Taschen New York: Portrait of a City Exhibition

Great book! Just great book! Must have book :)
Great party! You shouldn't have missed it :)
See how much fun was it:

There were plenty of books to look through, great folks to mingle with, open bar, and nice prints on the walls.

Now this is my brand new t-shirt I designed :) after 3rd drink!
Just kidding :)
Photo made by amazing guys working at Levi's workshop.

Everyone was doing their way around NYC's skyline to get it printed on a t-shirt later.

Jumping or kissing? I may say only that at the end of the night I found a t-shirt with these kissing guys lying on my photo-bag! Have no idea! Honestly!

They got their own t-shirts I believe. Besides the fun they had.

He just stepped out of the picture I think. Didn't see how he walked in the workshop anyway.

This moment just caught my eye by the movements happening in all 3 plans.

Am I handsome! Yeaaaah :)

Central Park ZOO ???

The best thing about New York City is it's people for sure. You might meet something absolutely unexpected and crazy in the middle of the day just walking any place of the city.
For example these guys were walking among huge crowd of strollers, joggers, bikers, natives and tourists.

Nice weather, crowd of New Yorkers and tourists enjoying the nice autumn weather in New York

And this creative couple we had met actually 5 min before.

Shooting movie on the run at Central Park

5-minute headshot

At the end of another very long day I still had some juice and lights set ready :) And there were a couple of cool guys helping us with running the photoshoot whom I wanted to photograph. Luckily for me they were interested.

So I just used one rather big softbox for a swift 3-minutes sessions for both Anvil and Carl. I kinda like the result ;)

Fashion lookbook - great team of professionals

It was a very long and fast-moving fashion lookbook photoshoot. The team was working together for the first time and I hope we will have a chance to work again, I like the result very much!

Thanks to all:

Make-up and Hair - Wenya Chang - amazing work, all images you'll see here are NOT touched for any skin or hair issues (and mostly straight out of the camera, just basic level/contrast/sharpening adjustments). During the whole shoot Wenya was all the time doing the right stuff in the right moment. No need to ask her - she fixes a problem before you see it.

Model - Micaela Piccolo - extremely professional and hard-working, I admire her because she almost couldn't stand at the end of the very hard day but was able to smile! And what a smile she has!!! :)

And to me she has that look of Monica Bellucci - check the pictures below for yourself ;)

Family photography - Breakfast in dunes

The forecast for today was very promising and we decided to go to our favorite beach on Fire Island for a breakfast instead of having lazy Sun morning at home.

It's being our most visited place since we got into the country. It's still half way open due to non-season and reconstruction of the beach. But that's what we like at this time of year - no people :)
We definitely had a great time, relaxing on the beach and walking walkways through dunes at Robert Moses State Park.

 Besides here I can give a tip for those who often goes to NY state parks - they have an Empire Passport which runs at $65 for a whole year. So it's really worth it if you do more than 8 visits a year. We are buying it each year.
And we love Fire Island lighthouse very much - it's just great. So much history is behind it and lovely people work there. You must see it yourself. Also they finished tower's renovation and it's fully open for visits now.

One more point - due to my current health conditions I couldn't carry my regular camera equipment with me so all these pictures were shot using my son's point-and-shoot - Canon PowerShot SX120. I'd say it works great for family album ;)

Photo books in easy way

Great news to all photographers and other creative folks - now we have another way to showcase our photo books made via Blurb.com on-line - they just came up with a new fine widget.
It's easy to integrate it into your photography web-site, photo blog etc. You may post it to your Facebook account in just one click.
Below you may see how it works - there is my fine art / documentary book about Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in NYC.

Boo To You! by Alex Kotlik | BOOK INFO

Portrait photography of the actor Eric Jaeger

"Eric Jaeger is a recent transplant to NYC from Akron, OH via Pittsburgh.

Favorite credits include Contact, Romeo y Julieta, Michael Rupert's Streets of America and the film In Northwood. Most recently, Eric was seen in Dixon Place/The Living Theater's Salome! A Veiled Threat, puppeteering the infamous Muffy the Talking Vagina."

Headshots with actor Joe Beuerlein

What can be better than to meet lovely autumn morning in Central Park? We started a headshot/portrait session at 7.30am with the actor Joseph Beuerlein when the sun was still behind skyscrapers. And we were watching as it goes upper and coloring the trees and waking up the park.

East side family photography session

This time we started the session with 4-month Roby at home and then walked toward great morning in the Central Park. Foliage and great warm and sunny morning added to the mood of portraits.

Singing Italian - Headshot photography session

It was just wonderful weather on Nov 9th and I had a great on-location outdoor photo session with gorgeous Maristella. She is a singer and song-writer, I found her voice charming - you may check it on her web-site.

We worked on her promotional photographs during the session and regular headshots as well. Easy job considering that fact that she was posing for the portraits so professionally as if she spent whole life in front of photo camera :)

Portrait photography of Alex The Great and his lovely family

I love to photograph this family - they all are so great that it's not a job but just my pleasure to work with them every time. I wish I did this photo session good enough that they'll be back to me next year again :)
You may see more of their family portraits on my web-site as well.

Birthday event photography at Queens Farm Museum

I got quite unusual venue for birthday event photography assignment recently - Queens Farm Museum. And it was great! Both kids and their parents had a lot of fun and it was relaxing. Our main hero - Andrew, was totally into chickens :) You may see it in photographs.
And animal feeding and hayride were long-awaited by all kids.

Jump up high - Model portfolio photography session

Here is another photo session for a model photography portfolio. I was mostly about to get some portrait with fashion-style lighting though :)
Besides Anthony was just great - I can recommend him as a model absolutely. He is ready to work, very professional and knows what to do...

Strobist info:
done with just 2 bare Speedlites 580EX. Back light and spot light with homemade barns sometime.