a fashion shooter

Looks like the notorious Annie Leibovitz is in an unfortunate situation.

Rumors of bankruptcy and late payments have been circulating around Annie L. for years now. And according to the New York Times (2-23-2009), Annie Leibovitz, one of the most successful editorial and commercial photographers in the business recently had to borrow $15.5 million to pay off debts and such.

And what did she use as collateral? Oh, her three West Village town houses, her country home in Rhinebeck NY, and * the rights to all of her photographs.* Scary.

“In other words, according to loan documents filed with the city, one of the world’s most successful photographers essentially pawned every snap of the shutter she had made or will make until the loans are paid off.”

(nyt)

Quotes from this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/arts/design/24artloans.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1

WOW. Hard to believe that a photographer who commands staggering day rates and whose career seems to just keep going up and up could end up where she is today. 

So, I guess the moral is, do not live beyond your means. If you can, save your money. Put it in the bank until you really, really, really need it.

A couple recent hot spreads mentioned on Fashiongonerogue. the first one in Italian Marie Claire:

Tiiu Kuik and Michelle Buswell on the beach

and here is the lovely Doutzen Kroes  nude in VMan magazine

Just in case anyone here missed it, Paolo Pellegrin of Magnum Photos has done some relly beautiful work for the Times recently in the 2.28.09 issue of the magazine – Oscar Issue: Great Performances. It’s a somewhat unusual approach to commissioned celebrity photography, and the results are lovely.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/magazine/20090205-great-performers/

There were also some nice photos by Ryan McGinley in the 1.25.09 article – What Do Women Want?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/magazine/25desire-t.html

(I was trying to get off of this testing phase on this blog. and back to lighting, but I am still testing…)

In trying a third Canon 5D Mark II body today, it focuses better with the outer AF points, but they are still no good for full figure shots where the target is far off. Lots of out of focus ones. 

On a positive note, the outer AF points seem to work ok for waist-up shots. And the color on this one is FAR better than my other 5D2 bodies.

(If the skin tones look a little funny, that’s because they are. The model is going to Japan tomorrow, where they insist that the models be as pale as possible. So she’s been hiding from the sun And thus, copius amounts of spray-on tan were applied.)

Still, if I were shooting something critical and could not be tethered to a computer to check focus, I would not use this camera! The auto focus is just too dodgy on far away objects, even using the center point. Tis a pity.

p.s. Dear Canon: Isn’t the one-shot AF mode supposed to only take the shot when it’s achieved focus at the selected AF point? IF so, maybe part of this problem could be resolved with a firmare fix: make it so that in one-shot AF mode the camera actually does not take the shot if the image is out of focus. Would this work, or can the camera just not tell that the image is not in focus?

**notes on the lighting setup for the above shots will follow shortly**