep seeing the same furniture, cubicles, lighting and paint used again and again and again. Still, after a quick tour of the space, I decided to begin in the reception area…

…sort of a mini-history of the financial markets as seen through the eyes of Time Magazine. I kinda thought it would be a good place to start, so we dropped Mitch and Morty onto the little couch and went to work…

But we also had to photograph a situation with Conrad, the third partner in the firm, and there was zero chance of him fitting on that couch. That part of the story brings us to this conference room…

The first thing you gotta do when faced with the dreaded White Board/Conference Table scenario is ignore how frightfully normal the situation is and try to envision it instead as a set piece that will only work because of the personality you can bring to it. That first means usually cleaning it up and add some tasty lighting…

Next, stir in the talent…

…but the whole serious/symmetrical thing wasn’t doin’ it for me, so I told the guys to just go about doing what they normally do…let loose and ignore me…and they did…

…and that kind of unguarded moment was exactly what Adrian wanted for the story…