A Brief History of Frank
October 12, 2009
This picture has been posted before, it’s an 8x10 shot from 2006. I’ve been out showing my work around a lot lately and while I intend to be firmly entrenched in my niche — intimate portraits of alternative women (or whatever you want to call it) — I also want new viewers to catch a glimpse of my background. This is one of the first images that got me going in my current direction and it’s funny that it should be of someone completely opposite of the oh-so-hot ladies I’m associated with photographing.
Game Boy (larger)
Before that I was trying to confront and overcome my shyness about approaching strangers for portraits. I would wander around with this large American flag and wrap it around whomever would pose. This was in NYC in February and it was probably the most successful image of the series.
I have a release but it’s just a scribble…. (larger)
Up until 2006 I had been lost in the morass of the dot.com and agency worlds. I may have been a creative director (but I don’t know if that should count during the dot.com era?) I also did my own photos for my projects and ended up doing a fair amount of architectural photography.
Two 4x5 shots stitched together — Geeky. (larger)
And I photographed a few men…
Richard (larger)
I also did a few ads here and there:
I still clench…. (larger)
Hopefully it won’t surprise you to know that I ran my own design studio that did dozens of posters, coffee-table books, exhibits, brochures, and identity systems. Heck I even had employees. Stayed awake in meetings. And made a profit!
One of thirty posters designed for a lecture series at RIT. (larger)
Back in the day — way back — when Photoshop was in still in diapers (if version numbers equal age) I was one of its earliest adopters (v.0.9). All of these are 1996 or earlier…
1995, pitched it to Kinkos, Xerox, HP, Minolta…. a universal comp (larger)
1996, coverwrap — this was done pre-Tropicana by the way…. (larger)
1994 promo (larger)
1995 Yet another trade ad…. (larger)
Done in 1991 with a video recorder, the original is on tape! (larger)
Everything before that — the old Nikon/Kodachrome international Fortune 500 annual report stuff (or taking over the dining room to shoot an $85 catalog shot using six sheets of 4x5) was done before I got my $4000 Kurzweil-Xerox greyscale scanner and my “loaded” dual-floppy Mac II with 8mb of RAM and its 40mb hard drive. But come on over and I’ll crank up the slide projector!
Hopefully that should put some minds at ease — I’ve been around the block as they say — but I’m most jazzed about my next shoot, after which we’ll be returning to our regularly scheduled program and pretty pictures.
After 25 years I think I am doing my best work right… now.