livebooks blog

"Refinery" © Brian Kosoff

Over the course of my advertising career I followed a pattern of continually trading up to larger studios and adding more subtenant photographers to lower the overall cost per foot of the studio. My first NYC studio, in 1980, was about 2,000 square feet. All mine. My next studio, which I built in 1985, was 5,000 square feet. With this one I decided I would rent space to other photographers. My thought was that this would keep my costs more reasonable, and if I were busy there’d be more than enough space to produce the work.  Ultimately I had two other photographers in that space with me. This worked well for 15 years, until the dot-com bubble (the internet!) caused rents in the Photo District, where my studio was located, to go skyward. I had to move.

For my last studio, built in 2000, I partnered with another photographer and we shared responsibility for the space. This space was 7,500 square feet and we built facilities to accommodate us and three other photographers. Around this time the dot-com bubble burst (the internet!). The economy and the ad industry slowed down. I still had a large client list, but they were producing fewer ads, also in part because print media was less effective in a media environment diluted by the Internet. And what they were paying for each assignment was lower. The assignments themselves became less photographically challenging and less satisfying, due to a switch from still life photography (my specialty) which required the creation of sets that illustrated mini environments, to more silhouette-type photographs that could be photo composed into digital environments or stock photos. All the signs said it was time to move on.

Fortunately for me, a few years earlier I had started to shoot landscape photos again. I got married in 1999 and moved to a cute Hudson River town just north of Manhattan that had several galleries, including a few co-op ones. My wife encouraged me to join one, and I thought it would be a good excuse for me to actually print up a few of my landscapes, so I signed on. In April of 2001 I had the first solo show of my work since 1976. It did extremely well and was very profitable –- enough to make me think that I might have found an alternative to advertising photography and the high overhead of a Manhattan studio. Within a week of the show I had representation offers from several galleries in Manhattan. I ended up at Edward Carter Gallery and my new career shooting landscape really began.

"Snowy Ridge" © Brian Kosoff

A few months later were the September 11 attacks, and the aftermath devastated the NYC economy. A large chunk of lower Manhattan was closed off. For the galleries in Soho, it could not have been worse. Many businesses came to a screeching halt. Ad agencies had massive layoffs. The amount of work now available to advertising photographers was dramatically reduced. It didn’t seem like there was a real future in that field anymore. For the first time I thought that I might close my studio and leave Manhattan.

It’s not easy to walk away from something that you built over the course of two decades. My business was still viable, I still had a large client base and they would start to produce advertisements again, but there was a larger change. Even if it was still profitable, the kind of work that client’s wanted was more about cost than content or quality. That’s just not where I wanted to be. So at the end of 2002 I made it official and closed my studio.

Biden and Obama during the DNC, published at BAGnewsNotes. © Alan Chin

With a sense of duty but not much true excitement, I had planned on traveling to Denver for the Democratic National Convention, months before. Then, in August, war broke out in the Caucuses between Russia and Georgia. I called Michael and said, I want to go to Georgia. And he said, do you have an assignment? And I said, no. And he said, what about the DNC? I said, forget about the DNC. And he said, are you going to forget about the DNC if I can “assign” you again? I said, what do you mean? He said, if I can commit to paying you, would you think about not going to Georgia on your own?

If someone gives you a good assignment, you take it, right? I’m not going to be able to pay my rent from this blog, but, a) it’s the thought that counts, the fact that he’s willing to commit; and b) every bit helps. When I thought about it, it came down to: Michael Shaw is offering me an assignment to cover the DNC.

So Michael came to Denver as well, because he’s not only the editor, he’s also the main writer and journalist for the BAGnewsNotes blog. It was the first time we worked together face-to-face, because he lives in San Diego and I’m in New York. And it was enormously productive. We were able to get decent access, because the political parties take blogging very seriously, so they gave us standard press credentials. Of course it’s funny for me because I ran into all these photographers I know, and they asked me, who are you working for? They say, Time or Newsweek or whoever, and I say, it’s a blog called BAGnewsNotes. But just gauging from their responses, many photographers had already heard of what Michael was doing, and were already reading the blog. So within the small world of photojournalism, people know and appreciate it.

They thought what we were doing was fabulous, but also that it was incredibly ironic because I’m known for being very analog in this digital age, and developing film in hotel rooms. I do all these really old-fashioned traditional things, yet here I am on the other end of it. I’m shooting black-and-white film, processing it in a bathtub, and uploading the images to a blog. I was shooting digital as well at the DNC, but the New Hampshire and Ohio primaries I photographed entirely on film.

I believe that BAGNewsNotes has real credibility. Aesthetically, we’re not there not yet, I’ll be the first to admit that. When it comes to design and how we present the images and text, it’s not perfect. But that’s growing pains, technical issues. In terms of mentally and conceptually where we want the site to go, we have a good idea and I think we’re succeeding. Sometimes I feel like I’m really sticking my neck out, because I’ve put a lot of work into this in the last couple years, especially the last year. And I do wonder if maybe that was time that I should have spent trying to get traditional assignments. But then I look at the fruits of our labor, the photography and the analysis, and I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished, on less than a shoestring. Hopefully, the more people who look at what we’re doing, and the more people we’re able to get turned onto this, the more viable it becomes.

"Contrails," an image by former advertising photographer Brian Kosoff. © Brian Kosoff

When I began working as an advertising and editorial photographer in 1979 I joined an industry that hadn’t changed much for 50 years. People made a product, someone would have to photograph or illustrate it, and then someone else would put that image in a publication. How much could that paradigm change?

My first encounter with digital technology’s foothold in the graphic design world was in 1984. I went to see a client, a design firm, and one of the designers pulled me aside and pointed out a small computer on his desk. “This is going to revolutionize design,” he told me. I looked at the little box again, focusing on the small screen and wondering how designers accustomed to drawing on 24-inch pads with hundreds of color markers would be able to work on a 9-inch black-and-white screen using a “mouse.”

Of course, a decade later the digital revolution had arrived. The world of graphics and printing changed dramatically –- typesetters disappeared and art directors also became computer experts –- but it was the effect on photography I really felt.

I bought a Mac and Photoshop in 1991. Previously I had done a lot of special effects photography for clients. The type of thing where you have five cameras set up on five sets and take the same piece of film and multiply expose that film to precisely masked and composed scenes. The Mac changed all that. Now all I had to do was scan film at the local service bureau and then move the pieces around almost effortlessly in Photoshop. Well not that effortlessly, it would take hours sometimes for the Mac to complete a Photoshop command. I can recall holding a loupe to my screen to check if the progress bar indicated whether the Mac had frozen or was still working. Seeing the bar move a single pixel in 90 seconds meant that PS command was going to take all night. Of course it usually ended up freezing first.

For most advertising photographers of my generation these were the good times. Very little had changed for us except we had more and better tools. But the same tools that made photo composure so easy for photographers also made photo retouching easier and less expensive. Why pay for a highly skilled photographer who could produce images needing little or no retouching when you could hire a less experienced and far cheaper photographer who’s work could now be inexpensively retouched and enhanced? You could argue that the more experienced photographer brought other values to the mix, but in many cases lower cost trumped quality. Still, the old hierarchy persisted. The photographers just starting out got the lower paying assignments, the high end photographers still got substantial day rates, and the mid-level photographers got a mix of both, an agreeable situation for all. More »

An image by wedding photographer SAS Becker. © SAS Becker

Q: What is the biggest mindset change that needs to happen in order to make a successful transition from part-time to full-time wedding photographer?

A: Making the switch from commercial photography to the private sector seemed like an easy transition.  At first, I thought private clients would be easier than photo editors and art buyers… somehow not as demanding. This is not the case. Just think about how much is riding on a wedding: all of the planning, money, anticipation. You can almost always reshoot a model — not a wedding. I think you should approach your families and couples like a commercial shoot. You should always have a concept or an idea you are trying to convey. Are your subjects free spirited, strong, inspiring, or traditional? How will you illustrate this visually? Having a concept brings depth to your images and brings them to life. In the end, whether it’s an art director, a bride, or a new mom, all you really want is for them to be happy with the end result.

This is also really a question about values. I would prefer to think of myself as more than simply a service provider or vendor. In the end I am providing my clients with a photographic product. But, I am not making widgets here; I am giving 110% of my time, talent, and heart as an artist. My values tell me to treat it like a business. Your customer always comes first. It is my job to make sure they are satisfied. So before, during, and after the creation of the photos I am a business professional, they just get a little piece of me in every sale ;-)