May 10, 2009
You are What you Eat!
photo © Kat Caverly 2009
Tom has been shooting still lifes working in our natural light studio And this afternoon at sunset the light broke through and made magic...before "magic hour".
Side Note: Magic Hour is a movie term for that hour after the sun goes below the horizon; dusk. It is a very warm light and was directional from the side. A few choice clouds moved in at just the right moment and everything went soft.
Tom added a fill card and I shot at 4000ºK and 6000ºK. With some masking and sharpening and burning and increasing contrast selectively; viola!
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May 3, 2009
My friend Rosie
photo © Kat Caverly 2009
Rosie is my "circus kitty" so all I had to do was place her on the stool and turn on the lights!
I decided to warm up the "film" and shot at 5000ºK using 5500ºK flashtubes. This is classic beauty lighting. This piebald feline is a classic beauty. I am shooting with a Nikkor 105mm micro lense which is a beautiful piece of optics. it is perfect for portraits of small subjects.
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April 19, 2009
The Ravages of Time...Exposure: Papercams
photo©Kat Caverly 2009
Tom has started to shoot Papercams again and it is so very exciting.
For this shoot, Tom is shooting with a Mole 2K with strategically placed gobos and reflectors. I decided to shoot the process because it is just fascinating. For my shoot, I am using a Nikon D700 and decided to warm up the tungsten light a wee bit by shooting at 4000ºK, The result is a nice warmth on the skull while maintaining the cold metal of the chain.
I am shooting at ISO 1000 while the Papercams have an effective speed around ISO 2; yes TWO!! So his exposure time for his first test was 30 minutes; the time of this particular hourglass! And he wants 1-1.5 stops more in his final exposure!! More to come. Take a look over at Papercams to see how he does it.
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January 3, 2009
On the Set with Archimedes
photo © Kat Caverly 2009
A month in the making, the set of my latest portrait is a tribute to my husband and partner, Thomas Hudson Reeve. Besides bringing Archimedes to life, Tom built the set and did the special effects, and was my lighting assistant.
Using Barbarino's print as our inspiration, our goal was to capture the deep thought of the great Archimedes, as well as the dramatic lighting and feeling of space and place.
Starting with an overall super-soft fill of only f4 (8 foot Octodome behind me), we built the lighting. The main light is a Speedotron beauty dish with a 20 degree honeycomb grid set to f16. The background light is flagged to throw a window shape, f22. Finally we bounced a softened 102 head off a show card as a fill for the foreground, f8. Exposure was set at f18 at 1/15th of a second (for the fire in the torche).
I am using a Nikon D700, white balance set for 5700ºK, post processed in Photoshop CS4.
I did the character styling; wardrobe, make-up and hair. Tom was the decorator and did the shopping for all of the props including a magnificent chair. He has was the prop master and custom built the fire effect for the torche.
The results are very exciting! We make a great team and with all of the skills and experience Tom has with stage craft and photography, I have a team equal to many many professionals all wrapped up into a dynamic duo!
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December 29, 2008
White Christmas Dreams Do Come True!
photo © Kat Caverly 2008
We had the whitest of Christmases and the snow was magical. You could actually see individual SNOWFLAKES in the drifts!
The image above is a micro photograph of a miniature ornament on a live baby pine tree. The tree was naturally flocked by our second snowstorm 2 days later. Again there was the magic of a snow light enough that you could see individual snowflakes with the naked eye. That made last minute Christmas shopping even merrier and bright!
We decorated the BIG TREE on Christmas Eve. Unwrapping each of the ornaments in my collection is like opening endless presents. It takes about 4 man-hours, or maybe a bit longer. I take the opportunity t really look at and feel each of my prizes. And this year we spent a day lighting and doing a beauty photo of this tree.
I never thought about how hard it is to photograph a Christmas Tree and capture its personality and how it looks to the mind's eye, how the tree feels to my heart as much as it looks to my eyes.
Next, how do we capture the start of a new year?
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October 15, 2008
Open for Business
KAT CAVERLY, photographer
The studio is ready; check! Have MINI, will travel, check! We are ready for location shoots! And for the last two weeks I have been preparing the new website!
After much deliberation and remembering the advice that Victor Skrebneski gave me while I was working in Chicago, "only show your best work". I think this is excellent advice and so far I have only included 6 photos and one is from my last project. I must admit that I am doing my best work ever now!
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September 29, 2008
KAT CAVERLY Beauté
Thomas Hudson Reeve photographed by Kat Caverly
Looking beautiful is all about the lighting. Looking ugly is all about the lighting too. BEing funny as Tom shows us in the test above, well is all about personality!
When we have a choice we choose beauty lighting. And now we can bring the studio with us on location with the right equipment (and the right assistant).
I worked on the specifics of the equipment and the lighting ratio for a couple of weeks and then discovered Lastolite! lastolite has come out with the HiLite which is a softbox that can be used as a background making a High Key beauty lighting a bit easier and totally portable. The 6'x7' version folds down to a 40" circle. WOW. It takes a bit to master the folding back up but thanks to the brilliance of my esteemed colleague Thomas Hudson Reeve, he was able to get it done in under 3 attempts with just a bit of practice.
The key here (excuse the pun) is SOFT. I chose a extra large softbox 48"x72" for the fill light and after much testing I chose a Speedotron beauty dish shooting through an ultra white umbrella (for the shape on the eyes) for the Key light. the key to the Key is soft soft soft.
The HiLite serves as the background in this scenario and gives an fabulous cleanliness to the whole look and I only needed 48" between the background and the model. Overall I just needed 20 feet of space to setup and get a studio look while shooting outdoors!
Special thanks to international make-up artist Susan Sterling who achieved that perfect young, fresh and beautiful make-up, and I couldn't do any of this with grace without Tom Reeve.
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September 21, 2008
On the Road Again
Location shoots! Such excitement. I have to admit that things have gotten so much better in the last 30 years. Strobes are faster and smaller. Softboxes have gotten quite creative and truly portable. I just got my 6x7foot HiLite from Lastolite and I am so enamored. Fabulous!
And in this age of eBay it is easy and cheap to get a full lighting kit. But it all had to fit in the boot of my MINI!! I am hoping to add a faster, lighter power pack before the end of the week but I am ready now. I have a vintage Speedotron 2400ws pack with an old anvil case. Really brings me back!
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June 8, 2005
Smile with Affection
By DEANNA DAHLSAD
The Photocartoonist combines her way with people & her way with the camera to capture the honest humor that lies inside us all. Each photograph has the feel of a snapshot. You know, those quickly snapped pics you take at birthday parties, summer picnics, & family reunions, capturing folks as they are, not necessarily as they wish they'd be...
These are the photos everyone saves, puts in the family album & takes great delight in looking at over & over again. “Oh, remember when Uncle Earl did this?” Someone else asks “Where's the one of Sue being so silly?” and more than one voice retorts “Which one? She's silly in all of them!”
This is what Kat Caverly, The Photocartoonist, does: she makes folks laugh out loud & smile with affection at total strangers. So even though you do not know these people in these photographs, you look at the them and feel as if the they were taken at your family gathering – one silly moment after another caught on film that the subjects will never be able to live down. Each person seems as real to you as your own crazy Uncle Earl, and your silly sister Sue – even if they like to pretend otherwise.
Posted by photocartoonist at 7:58 PM
May 22, 2005
Interview with The Photocartoonist
photo by Thomas Hudson Reeve ©Kat Caverly Enterprises
Imagine you are walking down the street. There is nothing special about you today.. You are waiting for the bus, running out for a jug of milk, taking your dog for a walk, doing ordinary things on an ordinary day...
A woman rushes towards you, with a huge grin & a camera, waving a piece of paper & asks you to sign a release. She then proceeds to ask you to make a silly face, but not just any silly face: ’Your favorite silly face that you had when you were 11 years old.’
What do you do?
Well, if you are like most of the people that Kat Caverly, the Photocartoonist, meets, you sign & pose baby!
Completely disarming, thoroughly engaging, she romances the silly out of you. Yes, romances. Her joy is contagious, her smile continuous as she poses you this way & that, complimenting you on your ability, your gift, for making people laugh. There you are, in public, exposing your goofy self to a stranger, with no money changing hands. Then, she leaves.
Do you feel dirty afterwards? Ashamed? Embarrassed? Do you experience the same feelings as after a one-night-stand? Is it worse as you were ’doing it’ in broad daylight on a public street -- in front of a camera no less?!
Most of Kat’s subjects don’t. In fact, most love seeing photographs of themselves playing on a greeting card! That is, until some ‘friend’ rushes over, card in hand, to tell them they should complain. Suddenly the subject is no longer seeing their ability to make others smile as a gift, and instead feels they are owed something for being the joke. ‘Someone else thinks they are an asshole, and they stop feeling the joy’ says Kat. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen often. "For every one who make noise, 10 more love it."
But what does happen when these few unhappy people come forward? Caverly turns them over to her attorney . (Remember, she ran over with that piece of paper for you to sign?) She always gets an intellectual property release ‘in perpetuity’ signed, so legally there is no problem.
But it still bothers Caverly. She is sensitive to the criticism, but it is clear from how she talks that she is not just worried about having her work seen in a negative light. She is hurt that someone who had had so much fun & was enjoying their own ability to be foolish, now just feels like a fool.
"There have been many days when I decided I would quit. Just stop. But as I turned around, there was this perfect opportunity, and I dashed over to start it all again." After all, she is Kat Caverly, Photocartoonist. This is not only what ‘she does‘ but her passion.
But what is a Photocartoonist?
"I make fun of people" is the simple answer Caverly gives to most people. It is really too simple an answer. However, if you prompt Caverly for a little more, she will give a great giggle & a lot more information. Delighted at the chance to talk more about her work, and being as gregarious as they come, she gives me more information than I can jot down.
Basically, the name ’photocartoonist’ was given to her as her photography sort of defies traditional categorization. When viewing her portfolio, ad agencies stated her work was not for advertising, to try magazines. Magazines felt it not editorial, but photo-journalism. The newspapers saw her work as commercial... And so it went. In order to make the most of the uniqueness of her photos, she now uses the coined ‘photocartoonist’ to brand her work.
How did her photographs come to be so unique?
As a child she was continually photographed by her amateur photographer Father. She names him as her early inspiration. She also fondly remembers her Grandfather’s gift of gab -- ‘He could have a joyous conversation with a rock!‘ As she was often in Grandfather‘s tow, this is surely where she learned how to disarm her subjects with her gush of warm, infectious conversation!
Caverly gives her background in behavioral psychology credit for creating what she does. "Originally I studied to understand what makes people tick, and to control them. Now my work is an exploration in human good nature."
But, if behavioral psychology is behind ‘what she sees,’ then her 27 years experience working with chemical/optical photography must be credited with ‘how she gets it.’
Specifically noteworthy:
* Eight years as an apprentice in commercial & fashion photography taught her how to completely pose & contrive a photograph. (This is also where she first began to build her humor skills to loosen up anxious models/actors with her ‘silly face’ gambit.)
* One year working in a color lab printing film gave her an eye for how a snap-shot looks. So even though her photos are completely set-up, they have the feel of a snap-shot.
Her subjects:
"I can stand on any street corner in mid-town Manhattan and have 20 people come to me" says Kat. She may start out the day with a theme, for example the ’Pick Your Nose’ series, but sometimes, she just sees something, and seizes the opportunity.
She prefers working with folks on the street,. The spontaneous ‘meet on the street’ is more conducive to play than an appointment to show up at a studio. She works with children & animals, but finds it much more difficult as communication is so crucial to setting up the shot.
However, one of her favorite photos is of Buster, her cat. Perhaps it was the glory in finally getting a great shot. After Buster destroyed the set by spilling bubbles, thrashing with decorations & scratching her husband’s arms as he tried to hold Buster in place, Buster finally turned & looked right at Kat. It truly is a photo that could not have been achieved with Kat setting it up -- this creativity was all Buster. Or maybe, she loves the photograph because she loves telling the story... Did I mention, she loves to talk?
Kat also does self-portraits. ‘I am my favorite subject!’ she coos, but clarifies that this comment comes from her alter-ego, ‘Shirley.’ (Shirley’s pics are my favorites too!) Now her husband, Thomas Hudson Reeve, does most of the photos of her.
"The ability to make a fool of yourself in front of others releases you" says Caverly.
And I can’t think of a more fitting way to finish the interview.
An Article by Deanna Dahlsad
reprinted with permission
Posted by photocartoonist at 8:06 PM | Comments (4)
May 19, 2005
Portrait of the Artist
©photo by Kat Caverly, Self Portrait 1978
The most amazing thing about being a photographer is how complete the memories are when I look at my photographs. I remember every little thing, but particularly the feelings I had while I was making the photographs.
I have been doing self-portraits since I became a professional photographer and this is one of my favorites. Taken with daylight E4 transparency film in tungsten light, the yellow cast is natural. Seeing these portraits today made me yearn for film for the first time in many years.
©photo by Kat Caverly, Blue Boy 1976
I was fascinated by color infrared film and used it in a series of landscape photography. The result was a blue cast to the skin in daylight and an over all mystery to the portrait. Photographing people did not seem to come natural to me and for a few years I stuck to photographing things, places. But this session really spoke to me and from the time of this portrait I began an apprenticeship as a fashion photographer.
©photo by Kat Caverly, Silence a Dream 1977
I often saw models in unusual settings, the juxtaposition of beauty and decay, the magic of the interaction. I started to photograph ordinary people in the same manner as the fashion models. After all models were real people too.
I went on to specialize in Beauty photography from 1978-1980 and when I arrived in new York City in 1981 I took my camera to the streets. I knew my vision would be best expressed in the faces of everyday people in everyday situations. But I always used what I learned from my work in fashion and beauty to bring out the best in all of my subjects.
Posted by photocartoonist at 11:10 PM
October 22, 2004
Don't Fight for Peace
Don't Fight...for peace
"You don't FIGHT FOR peace," a wise man once said, " You DON'T FIGHT for peace." Interesting words; interesting concept. Peace. Is peace even possible?
Posted by photocartoonist at 2:29 PM | Comments (2)
August 27, 2004
String Theories
A Fibonacci Sequence Spiraling Geometrically through Years of a Life
Nothing can be said about photographer Thomas Hudson Reeve that hasn't been better said by himself. And to describe his photography in words would require a library and it would still not begin to do it justice.
I have chosen one of my favorite photographs to illustrate this article, Ice Roof but I am also amazed by his Pigeon series.
Taken from his roof in Hell's Kitchen, on the westside of Manhattan, Thomas snuck into the midst of literally hundreds of the sleeping birds before sunrise.
He is currently working on a series about clouds and as with his other projects, we will see again that Thomas Hudson Reeve sees the extraordinary in the very ordinary.
Posted by photocartoonist at 10:30 PM | Comments (1)
August 17, 2004
The Ultimate Cartoon: People
It Takes All Kinds
And all of them eventually make their way to New York City. A close look at the work that I do on the streets of Manhattan will reveal a study in human good nature. I ask people to play with me and , of course, I get their permission to take their picture.
Photographing people is my passion, my art, my obsession. The kids I shoot for the greeting cards, even the animals and the models, I do that for commercial reasons. The people are a field study; a fascination that started with a degree in behavioral psychology.
There is something about the camera, and my personality, that lends itself to making people comfortable. Most people do not like to be photographed; I understand this. Personally I love to be photographed and I love looking at pictures of people, including myself.
I have been a professional photographer since 1976 and one of my purest joys is to look at my archives. This ever growing collection represents my life as an artist, my unique point of view literally. And now that I have gone completely digital, I have found a freedom that transcends film, trandscends the financial limitations that use to inhibit my work. Truly, my answer to everything is "Take a picture of it!"
Posted by photocartoonist at 11:55 PM | Comments (1)
August 14, 2004
Rubber Duckie you are the ONE
Making bath time fun since childhood!
Take a close look at this little one. Is he strangling this hapless duck? And he's doing it with a smile! You will find a fun collection of posters here. Check them all out!
Posted by photocartoonist at 10:46 PM
August 11, 2004
The Shades of Liberty
It takes all kinds; all sizes, all colors, all shades. America is more than willing to wear their red, white and blues on their sleeves...or on their accessories! Ain't marketing patriotic?!
ShadesofLiberty.com features galleries of photographs of New Yorkers wearing a particular pair of sunglasses. All walks of lives, from all over the world, were ready to play with me and show their spirit.
Now all rise for the National Anthem....
Posted by photocartoonist at 9:10 PM
August 2, 2004
Pinhole Paper Cameras
He has been called a genius and reading his autobiography I tend to agree with these reviews.
The photographer, Thomas Hudson Reeve, says it best:
"The modern camera is a wonderful thing, but it's nice to remember how simple the mechanism can be. You can strip away the technology until there is little left but the abstraction on which the machine is based. A simple manipulation of space, a few materials, and a couple of hand tools and the magic (physics) is at your fingertips without sophisticated engineering."
Posted by photocartoonist at 10:50 PM