Last weekend I did a test shoot with a beautiful model Tanja Lederer and collaborated with a great team of people to get the shoot done. On make up, I had Lindsey Guest, and on hair was Krystal Bilheimer from Lily Artist Management. It was a great time in the studio, and I had a lot of fun with these lovely ladies creating some great new images. Check out some of the finished shots:

The last few weeks have been filled with meetings with potential wardrobe stylists, and planning shoots for this upcoming summer. Very excited to get some shoots done that will expand my book even more. Speaking of shoots, I had a pretty good one over the weekend. Also, I made a pretty hefty update to my website. It’s been updated with some old favorites that never made it onto the site as well as reorganized. You should definitely check that out!

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Here’s some behind the scenes shots of me from over the weekend working with my beautiful German model Tanja.

With Spring/Summer coming up, I’ve been thinking about a shoot to do. So, I thought that doing one inspired by tennis would be a dope idea. Supposed to be doing this shoot next weekend. This is the direction of the styling. Crazy excited for this one.

Just entered the image below of my grandmother into the 2010 PDN Faces Contest. Help me win and VOTE!!!!

For the past few months, and also while I was attending Hallmark I was so stuck on creating a certain type of image. Now, through a series of spontaneous and random events I have come to the realization that Marcus Smith is a photographer. NOT a fashion photographer, or music photographer but rather simply just a photographer. What that means is that through thought, light, and action I can make ANYTHING interesting. I was told this countless times repeatedly while in school, but it wasn’t until this morning that I finally realized how valuable and powerful that idea is. Before, I was limiting myself by thinking fashion this, beauty that. Those ARE NOT my only interest, so why on earth would those be the only things that I put effort into shooting? The answer is actually quite simple, it’s obvious and far less challenging to do those type of images than it is to come of with an idea, and make it look good without relying on the model or the make up. Don’t get me wrong, I LIKE fashion, but I don’t want to be one dimensional, I want to be a photographer who’s portfolio you look at and think can handle shooting anything. This moment of clarity has brought me a new excitement about creating fresh images of things that I like. I would like to end this post with a couple images from two photographers I feel do a hell of a job at creating images of things they like from their point of view. The first two images are by Carlos Serrao and the last two are by Mark Zibert.

I’m sorry for the lack of posts over the last few weeks everybody. I have really just not been in a blogging mood. I’ve been feeling that my time has been better spent trying to figure out how I’m gonna to better myself this year as a photographer and get some shoots done rather than blogging. I’ve been spending lots of time studying photos and styles that make some photographers highly sought out, and have just been taking all that in to hopefully absorb some of that same skill into my photography over this fastly moving year. Not to mention I have also been on the road for the past 2 weeks working on Part 2 of the Adidas 2010 World Cup campaign in Barcelona, Spain. That’s something I will eventually be blogging about at some point as well to let everyone know how it went.

About 2 weeks, UK photographer, David Sims came rented out our studio for a 2 day shoot with Giselle. He’d been one of my favorites for quite some time because of his use of movement and light to show shape in his photos but last night I really took some time to study his style. Here are a couple photos from him that have inspired me and will hopefully inspire you and give some idea of the direction I want to move forward in my own style. It was really interesting to meet him and have the opportunity to see how he works.

Found a cool iPhone app the other day called hipstamatic. Snapped these yesterday on my way to Miami.

A few days ago I posted an intro into this post talking about my trip to Argentina. I wanted to update the blog right away but I had to take some time away from the computer to spend some time with my Mom and girlfriend who came to visit me in Boston over the holidays. So many things happened on the Argentina trip that I honestly don’t know where to start, but I guess I should probably just start from the beginning.

“These are some images I took while I was in Argentina with my Canon G11 point and shoot”

Before we left for Argentina we had a 2 day shoot for Nike’s House of Hoops in Washington D.C. where we shot two high school basketball teams. Due to that shoot we had to catch a red eye flight out of Washington to shoot in Argentina for Coca Cola’s global South American campaign. We were scheduled to be there for 9 days, 8 of which were shoot days with multiple shots scheduled for each day. The flight was 10 hours long, and I was sitting in Economy Plus in an aisle seat surrounded by kids. When I tried to stretch out part of my legs would hang into the aisle and I swear that right when I got comfortable enough to fall asleep I would get bumped in the leg by the flight attendant and the food/beverage cart. In other words, I got absolutely no sleep on the flight and that wasn’t fun AT ALL.

“This was at a street market they have every Sunday in an area called Boca. Click on it to view them full screen”

We finally land in Buenos Aires and it is already morning time there. I have been up for at least 20+ hours already and we step off the plane already having to get to work. When we get there, we tech spec the space and see that it is a pretty tight working environment and barely enough room to move. After we got there, it finally hit me that most people didn’t speak English when I asked where the bathroom was and no one knew what I was saying. This experience has actually inspired me to try to learn some Spanish in 2010. After being awake for 30+ hours straight I finally made it to my hotel room and just CRASHED to prepare myself to epic amount of work ahead.

“This is the absolute CRAZIEST shoot I’ve ever done.” – Gary Land

Everyday we started bright and early in the morning, and worked well into the evening. By the end of this trip we were all beat. On this shoot, there were a lot of things that made it more challenging than any other shoot Gary had done. First of all, most people working on the shoot did not speak English so we all needed translators. It makes things just a little bit difficult when the Art Director on the shoot is trying to make selects and can’t speak English. On top of all that, I don’t think there was a problem that didn’t come up on this shoot. One day we lost power for 3 hours due to a storm, AND experienced power surges for the rest of the day after it came back on. Then, we had 2 digital backs totally crap out on us on the shoot. One lesson I learned for sure is always have a plan B. We were using a rented Hasselblad H3D-50 II, a 50 megapixel camera system, and that all of sudden justr locked up out of nowhere. Then, we switched Gary’s personal camera, a Hasselblad H2 with a Leaf Aptus 35S back which is a 33 megapixel camera system and then THAT stopped working out of nowhere. Finally, we finished the shoot with an H2 with a Phase One P30 back. By the end of the job we had 3 different file formats, and 5000 shots had been taken which amounted to about a terabyte of hard drive space.

“Also at the street market, these people were rockin out!”

By the end of this trip I was definitely ready to come back home. It was nice to see Argentina, and after all that we were crazy enough to do a fashion shoot on the last day before we left. Like some true photographers, we left from the studio to catch our plane after doing an extra shoot. I hope you enjoy the photos, and videos. This month I already have two more trips overseas. You can expect the same type of stuff from that as well.

First of all, Happy New Year! I’m excited for the start of 2010. I would say that 2009 was a pretty good year for me. I graduated from Hallmark Institute of Photography in the top 10% of my class, got a full time assistant/retoucher/digital tech position with Gary Land, moved to Boston, and spent more time on an airplane traveling in 4 months than I did in all the 23 years of my life. I would have to say that that’s one of hell of a year, and I’m excited to only top that in 2010. So only after 5 full days into the new year I must say that I’m well on my way to having a prosperous and successful year.

That’s where I’ve been the last 10 days. All the way up to Xmas eve. I have a lot to write about this trip and lots of pics to show from it. So, after I take a while to recoup I will definitely be updating the blog to talk about my trip. Until then, here is one pic I snapped while there. I hope everyone is having a happy holidays.