livebooks blog

Howie Lee Weiss is a professional studio artist and also professor of fine arts. Known for stylized, precise, graphic imagery, Howie Lee Weiss’s artworks have been reviewed in such publications as Art in America, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Baltimore Sun.

Weiss’s iconic drawings have been exhibited in galleries in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, DC. His artwork has also appeared in venues throughout Italy. In Japan, Weiss lectured with the Keisho Art Association in conjunction with an exhibit that featured his extensive, free-style sketchbook practice.

He has been teaching at MICA – Maryland Institute College of Art since 1979. At MICA, he oversees the Senior Thesis Program for the 2-D Fine Arts, as well as having taught all level of classes within the college. As a child, Howie Lee Weiss loved drawing pictures which led to art college for his BFA and eventually to Yale School of Art & Architecture where he received his MFA.

Search – 49 x 44 Humankind’s ongoing continuum of curiosity is at the core of these narratives. Drawn pictures with titles such as Wonder, Quest and Search describe the types of universal pursuits that seem central to all people.

Q&A with Howie Lee Weiss

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

HLW: Elegant, clean, informative.

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

HLW: As new drawings are produced, they may fit into existing categories or require a new category in itself. This varies with time. Additionally some drawings may be edited out of the website, therefore not only adding is important but subtracting becomes essential also.

Ensemble – 8 x 7 Minor but multiple variations based on simple shapes assemble together to form large collections. Each small drawing shares wall space with its numerous, almost identical partners; thus the individual becomes part of the larger population.

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

HLW: I put 6 drawings together in one j-peg so viewers could see all 6 works at once – giving somewhat of a mini overview. I plan to change the home page from time to time.

Global – 52 x 45

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks?

HLW: Ease of navigation.

Q5: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

HLW: Balance – not too much – not to little – and organize.

See more from Howie Lee Weiss here: www.howieleeweiss.com

Song – 56 x 47

Erin Derby discovered photography in high school, and the second she walked out of the darkroom with her first GOOD photo, she was hooked. Derby knew it’s what she would do with her life. In college, she was the photo editor of the daily university paper, and after college she moved to NY where she pursued both art and commercial photography.

Erin Derby feels lucky to be able to shoot various subjects that really interest her, rather than being forced to only pick one genre.

Q&A with Erin Derby

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

ED: Modern, bright, dynamic.

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

ED: I do a major update every year, which involves a total overhaul. And then throughout the year I do mini-updates…Approximately every month or so. Depends on what new work I want to share.

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

ED: I pick something that is new and that I’m personally really excited about, and can’t wait to share. It also needs to be big and bold and striking. It needs to really set the tone for the site. And it needs to be NEW!

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks?

ED: My TWO favorite things are that the site looks so professional and polished without any effort, and updating it is extremely easy and immediate.

Q5. What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

ED: Don’t overthink it. Don’t spend months debating and delaying it. Just get it up there. You can always make changes.

Erin Derby has been with liveBooks since 2007! See more of her work here: www.erinderby.com

Based in the New York City area, Erik Rank specializes in photographing food & lifestyle images, environmental portraits for magazines, catalogues, and advertising clients. Erik has extensive experience in producing a photo shoot from start to finish with ease. His over 25 years in the photography business allows him to put all his resources together for the main goal of creating a beautiful and dynamic photo for his clients.

“I got interested in photography in high school when my mom made me take a photo class rather than have a study hall where I probably would fool around and get in trouble. At first I didn’t like it, mainly because my mom made me do it but I fell in love with photography and I never looked back.”

Erik has a “Just” series on Instagram that are images that he takes with his phone of images he sees through the course of the day.

“I didn’t really have titles for the photos I was taking so I called it Just xxx… of what ever the subject was/is. For example, an interesting shadow, a bowl of colorful rubber bands at the checkout counter at Whole foods, my martini I am about to drink, my walk during a snow storm and and interesting arrangements of pipes on an orange wall as I get out of my car in a parking lot. It’s ‘Just’ stuff like that, things that I see all day and find visually interesting.”

The Just series can be found on his Instagram account: @ewrphoto.

Q&A with Erik Rank

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

ER: Light, Airy, Story Telling

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

ER: Not often enough, but probably twice a year.

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

ER: They are often edited to death and just select my the quality and the feeling I get from that image or images.

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks?

ER: One of my favorite new features of the website is how it scrolls up and down. I fell that this is the way people view images these days, on an iPhone or an iPad.

Q5: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

ER: “Less Is More” – I feel I have that problem I feel I have too many images on my website but it is very hard….even trying to take your own advice.

See more of Erik Rank’s work here.

Michael Kirchoff grew up with a deep love of photography since he was a child. During a high school photography class he decided to make it the focus of his life, though he really didn’t know it was something that he could actually make a living doing. He began working at various jobs in the industry, from rental houses, to assisting, to production, because it’s what he loved (and had bills to pay!).

After several years Kirchoff started shooting product and still life work because he was simply patient with what that entails, and was fascinated with lighting and the challenges that that presented.

About ten years ago, however, he had lost a few of my big clients during a downturn in the economy, and took it as a sign to start making photographs that “quite frankly, came from the heart and passion that had started me down the road to photography as a career. I’d always made images for myself throughout my life, but this time I made fine art photography the direction I wanted to go.”

He also figured it would give him an opportunity to continue doing commercial work while showing potential clients that I could put more art into the images that I made for them. At the moment, fine art photography is where he is, and commercial work comes in only occasionally. He likes the mix and strives to get to a place where the work is split 50/50.

Q&A with Michael Kirchoff

Q1: How would you describe the aesthetic of your website in three words?

MK: Clean, simple, easy to navigate, where the images come first.

Q2: How often do you typically update your website?

MK: I do tweaks to the site a couple times a month normally. A few times a year there is a major change or overhaul made, depending on the amount of new work I’m looking to show. There are many artist statements on the site and I find myself writing and improving those quite frequently. liveBooks makes that super simple to do.

Q3: How do you choose the photos that you display on your homepage?

MK: Images on the homepage are usually signature photographs from the different bodies of work in the portfolio section. Also, a few that have sold well as a prints over the years. The slideshow feature for the homepage works well for this and is simple to sequence.

Q4: What is your favorite feature of liveBooks?

MK: Navigation tools that make sense. Larger images that jump off the page while still loading quickly. The ability to mix text with images. These are all very important to me.

Q5: What’s one piece of advice you’d offer to someone designing their website?

MK: Have patience. When I started I became frustrated quickly because I wasn’t sure which tools were going to apply to what I was trying to do. liveBooks has many options, so take your time and try them out before making any final decisions. You can put a site together rather quickly, but one that you will be happy with has to be thought through. Thankfully, the people at tech support were able to answer the loads of questions I had.

liveBooks actually has more to their sites than I need at the moment. Though, as I branch out into new forms of expression, I know that they are already there to support and showcase what I want to do as a photographic artist. I have plans to put some of them to use soon, and I know they will be there to help.

See more of Micheal Kirchoff’s work here: www.michaelkirchoff.com