I’m excited to announce that I have just joined up with Wonderful Machine, a web portal and photographers’ representative dedicated to connecting art buyers with photographers. Part sourcebook, part agent, Wonderful Machine actively promotes its photographers through its website, print ads, direct mail, email promos, and portfolio showings. It has managed to hold buyers attention in a crowded dissonant marketplace by carefully selecting its members and promoting them only within areas where Wonderful Machine sees a deep proficiency.

When you sign up with Wonderful Machine, as with any rep, they decide how you will be marketed and which images will be used. Users of the web portal can search by city or specialty, or contact Wonderful Machine directly to find the best fits for their projects.

It was great to see that Wonderful Machine’s photo editor saw the depth in my work to include me in five categories: architecture, corporate, institutional, landscape, and fine art.

My page at Wonderful Machine.

Wonderful Machine’s home page.

Wonderful Machine has a great blog, too. Well worth a look and a subscription.

Rounding out today’s trifecta of site updates, I’ve added a new splash page slideshow. It features images from the new Portraits – Recent gallery. Prior to this, since the launch of the site last November, it has featured architecture work shot during 2009.

The second web site update of the day is the addition of a new people gallery, highlighting portraits and projects completed over the past few months.

NYU Gallatin School, homepage banner portrait.

Artist, Mike Glier. Williams College Life of the Mind series.

NYU Gallatin School, one-on-one art critique.

The new Portraits – Recent gallery.

Photographed last spring, the Monticello and Charlottesville, VA images are now in their own gallery on the web site.

Railroad crossing, Charlottesville, VA.

Charlottesville, VA.

Monticello & Charlottesville gallery.

Prior blog post.

Hey, I admit it. I Google myself every once in a while. It’s a good way to keep up on how my web site and my blog are being indexed. It’s also a convenient way to find out if photos of mine are appearing online. You never know what you may find…

A few days ago I came across this:

It’s the home page of an Austrian art gallery, Fotoforum West. They are having an exhibit of Miles Davis pictures, highlighting portraits of him along side his paintings and prints. Pretty cool. Even cooler is that that’s my photo as the lead image for the show. Cooler still is that I’m in great company – Annie Leibovitz and Anton Corbijn. You can’t ask for better than that.

The show is getting a lot of press in Austria and I’m even being lumped in with Annie and Anton as a starfotografen. Google translates that as a “star photographer” though it’s more likely a “photographer of celebrities” than the other way around. Not bad for an image of mine which is just over 22 years old.

There’s only one problem… I didn’t know anything about it. No one contacted me and asked me for permission. But what’s odder still is I don’t know how this gallery came up with a print. The photo has been published twice. Once in Rolling Stone (1987) and once in the book, The Art of Miles Davis (1991.)

Miles Davis, Rolling Stone, November 19, 1987.

I’ve never sold or given away a print of the image. So, as much as I am surprised to see the image re-surface, I’m curious to know what path it took. The only method I can think of is that someone copied the photo out of the book. I have begun to see if I can find out. The gallery in Austria has not returned my emails and a gallery in England (the exclusive agent for Davis’ artwork in Europe) knew nothing of the show nor my image.

An interesting side note to this – the portrait was taken within a few months of my having started out on my own. I was freelancing in New York and had fallen in with a publicist whose core group of clients was nightclubs. Davis had a show of his work at the Tunnel.

I remember getting a frantic phone call from the publicist telling me to hightail it over to the Tunnel to photograph Davis for Rolling Stone. Just like in a movie, I could be heard to say, Rolling Stone – this is my break! First problem was that I didn’t own any lights outside of a couple Vivitar flashes. So, I ran over to Lens & Repro, rented a Norman 200B, a stand, and an umbrella, and then cabbed it over to the Tunnel.

I set up my light and waited my turn. I was waiting a long time when I was told, “We don’t need you. Rolling Stone sent their own photographer.” I couldn’t believe it. This was my break, I was not giving it up. I don’t remember who I spoke with but I pleaded my case, pointed out the expense of having rented equipment (something the Rolling Stone photographer did not do), pointed out that I was already set up and ready to go, and asked for a minute or two with Mr. Davis.  They gave me one.

1o to 15 seconds of it was spent photographing.  I got off 6 frames in color slide on one camera, 6 in b&w on another. The remainder of the time was spent getting Davis to move back into position. He kept wandering over and standing directly under the one light. Long story short, the Rolling Stone photographer somehow messed up. His images didn’t come out so Rolling Stone ran mine.

In the end, I can’t say if this was my break (is there ever one?) or that it led directly to other assignments. A few years later, Davis passed away. I was able to see one of his last U.S. concerts. It was an amazing experience made all the more so by having had a few moments with him at the start of my career.

Miles Davis, November, 1987.

I see an iPhone enabled site looking at me.

One change with new web site and blog is the ability for both to format themselves on the iPhone and on other touch-type smart phones. This makes for quicker loading and painless viewing of both sites when seen by those on the go.

JonRoemer.com on the iPhone:

Learning to See on the iPhone:

For JonRoemer.com this is a feature built into the web site’s structure. It replaces my hand built, hand maintained, iPhone site which ran concurrent with the old JonRoemer.com.

For the blog, being on a WordPress platform, flexibility is the name of the game. I tried three mobile versions of the blog, each promised a simple design, but only one delivered on design, ease of use, and worked out of the box. The mobile theme I’m using is WPtouch iPhone Theme. It has many options built-in, all accessed via WordPress’ settings menu, it couldn’t be easier. If I had to change one thing with WPtouch iPhone Theme, I’d want the ability to not have the calendar month and day as an icon with each post on the homepage. That’s it. This WordPress Plug-in is incredibly well made and well documented.

The two other iPhone mobile themes I tried were Carrington Mobile and Wapple Architect Mobile Plugin. The former looked to be even simpler in feel than WPtouch but it did not reformat blog photos for smaller phone screens leading to half of each image being cropped out. The latter promised to automatically create a site that mimicked Learning to See but other than orange links it looked nothing like Learning to See and it too had image problems. It dropped many images when viewed on the phone leaving placeholder icons instead.

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Apologies to Eric Carle and Bill Martin Jr. of children’s book fame. If you have kids or grandkids, if you ever babysat kids who are in the board-book stage, you know their work. Hopefully, I won’t have an angry author and illustrator looking at me.

Butler College, Princeton University, God courtesy of Michelangelo

The clouds above were present when the image was shot so it’s hard not to make the leap above. This is a new project added with the new web site, Butler College at Princeton University, designed by Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

Shot in August, Butler College incorporates many sustainability features including green roofs on more than half of the buildings. These will serve as a living experiment for professors and students as they assess its impact when compared with traditional roofing materials.

Here are more images from the project. Larger versions can be found at the new web site in the Butler College Gallery (minus Michelangelo’s input.)

The under the hood switchover was late last week but we can call this launch day for the new web site and the new blog.

The web site is at my domain, jonroemer.com, and on this blog there are direct links via the Portfolio button to the left and on the About page.

What’s new at jonroemer.com? New galleries, new images, and a whole new engine underneath. The site is Flash based but still allows for direct linking to every page. There are many other great features as well:

• Images and layout are dynamic. They will resize automatically to fit your browser window.
• The site can be run fullscreen via the full button at the bottom of each gallery.
• Images can be advanced by clicking to the right or left of the page, by clicking the arrows beneath each gallery, or by using the forward or back arrow keys on your keyboard.
• Images can be emailed.
• Curious for a bit more information on an image? Click the info button beneath the image.
• Thumbnails are now available for every gallery.
• The home page will feature slideshows instead of a static image.
• Contact information is on every page along with a more detailed Contact page.
• For the first time in over ten years of jonroemer.com websites I’ve added an About page and a Client List page.

The blog has been renamed, Learning to See, and is now hosted within my domain. All of the posts from the old TypePad blog have been imported here. Nothing was lost in the changeover.

Both Learning to See and jonroemer.com now have Smart Phone and App Phone versions to make viewing on those platforms quick and easy.

I’ll have more to say on the change over and what I’ve learned in the process in the coming weeks. For now, I’d like thank Rob Haggart of aphotoeditor.com and aphotofolio.com for his help in switching platforms and in consulting on my gallery edits and image selection; friends for giving everything the once and twice-over; and my very patient family as Dad became obsessed with yet another work related project.