Photography for Real Estate / Discuss

davidpalermo says:

Hi gang. A number of weeks ago I mentioned that I might get to meet Julius Shulman. Well, yesterday I spent over an hour with him in his home! Just he and I.

If any of you are wondering who this person is - he is probably the most well known architectural photographer on the planet. The following link shows some of his images:

www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/artists_editions/all/0...

and here is a video of him seeing his most recent book set:

www.taschen.com/pages/en/community/video/18507.julius_shu...

What an honor it was to be able to spend time with this legend! I drove 2 hours from Santa Barbara to his L. A. home and nervously rang his doorbell. No answer. I rang it again after a few mins. No answer. Hmmm maybe he is sleeping. What do I do now??? Just then I hear a voice from another part of the house, "Hello? I'm over here." Whew! He's here and not sleeping! Cool! So I walk over to the screen door to his office and ask if I can come inside. He says, "Well, I sure hope you aren't going to stay out there!" The man, at 97 had a sense of humor - very cool. Heck I guess if you make to 97 you have a sense of humor!

So I came in and we chatted for a long time. We talked about his images. He gave me lighting tips! He wanted to know about me and my work etc... just the nicest guy you could meet.

I study his images quite a bit - he is one of my favorite photographers. His sense of design about a place is amazing... that's what I like most. He can see compositions so well.

You'd think at 97 he'd be retired. No way. He shoots about 5 assignments per month. He just got back from South Coast Plaza - a beautiful mall in Southern CA. he was in Palm Springs shooting there. And recently finished a calendar at the Griffith Observatory with his partner Juergen Nogai;

www.friendsoftheobservatory.com/items.php?itemid=2

He was gracious enough to autograph my books and calendar. I collect photography books.

I think the most useful thing I took away from this meeting was that lighting is important if it compliments the way a place was built. Now I know this doesn't apply too much to RE photography but it applies to what we do in general as photographers. It means a lot to me to think about that a little but more because I get so caught up in lighting sometimes that I forget what I am trying to do/say as a photographer.

He invited me to show him my portfolio in April. He wants to talk about it and help me edit etc...

Oh he is also working on about 5 more books. One we will all be very interested in having! he asked me to read some of what he wrote to see if I liked it. I did. ; )

If you ever get a chance to meet and talk with photographers you admire, do it! It's a huge inspiration!

Check this out:

www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/shulman/

Be sure to click on the sound description about how he shot his most famous image "Case study house #22".

David
Originally posted at 12:07AM, 14 March 2008 PDT (permalink)
davidpalermo edited this topic 51 months ago.