"The $1,000.+ baby photograph..." April•2005

VALHALLA, NY. Three-day old newborn premature baby in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Westchester Medical Center University Hospital in Valhalla, NY on Wednesday, April 13, 2005. © CHET GORDON / THE IMAGE WORKS

I've been meaning to write about this image for a quite a while now. This image has sold numerous times and continues to sell to this day. It was made during a simple assignment when I was a freelancer for the NY Daily News back in 2005. Real simple. If memory serves, this child was born to a Westchester County, NY woman who at 21 years old or so, already had two or three children at home. Be escorted into the hospital's Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) with the PR rep, meet mom and make a few frames of mom and then the baby. I think we even had mom holding her new baby for the "Tee-Vee" cameras too. I could only make a few frames with bounce flash in the ward, as the lights were kept dim for the other preemies in their incubators and such. That's what I remember about the assignment 5 years ago...

Cut to today: When I'd received another royalty check a few weeks ago from my editorial agency, The Image Works, I got to thinking about exactly how much money this image has earned in editorial resales. After corresponding with one of the research editors at the agency, I was quite pleased to learn that the image has sold 8 times so far to clients such as Houghton & Miflin (textbook publishers) and Allyn & Bacon (textbook and professional book publishers)

More like a grand total of $1,563.00

*Another proven reason why I know it's imperative to maintain good working relationships with editors who handle my image files down the line, particularly my editorial stock imagery. As I've written in previous posts here on the blog, good captioning is mandatory as well; as an image with a good caption increases the percentages that it'll not only be retrieved in an agency's archive (or mine for that matter) which translates into potential sales. Do the math. "Cheers...!" ~cg.

*My Photo in USA Today.com 19•Aug.•09

Don Hewitt, former 60 MINUTES Executive Producer photographed in his Manhattan office in December 1995. Hewitt passed away at age 86. (Chet Gordon / The Journal News)

*A portrait I made back in 1995 or so of former 60 MINUTES Executive Producer Don Hewitt appears on the USA Today website. Hewitt's career as a television news executive spanned more than 50 years, and I remember the portrait assignment like it was it was only a few months ago. Shot on negative film back then. Dragged in a Dyna-Lite two light set set-up early on a Sunday morning into the midtown Manhattan offices of 60 MINUTES and remember bouncing one head into the ceiling with a grid over the strobe head. I remember wanting the consistent small camera apertures at f/11 - f/16 on a slow speed film. (Strobist techniques way before it was even called that.) I still remember bits and pieces about that interview and how pleasant he was with me - even though I was at the early stages of my career. Some assignments will always stick with you. I'm glad that the boys at my old paper in White Plains, NY managed to move this image to Arlington, VA (USA Today's HQ).
Hoping this story makes their print editions as well later today. Boy, this business is really something when you stop and think about it all... -cg.

www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2009-08-19-hewitt-h...

This photo has "grown legs..." July 2009

An image of mine I made back in 2006 in the Gulf Coast appears on client AmeriCares website. I'd toured the New Orleans area, as well as into Mississippi during the week I spent shooting for them back in June 2006, ten months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast states.
An image from that brief stop in a FEMA trailer compound in Moss Point, MS was also used by AmeriCares on a calendar they produced a few years ago as well.

Gotta find that calendar... -cg.

Kodachrome is retired by Eastman Kodak Co. 22•June•09

"Goodbye, Old friend..."

Ever since I can remember, I've wanted to take pictures. Like the pros. Used to cut out images from the major magazines, and literally tape them to my bedroom wall as a teenager growing up on the NJ Shore. I'd also collect these clippings in binders and committed to memory the name photographers of the day. When I began seriously shooting slide film back in the early 80's, Kodachrome was an automatic requirement, just like the big boys. I've run a lot of transparency films through my Nikons and Leica through the years, and nothing matched the consistency, tonal range, contrast and of course flesh tones that Kodachrome film stock provided. For me, Kodachrome Professional 64 (PKR-64) was the standard when I traveled internationally. With Kodak's announcement yesterday that they're discontinuing the film, it surely marks the end of an era for those of us that know.
Yea, like I mentioned at the beginning of this post, "I've always wanted to "take" pictures. Kodachrome "made" me a photographer... -cg.

Read about it here and here.




10:45PM: More on my Kodachrome images:


After quickly producing the images of my mounted & unmounted archived Kodachrome slides earlier this morning, I was quite pleased to see that my editorial stock agency, THE IMAGE WORKS posted the files within the hour on their main search page. Nice work, guys. Now let's hope for a few "bites" from their clients on any of these images. -cg.

*Alex Rodriguez archived images & the importance of writing good captions...

*(Above) Doing an archived search in the application CDFinder for Alex Rodriguez images I shot of him a few years ago.

OK, I'm going to give this lesson again. Pay attention. Sit up straight. There will be more explanations and a pop-quiz sometime soon following on the blog. I was a night photo-editor at one of the country's largest paper's, and demanded well written and concise captioning information from the photographers who worked for me when I was on the desk. Just as I was trained as a contributing photographer at the NY Times and USA Today, among other clients almost 20 years ago. I have stressed for the longest time to colleagues and anyone with any display of seriousness about wanting to work as a photographer, the importance of writing good captions correctly on your image files and then, more importantly, being able to find & retrieve those images in a timely matter to send to an editor, publication, wire service, or stock agency. I also speak of working in this business, as that is just what this is about - A BUSINESS. Period. Writing good captions correctly is the first and foremost way of archiving your images. If you're not following me here, it means that the images can be re-used by new potential clients & publications - in turn, listen up, MORE SALES. Bang! Imagine that ? We all have potential money makers right in our archives. Now I am not one to have any thoughts about celebrity news at all, and NY Yankee Alex Rodriguez' marital problems, first with rumors of his having an affair with the singer Madonna last week (denied by her) then just today, his lovely wife, Cynthia files for divorce; all means nothing to me. The same with the untimely death of actor Heath Ledger a few months ago. When I learned of his passing, and thinking quickly, I was able to find the portraits from the take I did with him a few years ago while on assignment for the NY Daily News, and then move a few images to my stock agency, as well as to my current newspaper, where I'm a staff photographer. It was also cool to see the Daily News re-use my images of Ledger, one gracing a full page. Anyway, here are a few of A-Rod during a check passing where he and his wife donated $200,000. to a Boys & Girls Club in Upper Manhattan. I wanted to show that it took all of about two minutes to do an archive search here on the Mac PowerBook at my kitchen table for the thumbnails, pull the corresponding archived DVD and grab the high res originals:

NY Yankee superstar Alex Rodriguez (left) and his wife Cynthia during a press conference where he donated $200,000.00 to the Children's Aid Society at the Salome Urena De Henriquez School IS 218, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York on Tuesday, May 24, 2005. Cynthia Rodriguez has filed for divorce, with claims of infidelity against her husband. © Chet Gordon / www.chetgordon.com