Steve Scap Photography

Hailing from the city of wind, Steve Scap loves to talk about himself in the third person. When he's not misusing tenses, Steve is busy photographing, designing, and watching tv shows on dvd...ing. Our protagonist has had a long standing relationship with photography. From his early days photographing his bicycle and baseball card collection, to his modern day endeavors shooting concerts and portraits, Steve lives to create. He's had a passion for flashin' since film was in fashion. A self-proclaimed "21st century digital boy," he's on top of the latest digital photography tools and techniques, but still likes to get dirty in the darkroom. Steve has had his work featured in art galleries.

Steve is available for assignments worldwide!

Check out www.stevescap.com
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I shot actor Steven Hugh Nelson’s latest head shots a few weeks back in good ol’ Wicker Park. Keep an eye out for him in Showtime’s “Shameless” as well as The Chicago Code!

http://www.stevescap.com

melovewantneed: nevernevernevergiveup: Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him. “It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.” So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art. “It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?” “Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied. “B-b-but, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!” To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”

melovewantneed:

nevernevernevergiveup:

Legend has it that Pablo Picasso was sketching in the park when a bold woman approached him.

“It’s you — Picasso, the great artist! Oh, you must sketch my portrait! I insist.”

So Picasso agreed to sketch her. After studying her for a moment, he used a single pencil stroke to create her portrait. He handed the women his work of art.

“It’s perfect!” she gushed. “You managed to capture my essence with one stroke, in one moment. Thank you! How much do I owe you?”

“Five thousand dollars,” the artist replied.

“B-b-but, what?” the woman sputtered. “How could you want so much money for this picture? It only took you a second to draw it!”

To which Picasso responded, “Madame, it took me my entire life.”

peterbaker: “Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II between 1909-1912. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.” Absolutely incredible.

peterbaker:

“Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II between 1909-1912. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.” Absolutely incredible.

A great story about The Fireside Bowl, a vital part of Chicago’s punk-rock scene in the 90’s.

jhnmyr: One night in San Fransisco I met up with Jim Marshall for dinner. He brought the same Leica camera with him that he’d used to shoot everyone from Muddy Waters to Janis Joplin. Jim could talk about the biggest names without dropping them. He really was there. They let him in. He told me how disappointed he was in recent times that publicists took all the magic of “all access” away. When Jim came to my show the next night I made sure he could shoot the entire performance, even the sweaty half of the show. You never see the sweaty parts of the show anymore because photographers are only allowed to shoot the first three songs. I get why. Who knows what these guys will do with a pic of you sweating your ass off, shirt half tucked? But Jim knew what was cool and what wasn’t, and that’s why he got the brilliant photos he did. He was a photographer who tried to capture you without capturing you the way they try to now. I would spend evenings at Jim’s house drinking wine and rifling through drawer after drawer of his photographs. I’d make piles of images I wanted, and by the end of it I realized I had 40 of these things and would have to thin out the stack. That was a tough job. John Coltrane at dawn. Miles Davis in a boxing ring. Bob Dylan rolling a tire. Jimi Hendrix at Monterey pointing directly into Jim’s camera lens while bending a note. And, perhaps his most famous photo, Johnny Cash giving the middle finger. That night before my show in San Francisco we brought our cameras to the bar and he taught me how to shoot a bit while hitting on women. Okay, while we both hit on women. After having said goodbye and walking our separate ways, I turned around and asked him to give me the “Johnny Cash” and he obliged. I know Jim is getting some amazing photographs up there right now… Rest in peace my friend… JM

jhnmyr:

One night in San Fransisco I met up with Jim Marshall for dinner. He brought the same Leica camera with him that he’d used to shoot everyone from Muddy Waters to Janis Joplin. Jim could talk about the biggest names without dropping them. He really was there. They let him in. He told me how disappointed he was in recent times that publicists took all the magic of “all access” away. When Jim came to my show the next night I made sure he could shoot the entire performance, even the sweaty half of the show. You never see the sweaty parts of the show anymore because photographers are only allowed to shoot the first three songs. I get why. Who knows what these guys will do with a pic of you sweating your ass off, shirt half tucked? But Jim knew what was cool and what wasn’t, and that’s why he got the brilliant photos he did. He was a photographer who tried to capture you without capturing you the way they try to now.

I would spend evenings at Jim’s house drinking wine and rifling through drawer after drawer of his photographs. I’d make piles of images I wanted, and by the end of it I realized I had 40 of these things and would have to thin out the stack. That was a tough job. John Coltrane at dawn. Miles Davis in a boxing ring. Bob Dylan rolling a tire. Jimi Hendrix at Monterey pointing directly into Jim’s camera lens while bending a note. And, perhaps his most famous photo, Johnny Cash giving the middle finger.

That night before my show in San Francisco we brought our cameras to the bar and he taught me how to shoot a bit while hitting on women. Okay, while we both hit on women. After having said goodbye and walking our separate ways, I turned around and asked him to give me the “Johnny Cash” and he obliged.

I know Jim is getting some amazing photographs up there right now… Rest in peace my friend…

JM

Time Out Chicago

I’m really excited to announce that Time Out Chicago has published my photo of Ryan Budds for they’re “Joke of the Week” section.  Check out the feature online or pick it up from your local newsstand!

Vivian Maier: Uncovered Street Photography Archive


Self Portrait - Vivian Maier

Around late 2008, John Maloof, a Chicago photographer purchased a lot of 20-30 thousand negatives, including some 1000 undeveloped rolls of film, from a small auction house in Chicago.  The photos were taken by French-born street photographer Vivian Maier. Little is known about Vivian, but John has managed to uncover a few facts about her.

John was able to find someone at the famous Chicago camera store, Central Camera, who remembered Vivian and then was also able to contact a family she worked for as a nanny during the 1950s and early 1960s. Vivian was born in France and moved to New York in the early 1930s, where she worked in a sweatshop when she was 11 or 12 years old.

Most of Vivian’s photos were taken in and around Chicago and give a black and white view of life in a post-war urban environment.

John Maloof found Vivian’s name on an envelope of negatives and decided to Google her name.  Sadly, the only result was her obituary, posted a few days prior.  It’s a shame that Vivian never shared her work during her lifetime, but luckily John is processing and posting her work on his blog. View Vivian Maier’s work at: Vivian Maier - Her Discovered Work.

“View South-West along 2nd Ave. from E. 121st St. Harlem, NY 1988”by: Camilo Jose Vergara This has to be the most in-depth photo project I am aware of by a single photographer. With “Invisible Cities,” Camilo Jose Vergara documented Harlem, New York, Camden, New Jersey and more recently Richmond, Virginia returning often to take the same photo each time.  This project, spanning over 30 years, is simply mind blowing. Seeing these urban landscapes changing is a gift to the cities and to the history books. Check out the entire 3 city project at Invisible Cities. I’d love to see someone like Google Earth take on a project like this on a larger scale, it would lose the intimacy of Vergara’s photos, but would be interesting nonetheless.

“View South-West along 2nd Ave. from E. 121st St. Harlem, NY 1988”
by: Camilo Jose Vergara

This has to be the most in-depth photo project I am aware of by a single photographer. With “Invisible Cities,” Camilo Jose Vergara documented Harlem, New York, Camden, New Jersey and more recently Richmond, Virginia returning often to take the same photo each time.  This project, spanning over 30 years, is simply mind blowing. Seeing these urban landscapes changing is a gift to the cities and to the history books.

Check out the entire 3 city project at Invisible Cities.

I’d love to see someone like Google Earth take on a project like this on a larger scale, it would lose the intimacy of Vergara’s photos, but would be interesting nonetheless.

Tech in the Tens

2010 is sure to usher in many new products, innovations, and creative endeavors.  Even more exciting than Jersey Shore returning for another agonizing season, is the batch of new technology just over the horizon! Welcome to “Tech in the Tens,” an on-going series of predictions and observations about photographic technology in the 2010.

With an overwhelming amount of technological innovation occurring on a daily-basis, and in order to avoid carpel tunnel for another week, I’m going to focus on two new technologies in this post. The Apple iPad and HTML5.

Steve Jobs Tablets

Every Apple fanboy this side of the Milky Way was glued to gizmodo’s liveblog hoping to catch a glimpse of Steve Jobs holding up his newest creation, the iPad, like Moses with the Ten Commandments tablets. But as with any new product as hyped as the iPad, there are bound to be haters.  A lack of flash support, no built-in camera and other shortcomings were instantly noted by both fans and foes. I predict that once application designers get some time to build iPad specific Apps, nobody will miss these initial “shortcomings.” With proper integration of HTML5 the iPad will be one of the best way to view media-rich content.  

The exclusion of Adobe Flash support seems to be biggest negative point people are concerned about, since the vast majority of web videos, and some websites are flash-based.  But exactly one week before Jobs’ iPad announcement, YouTube turned heads by announcing it’s beta HTML5-supported video player.  This is just what the iPad (as well as iPhone and iTouch) needed, as now videos embedded in HTML5 will play seamlessly in the browser window where Flash videos would show only as an error icon.  Prior to YouTube’s beta launch, Vimeo made the same announcement of an HTML5 beta. Imagine being able to stream hi-def videos or sideshows on the iPad’s screen virtually anywhere! This could prove very beneficial for photographers and videographers.

Keep an eye out for more Technology in the Tens posts dealing with things such as Micro Four-Thirds Cameras, USB 3.0, CSS3 and the Drobo.

Alex Roman - The Third & The Seventh.

This video was almost fully created using CGI.  I would guess that at least 95% of viewers would think this was simply another camera-caputred video.  I can’t help but ask the question: What does this mean for photographers and videographers? If someone can create a a complex, fully customizable video using only CGI, what is the need to shoot video anymore? Forget about bad weather, or location fees and get exactly what you want without leaving your desk…scary!

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