Approximately 20 years ago I was contracted by Saatchi and Saatchi to do a 20 minute short film on a multi-billion dollar corporation in California.

I had a relatively small budget of $350,000. My first job was to hire a production company. I also hired a co-director. My responsibility was producer and co-director. Everything was in order and three days before the shoot, the director was called out of town on another project. He was replaced by Charles Rudnick. Even though I had no relationship with Charles, but he was the consummate professional. There wasn’t anything he couldn’t do hands on himself. You couldn’t get a better film maker in that particular situation. When the crew was scheduled to go from Los Angeles to San Francisco, the first director wanted to come back and I said “no way Charles is going to complete the film with me” and that’s exactly what we did. Thus a long, prosperous relationship started. Charles and I have a mutual respect for each other and we’ve worked on several projects over the years. Effectively we’ve become interchangeable. Okay, maybe I’m stretching it a little bit. In many ways, he’s drop dead fabulous.

Charles’ wife, Carmen, is the owner/chef of Tommaso’s, one of the finest & well-known Italian restaurants in San Francisco. On any given day, you can walk into Tommaso’s and see John Waters, Nicholas Cage, Francis Ford Coppola, or even my dear friend, Bill Shatner and his lovely wife Liz. I just received a phone call from Charles to tell me that his mother passed away. She was a very special lady. Forgot to mention…Charles’ father was a physicist at UCLA.

Charles sent me the above photo of his parents.

Isadore Rudnick (his dad)

Mildred Rudnick Obituary: Mildred Rudnick’s Obituary by the Los …

Under normal circumstances I would not go out of my way to read a book about physics. But this book absolutely intrigued me and peaked my interest.
 I was familiar with Michio Kaku because of his presence on the Science Channel. Another good decision on my part. I’m into the second read. You have to know most photographers have limited vocabulary. Michio makes what initially seems very complicated very simple to understand. Sometimes very frightening, But that is the future. We all need to prepare for the future. An absolutely great book, a must read, just joking about my fellow photographers vocabulary. And while I’m talking about books, don’t forget Joe DiMaggio: The Long Vigil by Jerome Charyn and Pete Hamill’s new book Tabloid City.

Boy, I’m starting to feel like Oprah. Last but not least remember the Quote for Yogi Berra “The future is not what it used to be”.

To All The Ships At Sea

You’ve heard me Talk about my dear friend  Bill DeSmedt, the author of Singularity and former CIA Agent. “Oops, sorry about that”. Bill came over to my studio with two colleagues from India, Sandeep Koka and Samuel Arun Kumar Kudumula.

They all work for Alliance Global Services , and were in my area, performing a three-week evaluation of testing systems and procedures for a client in the healthcare space. One of the reasons of the visit was Sam is an amateur photographer and he wanted to see not only the studio but also the gallery. I think both Sam and Sandeep were shocked that both JoAnne and I were contributing photographers to the Times Journal Of Photography in Mumbai. It never ceases to amaze me how photography can bring people together, that under normal circumstances would never have had the opportunity to meet.

IT’S ALL GOOD. I think everybody had a good time and I’ve enjoyed the visit. They have an open invitation to return to the learning center the next time they are visiting the USA.

By the way, I strongly recommend that you click on the link and look at the short film on LexisNexis (http://www.allianceglobalservices.com). This is the future.

Photo ©Brian Struble

There is an old adage that the student becomes the teacher and the teacher becomes the student, or something like that. Brian started out as a student and I believe went to four workshops. One day I had lost my assistant due to a conflict in scheduling and Brian was kind enough to offer his expertise, not only as an assistant, or second shooter but also as an IT expert. He is well accomplished across the board and when he assists, more times than not, the workshops tend to be better. Brian invited me to a bicycle race but unfortunately, I had an assignment on the west coast. He sent me some photos that he shot. I was so blown away that I incorporated some of his photos into a presentation I did for Adorama. My studio manger passed a comment something to the effect of “why would I put his photos in my presentation” and my answer was “his photos are great and why not?” I’m not the end all of all photography.

Photo ©Brian Struble

One day I was teaching a class and I came up with a saying, standardization and simplification. To be quite honest, I don’t know if I heard it from someone else, or I actually made it up. What do I mean by standardization and simplification? By this I mean, know your equipment, keep it to an absolute minimum, make your insurance photographs, and once you’ve nailed that then you can experiment. Less is more. Simple, straightforward, composition: it will never fail you. When I visited Japan I was initially very surprised when I visited a Japanese garden. There was nothing there. The anthropologist I was with, took me by the hand and showed me what was there. Very simple, basic, and to the point. Once you see it, you’ll never forget it. It’s all about visual literacy. So, go out and make some great photos.

Signing off,

Joe D.