IN THE LOUPE: Albert Watson
Home/studio: New York City
Published books: "Strip Search: Las Vegas" (2010); "UFO: Unified Fashion Objectives" (2010); "Albert Watson" (2007); "Maroc" (1998); "Cyclops" (1994)
Recent awards/honors: Platinum Award for 2011, Graphis; The Centenary Medal, The Royal Photographic Society, 2010; named one of the 20 Most Influential Photographers of All Time, Photo District News, 2010; inducted into the Scottish Fashion Awards Hall of Fame, 2006; Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Advertising Photography, 2006; Grammy Award for Mason Profitt album, "Come and Gone," 1975 ; three Andy Awards, the Advertising Club of New York...
Albert Watson
No Slowing Down: The peripatetic master of celebrity, portrait, still life, fashion and landscape photography is still in constant motion after 40 years, always in search of the next arresting image
Most photographers quickly settle into a specialty, one genre or subject of photography that they are especially good at and for which they become well known. We don't expect people to be good at a lot of things. We expect professionals to....
IN THE LOUPE: Melvin Sokolsky
Home and Studio: Los Angeles (sokolsky.com). Represented by the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. After moving his studio to Los Angeles in the 1970s, he found that his work — especially his commercial work — took him all over the world, so he eventually let the studio go. His present studio is in his home, and includes a custom-designed south-facing balcony with the ability to filter and block light.
Family Life: Lives with his wife, Button, married for many years. They have a son, Bing, a respected cinematographer whose credits include "NYPD Blue" and "Numbers."...
Melvin Sokolsky: A Specific Palette
For more than half a century, photographer Melvin Sokolsky has blazed a trail across the fashion, celebrity and advertising world with his uniquely personal point of view.
Melvin Sokolsky was 18 years old, on his way to look at a studio to share in New York. He was with his girlfriend — now his wife — Button. The door on the seventh floor was opened by "a balding, chubbyish man with a little tummy, and he had a very thick accent. And I was like a gymnast. I looked at him as a guy who doesn't take care of himself. That was my mentality at that time. All sorts of criteria, of judgment, suspicion; I had it all."
The man asked if he could photograph Sokolsky's girlfriend. While he was setting up, Sokolsky wandered around the studio, where there were matted prints...
Erik Almas: Unlimited Horizons
With a passion for travel, Erik Almas expands the boundaries of the typical studio photographer, often including sweeping landscape elements in his commercial images.
It's December, and Erik Almas is a long way from home. For most of his life, Almas called Norway home; now San Francisco claims that honor, but at this moment, Almas is learning to scuba dive in Hawai'i for an underwater shoot. His voice is giddy with excitement. "I'm living my dream," he says. "This is amazing."
When talking with Almas, the word "amazing" comes up a lot. His career is...
Dr. Rob Kurtzman: Photography as a Second Career
A look at a professional who reached the top of his industry before switching gears to lead a new life behind a camera lens.
Rob Kurtzman, a forensic pathologist living in Grand Junction, Colo., has been practicing for more than 20 years. But in college, "it was tough deciding between photography or going to medical school," he says.
He was introduced to photography by his cousin, and received his first camera when he was 8 years old. "It was a Kodak Hawkeye, and it used 127 rollfilm," Kurtzman remembers. "I developed my first roll of film in our basement at home using an FR developing kit. It came with a daylight developing tank, three 5x7 developing trays, a contact print box, a few chemicals, a safelight and some paper tongs for the trays. I was hooked.
From then on, it seemed that I always had a camera...
Jim Dines: Photography as a Second Career
A look at a professional who reached the top of his industry before switching gears to lead a new life behind a camera lens.
When he was first introduced to photography, taking a picture was something just short of miraculous to Jim Dines. "As a child, I was fascinated that I could reproduce an image," he says. This philosophy made him see each photograph as a one-of-a-kind slice of life.
Dines grew up in picturesque San Francisco and started out thinking of photography as his first career choice. "I had a hard time making money at it, so I had to develop a new career," he says. "If there were enough money in it, I would have been a full-time photographer."
Instead, he developed a very successful career as a financial analyst. He still publishes a financial newsletter, The Dines Letter, but his love...
Dr. Stuart Green: Photography as a Second Career
A look at a professional who reached the top of his industry before switching gears to lead a new life behind a camera lens.
Stuart Green is not ready to give up his day job as an orthopedic surgeon just yet. In the meantime, however, he's content to have dual careers as a surgeon and a photographer. After all, his interest in photography preceded his career as a physician.
"My father had a darkroom in our house when I was growing up," says Green. "I started developing pictures when I was six years old." He even processed his own film for many years, starting with Anscochrome, a transparency film from the 1950s. He later used E-6 processing and now works with digital photography.
In his medical practice, Green has authored or contributed to 15 books and more than a hundred...
Hal Eastman: Photography as a Second Career
A look at a professional who reached the top of his industry before switching gears to lead a new life behind a camera lens.
Photography opened a whole new avenue of learning and excitement for me," says Hal Eastman, a prominent businessman who divides his time between Boise, Idaho, and Carmel, Calif.
Eastman graduated from Stanford Business School and enjoyed a long, diverse career as an executive in various industries before retiring to devote most of his time to photography. "Eighty percent of what I do now is photography," he says. "I'm doing projects that I really care about."
After working hard as an executive through his mid-40s, Eastman says, he decided that he wanted to do and be something different. "I had in mind that I wanted to explore the artistic part of life instead of business at that point," he says. "At first I didn't think of photography as an art...
Frank Ockenfels 3: Out of the Darkness
His spooky, brooding images sometimes scare people, but this Los Angeles photographer has become one of the most in-dmand portraitist of A-list stars.
Frank Ockenfels had a problem early on in his career. His unusual work, with an emphasis on spooky, dark images, scared some people.
It was a real issue: For some time, he actually had trouble getting assignments to photograph women. "It was a label I had for years," says the upbeat and forthright Ockenfels. "My work was seen as too moody, too much toward the dark side of photography."
Working the dark end of the street was a deliberate decision on his part, one born of necessity. "I had no choice but to take this stand in the first five years," he explains. "Everything I did was a 15-minute shoot, no matter how much time I was promised."
Being limited to 15 minutes wasn't the end of it. The bigger the subject, the harder it often was to get their cooperation, even under the lights...
