Almost Wordless Wednesday: Photographer Gary Firstenberg's Recent Midwest Travels and Links to Five More Photographers

Related Links
All the photos here are courtesy Gary Firstenberg, lifelong entrepreneur and rolling stone whom I met last week on his tour of the Northland. His work has been shared via a variety of formats from cards to breath mint tins. You can find a link to his work below.

I've enjoyed friendships with a number of photographers in my career and in my blogging. For this reason I am including numerous additional links to photography websites whose work you will appreciate and may consider for potential future assignments.

Gary Firstenberg
https://firstinphoto.smugmug.com/BEST-of-COLLECTION/i-rMwRHG8

Photographer Andrew Perfetti
https://www.andrewperfetti.com/

John Heino Photography
https://business.facebook.com/johnheinophotography/

Michael K Anderson
https://singingcanoe.smugmug.com/
Interview

Jeff Frey Photography
Interview
Giclee Reproduction

Karl Dedolph (Street Photography)
https://karldedolph.com/
Interview

Throwback Thursday: A Visit with Jeff Frey of CPL Imaging

"Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative act." ~Ansel Adams

I met Jeff Frey in 1987. My success in setting up an advertising program at AMSOIL that year caught the attention of a marketing VP for The Chromaline Corporation, a small manufacturing firm here in the screen printing industry. I was hired to become their in-house ad agency.

Chromaline had gone through four ad agencies in less than three years and, among other problems, their literature lacked continuity at the time. I set about to review and analyze their sales and product lit. After having been at AMSOIL, where standards were extremely high, it seemed the Chromaline lit (at this time) was shoddy at best. The product photos on these printed pieces looked especially bad and washed out, so I decided to switch the company to another pro photographer in town who I thought did decent work. First, however, I had to find the original photos that were used in the literature. Chromaline made photostencil films and emulsions in an industry where imaging is important.

Then it happened. I still remember the moment. I saw a black and white glossy, so crisp and rich it was literally eye-popping. The subject matter: a gallon container of photostencil emulsion. I knew then that the problem lay not with the photographer. I found it stunning that a boring, black container could look so dynamic.

Jeff's work has always been nothing short of astonishing. He does true magic with a camera. There are no shortcuts. His equipment is always state-of-the-art, and the outcomes always worth the effort.

Like myself, Jeff is also a New Jersey transplant to the Midwest. But high standards are what brought us together. This past week we talked about the photography business.

Ennyman: How did you get into photography as a profession?
JF: It was a hobby. Then I worked at a camera store here in Duluth, got friendly with an established commercial photographer and partnered up with him. I had pursued the hobby seriously when I was working in the camera store.

Ennyman: What have you enjoyed most about the photography business?
JF: The sales tax reports. (laughs) Writing the check to the department of revenue.

Besides that, my favorite thing to shoot is people at their jobs, because I allow them to participate in the building of the image. They tell me what is important, what they do, how they manipulate what they do. It’s a collaborative effort where the subject is helping to create the image.

Now, with digital, when I shoot to a computer, it’s very easy to get feedback and work together.

Ennyman: What are the two or three biggest mistakes that amateur photographers make?
JF: Thinking they can make money at it. (laughs)
An artist is not necessarily an entrepreneur. Just because you can satisfy customers with nice pictures does not mean you can have a successful business.

Ennyman: What about lighting… how important is that with digital?
JF: It’s every bit as important as it ever used to be. But you don’t need as much now.

You’re way better off making it right from the start. Basically I weigh the situation. After I understand that aesthetically it can happen one way or the other, I ask where it is going to take less effort. You have to know the limits of Photoshop. When it comes to light on someone’s face, there’s no way I am going to try to fix that later.

Ennyman: Do you have any secrets you’re willing to share that help turn good photos into great photos?
JF: Make sure the eyes are in focus. Also, it always makes a photo more interesting with more depth if you include a complimentary foreground element.

Ennyman: How has the digital age changed professional photography?
JF: Formerly, a Polaroid test was as much immediate feedback as we could get to check lighting, etc. The Polaroid was never the final product. You always had to then shoot the film and hope you get it right on film, like facial expression or catching the peak of a jump with a dancer. The dancers are thrilled because they don’t have to jump forty times to make sure you got it once.

I don’t have to worry about bringing different types of film, different speeds, different color balance film. Now we can white balance in the camera, can change the sensitivity on the fly.

Check out a portion of Jeff's portfolio here

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This interview was posted seven years ago today. Jeff and CPL Imaging can also be found here on Facebook. 

Ten Minutes with Motivity Photographer Rolf Hagberg

I met Rolf Hagberg sometime in the 1990's when he was working with Jeff Frey and Associates here in Duluth. It seems like whenever I was at Jeff's commercial photography studio for a shoot, Rolf was either entering or emerging from the darkroom.

Jeff had assembled a strong team, and many top Twin Ports photographers have been under his wing or associated with his studio in one way or another. Because of the high caliber of their work Jeff Frey and Associates has also become a key resource for many of the region's top artists (for example, internationally acclaimed water colorist Chee and the crayon artist Don Marco) who use the studio for high level reproductions and giclee prints.

During a recent visit, to get my Portrait of Chief Sitting Bull painting scanned, Jeff mentioned that Rolf was now (among other things) doing some remarkable bicycle photography. Remarkable is an understatement. The work has to be seen to be believed.

This week I caught up with Rolf and, among other things, we compared life notes. He showed me a few photos he'd taken and how they're being presented. The images are striking, and the presentation really shines. Over a bowl of hobo soup I picked his brain a bit about the work he's now doing. The bicycle photo business now has a name: Motivity.

Ennyman: How did you get into shooting bicycle photography?

RH: I've been a commercial photographer for almost 25 years, so I've been around photography a long time. My youngest stepdaughter, in her late 20's, is married to guy in Colorado who's a big time mountain bike guy. So, they're mountain bikers now, and a few years ago I thought I would make some art pictures for Christmas for them. So, I kind of just took a couple of my bikes and took them into the studio and started playing around, spinning wheels and tires, and having flashes go and putting hot lights on them, and trying to do all these different things. Eventually that led to me doing more outside events, where I would bring a number of people together that had bikes, and we'd find a spot that had a background that would work. There's a process using available light and tungsten, which are continuous light sources, and then a big flash at the end to kind of combine all of those things to make it work.

E: So you've been doing bike art for a while.

RH: Yeah, a few years. Last February of 2009, I had a show at One on One Bike Shop down on Washington Avenue in Minneapolis, and I hung 43 prints. The biggest were 2 feet by 5 feet, and then a lot of them were 11 x 14, 16 x 20, and they were framed, matted, glass, and then I had a number of this gallery wrap style. Everybody kind of liked those more.

E: And "gallery wrap" is a presentation format?

RH: Yeah, it's actually a style. It kind of talks about it here in this brochure, and on the website it even shows close up pictures. They take the print and then they wrap the image around that, so that it continues to show, and then these are printed on a metallic paper so the spokes and the white parts and the silver parts just really pop. It's really fun. It's kind of the whole other side of the Giclees. Super Duper, they're real archival. They have a coating laminated over them. They're 100 year prints and you can just wipe them off with a rag. It's kind of a combination between sign technology and art, but these bike guys just went, "Cool, we want this." They don't want pictures that look like their mom got them in the grocery store. So, that show went well. I sold some stuff, made some nice leads and kind of followed up. I also had, I don't have any more, I had 2 big prints that sold at Art Resources gallery down in the International Market Square and I'm working with them to try to do more bigger installations and more corporate venues, because the prints are real scalable. You can take one of these images and make it big as a wall. You could make it wallpaper and it would have a nice pattern.

E: What about books, do you think a book of your photography would go over? You've got some really great shots.

RH: Could be, could be. The goal, or not the goal but the market, I think, and a number of other guys think, is bike enthusiasts who have 3, 4, 5000 dollar bicycles sitting in their garages... and what do they have on their walls? Who knows, probably nothing really cool that's bike oriented. So there's a good market to try to do that. I've been talking with Steve Flagg, the source behind Quality Bike Products in Minneapolis. They're a wholesaler, huge wholesaler -- one of the biggest in the country -- and he feels there's a market for this, too, and he would love to be my wholesale distribution guy, so if we could kind of figure out what size and what type of images and how to sell it, he could push it out to his San Francisco guys, or his Dallas guy, whatever. We'd pick half a dozen or 10 different shops and we'd start to try to move some prints that way, make it bigger and bigger and bigger. Everybody in the world has a relationship with a bicycle.

E: We all remember our first bike.

RH: Yeah, in developing countries and in other parts of the world it's even bigger.

E: Our church is trying to raise money for bicycles for people in Africa who are doing ministry. What about your first bike, what was your first bike?

RH: The first bike I bought was, well, my first bike was probably a Huffy, kind of a single speed, smaller red kind of thing. But the first bike that I ever bought, that I saved my paper route money for was a Schwinn Varsity. It was 10 speed. It was purple, one that would have been early '60's probably, maybe '64, '65.

E: Are you from Minnesota originally?

RH: Yep, born and raised in St. Paul.

E: Thanks for your time, and for letting us show some of your stuff. Good luck with your efforts to put your work in front of a wider audience. It's worthy.

Check it out: http://www.rolfhagberg.com/