Steve Maller Photography

I had the pleasure of photographing Miss Savannah’s bat mitzvah a few months ago, and I got this lovely note from her mom. I am embarrassed sometimes at this kind of compliment, but nevertheless I’d like to share it with you.

One of the best decisions we made was hiring Steve Maller to photograph our daughter’s bat mitzvah. His unique photojournalism style captured the many powerful emotions and special moments of our day.

During our evening celebration, Steve created a slideshow in which he kept adding new photographs throughout the night. Many guests commented how special it was to see real time the journey we all traveled together on that day from the first prayer to the last dance. He brought us all together through the moments we shared.

I jumped onto the Aperture 3 upgrade bandwagon as soon as it was announced because I was anxious to take advantage of some of the long-awaited new features. But one that I didn’t expect was the ability to do “local adjustments” using brushes in Aperture’s characteristic non-destructive way.

It didn’t take long for me to grok the brushes thing. It’s incredibly cool, although there are some performance issues with them right now. But that could also be the result of me skipping a few hardware upgrade cycles. I’m still laboring away on the first Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro.

Here is a photograph that I took of Walter (my dog) on the beach a few weeks ago. I love this photo, but it has a huge range of contrast, and I thought I would play with using the Shadows and Highlights tools and their new Brushes augmentation. When you click on the photo, the Quicktime animation will first show you the original, then a version with Highlights and Shadows both set to about 40%. Finally, a version with the same amount of adjustment, but applied locally to the water and sky (Highlights) and parts of Walter (Shadows). What do you think?

I’m really excited to take my workflow to the next level with my favorite photography software!

My dear friends Gary and Liz got engaged last night in the old fashioned way, with a modern, rock ‘n roll twist. See below for the technical nitty gritty!

[youtube J9gVCcr4kH0 853 480]

Here are some technical details on what I had to do. I originally planned to film this with two cameras from the sound booth. I was going to use a Canon HG10 HD camcorder for a wide shot, and use my 5D Mark II with my 70-200/2.8 for a closeup (it’s a small club). But when I got there, I faced a couple of complications. First of all, the club was so dark that my HG10 (which is pretty decent WRT sensitivity) could barely register a picture. Focus was hunting badly, too. Secondly (and more seriously), I quickly realized that once the crowd filled in the floor in front of the stage, my cameras in the back of the hall would be useless, especially when Gary got down on one knee, as we planned for him to do.

So I had to think fast, and here’s what I did.

My Beacktek XLR adapter which was originally on the 5D Mark II with my Sennheiser shotgun and a feed from the mixing board was switched over to the HG10 where it would simply record the audio, knowing that the video was going to be all but useless.

And as for the 5D Mark II, I decided I was going to have to charge the stage with a wide-angle lens and take my chances at super high ISO on built-in mic, and sync the audio later. I wish I had a second Beachtek box, but this is the first time I saw the value in that. Anyway, I used the 16-35/2.8 even though I would have preferred my 35/1.4 because I was worried the 35mm end wouldn’t be wide enough if I was right at the front of the stage. I pre-set the camera on Manual with 1/30, f2.8 and ISO 6400. Like I said, it was super dark. Fortunately, as you can see from the resulting video, it basically worked. The first 30 seconds or so of video are super jumpy because I was literally knocking people out of my way to get to the stage. I was originally told the proposal would be before their encore, but as the show started I was told it would be in the middle of the set, and by then people were already smashed up against the stage 20 or so deep. Sigh.

My last challenge was syncing the audio from the two sources, but g-d bless PluralEyes. That was simple (after I retimed the 29.97 audio from the HG10 to match the 30fps from the 5D Mark II).

I’m quite pleased with how this came out, despite all the shortcomings and challenges. It was a magic moment, and I’d say I managed to bring it home in one piece. Actually in several pieces, but I put Humpty Dumpty together again in Final Cut Pro.

I am an Apple Aperture user, and have been ever since version 1.0 was released. Aperture is a terrific tool which is responsible in many ways for the great efficiencies I have achieved in my photo production. It allows me to work quickly and accurately, gives me a good number of editing tools, both for individual photos and en masse changes.

I currently have close to 100,000 photos in my main Aperture library on my studio computer, and I have anywhere from 10-20,000 photos on my Macbook Pro library, which includes my family pictures.

Every once in a while, though, Aperture has a hiccup that causes me trouble. Most notably, I’ve had cases where I’ve tried to move projects between computers, upgraded hard drive, or even upgraded the OS X on my computers. In these cases, I’ve had to perform surgery on my Aperture installation to avoid doing a complete rebuild of my library. Once I did try to do a complete rebuild, and my computer was tied up for almost 30 hours.

The symptoms most commonly associated with Aperture database problems are:

• Incorrect or corrupt thumbnail images
• Error messages about missing Master files
• Inability to export versions
• Inability to locate Master files
• Errors ordering prints and/or books

So, I have developed a set of tools that I regularly use to diagnose and repair my Aperture library and projects. I can help you to do this, too. If you have internet access and are running OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), I can use OS X “Screen Sharing” to access your computer and do this remotely. Most database and library repairs take less than an hour, and many can be completed in a matter of minutes.

If you’d like to hire me to do this for you, please contact me via email so that we can discuss your situation. The initial consultation is free. Up to 1 hour of repair work performed remotely over the Internet is $100. More complicated repairs will be estimated in advance.

Good luck, and happy shooting!

Steve

This is my brother and sister-in-law Laurence and Katie’s son Ben. Ben’s sister Anna and I were playing with him during a family brunch and he was darting under the table. I stuck my camera down under the table and took this picture blind (meaning I just pointed the camera and pushed the shutter button).

I didn’t do anything to it other than convert it to Black and White in Aperture, the software I use for my pictures.

This is not a perfect photograph, technically speaking. It is slightly out of focus, the background is completely blown out and over-exposed, one of Ben’s hands is cut off, and his hair is messy.

But of all the photographs I’ve taken this year, (around 30,000 is my guess), I think this is the best one so far. Why? Because it captures a moment in a life that might have otherwise gone missing. Because I love little Ben. He is warming up to his Uncle Steve and just a few weeks ago I never would have gotten this photograph. And because I feel like I could hang this picture on my wall and never tire of looking at it.

I thank g-d every day that I get the opportunity to do what I do with a camera, and I feel so richly rewarded. I just wanted to share that with you, my friends and family.

Happy Holidays.
Steve

One of my clients needed to do a photo layout for a magazine ad/editorial, and I thought our kitchen would be a great location for it. And our old house rocked the shoot. Doreen did a wonderful job of helping me clean up the kitchen, and made some great suggestions that ended up helping me a lot. It was fun WFH today.

The product name is deliberately blurred out in the photo below. And the large black and white photo in the front (mostly blurry) is actually a photo of my brother Dan and me!

I am shooting portraits of the members of the Burlingame High School basketball program. These first photos are of the 2009-2010 varsity boys. My son Sam’s a member of the JV team, which I’ll photograph soon. The “THUNDER” in the title is a reference to the GS Warriors’ mascot and his theme song by AC/DC. Go Panthers!

As a photographer, I have had the benefit of learning from some true masters of my art, both directly and indirectly. I am very fortunate for this. But I have learned not only from the masters, but from you. And you. And her. And him. And hundreds of people who have unwittingly taught me something about how to extend my vision, how to see better. Thank you to all of you. And here I present the first of many installments of photographs I’ve made of so many of you practicing your art.

I have found a beautiful old industrial space right across the street from where I’ve been for the last year and a half, and I am so excited. We’re mostly moved in, although there is a ton of unpacking and stuff to do. Here are a couple of photos of the raw space before we moved anything in there.

I’m working on assignment in Cannes in the south of France this week. I was given the opportunity to ride around on one of the Yahoo! “purple pedals” bikes. These whizzy retro machines are equipped with a solar-powered GPS and webcam, and when they’re underway, they take a photo and relay their position once per minute. You can see the route I took, as well as some of the photos the bike took here: http://purplepedals.com/

Yes, I do this kind of thing for a living. Silly, huh?

I made a 9-minute HD video which chronicles my ride along the beach. Here it is.