Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Joe Saunders, Chairman and CEO of Visa

This portrait is an outtake from a story running in Forbes this month. Pretty nice guy, he reminded me of one of my uncles in Detroit on my Mom's side.


Joe Saunders, Chairman and CEO of Visa; © Michael Sugrue

Monday, October 27, 2008

High times in the High Sierra


High Sierra, © Michael Sugrue


The wife and I went up to Bear Valley to visit a friend this weekend. The drive out was insanely gorgeous. Pretty much car-commercial scenic west of Stockton. Turns out that, for a blue state, it gets pretty red in some of those towns.

We had beautiful, warm weather and cool nights. Perfect. Despite the earlier post, we spent the majority of our time outdoors, hiking around Ebbetts Pass, and enjoying my hot and spicy mushroom salsa. As well as the requisite high-altitude hangover.

The haze in these photos is real. The Forest Service was conducting their own controlled burn several miles east of us. Can't wait to go back up this winter.


High Sierra, © Michael Sugrue

High Sierra, © Michael Sugrue

High Sierra, © Michael Sugrue

Also, I just got the green light on a new project I'm pretty excited about. A couple months of back-and-forth and it's finally a go. Could be the start of something pretty good.

Random travel photo


© Michael Sugrue

Good times

8500 feet up in the Sierras + wine + old random boardgame = good times in Bear Valley.

If you don't know, you better aks somebody.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Silicon Valley or sweat shop

Here are some shots of my assistant Kelly at a shoot a little while back. I finally got around to emailing them to her.

She kinda looks like she's making Gucci knock-offs for a nickel a day.


© Michael Sugrue

© Michael Sugrue

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Cinematography for the masses

Forget low-priced HD camcorders and even high-quality cell phone cameras, this site is the gateway to a new way to make movies so cheap, it's free! Camera blocking, lighting, and, choreography have never been easier.

xtranormal.com - "If you can type, you can make movies." And with the Lego people, too! Despite the animatronic voices and stiff movements, it's quite a start.



Via Prep, Shoot, Post.

Friday, October 3, 2008

4x6s

It's that time again...

Defending your copyright

There are a few other posts out there that deal with defending your copyright amid the potential Orphan Works Act.

Rob Haggart mentioned the site mygazines.com, which basically shows scanned versions of many magazines free of charge. This spurred debate on how freely available photographer's (and other creative) content is bound to become with changing technology. Apparently the magazines fought back.

As we know, the cover price of a magazine is a drop in the bucket for their revenue, while the real money is made on the advertising. I'm not sure why publishing companies would be upset about mygazines.com. As I see it, it simply puts more eyeballs on the pages. If the publishers could properly document it, they would certainly raise their ad rates.

Maybe mygazines.com didn't want to share that data, so the publishers did the next best thing and propped up a copyright claim to get them to stop. It follows YouTube and Yahoo settling similar claims. It seems the dam is leaking. How long the bubblegum will hold remains to be seen.