VISION

Design | Motion

In this photo above, which I took on a warm rainy day in 1985, that's Alfred Eisenstaedt, the father of photojournalism, in his office at the Time / Life building in Manhattan. After first choosing to pick up a camera at age 8, by age 12 I dreamed of being a photojournalist, just like Eisie, who I met through my father, as they had once worked on an article together. Yet after an internship at Magnum Photos, assisting Philip Jones Griffiths, as the journalism profession eroded under the weight of shortening attention spans, the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, I took on more commercial work -- although I have a proposed solution to the declining state of journalism in this post-truth world. VETTAGE is a decentralized, monthly subscription-driven collaborative journalism SaaS.. In the totality of my experience, my camera has taken me literally around the world and back. I've created a book of photographs and stories behind them. Some feature people you may have seen in big Hollywood films. You can also grab my CV here.

Director John Schlesinger once told me on a Manhattan set, "If you want to be a film director, you must first be a good photographer." Eventually in 1999 I made my first film, "Burnout".

"AN EXTREMELY DRIVEN DYSTOPIAN THRILLER [THAT] GIVES BIRTH TO THE NANOPUNK GENRE" - Filmhub.com.

Most recently my film "Faction," a NYC nanopunk thriller, won the 2020 Philadelphia Independent Film Festival's "Best Of" Sci Fi. You can watch the film here on Amazon or for free (with commercials) on Tubi by clicking the screenshot below.

I expanded the story into a modular online site, filling out some of the back story and expanding the international scope beyond the film -- although the site architecture may have deteriorated as some of the elements have been superseded since I created the thing in 2014.

Here's a more recent project, with a soundtrack by Moby, I finished earlier in 2024 (click image to watch):

During the pandemic, unable to be around people and produce content as before, I made the most of my isolation with Blender as a new creative outlet. I really enjoy combining Blender with video, Apple Motion and Adobe Premiere, Photoshop and occasionally other tools to create results like these for clients and myself alike.

At a minimum, I am very happy to provide design services with the skillsets I have -- 3D Animation, 4K video, Adobe Creative Suite (specializing in Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere, and InDesign), advertising, Al Production tools (ChatGPT, Midjourney, Movio, etc.), anamorphic lens filming, AP Style, Apple Motion, art direction, Blender, blogging, branding, commercial photography, copywriting, creative direction, cross-media, editing, editorial, ENPS/News Production, entrepreneurship, feature film production, Final Cut Pro, Google Analytics, interactive web, javascript, journalism, marketing, marketing communications, Microsoft Office, multimedia production, PHP/CSS, photography, photojournalism, post production, prompt engineering, public relations, Ronin MX 3-axis camera stabilizer, screenwriting, short films, social media, synthetic media, transmedia, video production, WordPress, and writing.

In larger endeavors, I mostly enjoy using all of these skills to provide clients with dynamic growth hacking through marketing content and strategy.

AI and Beyond

As a working professional throughout the entire duration of visual content's transformation from analog to digital to AI, I stand by this Primer as a general guidance.

That said, I maintain a continued interest in a modular, decentralized approach to storytelling and have incorporated AI into the workflow this time, in another experiment in the works (pictured above). The story is centered around a really cool post trip hop band whose lead vocalist, Elaine Watts, is caught up in some art world transnational money laundering, and her romance with a man she doesn't yet know is an undercover FinCEN agent.

I also loosely maintain a YouTube Channel for a character I created called Silver Siren. She's at least a Type I civilization being from a post-Singularity society whose planetary harmony was disrupted by the 1974 Arecibo Signal, causing total destruction, but not before she was able to re-encode herself into a radio signal to be transmitted back at the source to find out why her world was "attacked" -- which also killed the one she loved. By the time she makes it to Earth, popping up on the Internet, she's lost some of her memory, and whether or not she will seek revenge is unclear. In the meantime she sees many ways she could help us through our current technological and AI adolescence to "not just survive, but prosper."

SYNTHETIC MEDIA GOVERNANCE

On a more serious note of concern, public alarm over the use of AI in deepfakes, and content generation in general, to deceive a targeted audience for military and/or political gain should be weighed with circumstances relevant on a case-by-case basis. For example, how likely is it that the target audience will be exposed to the generated content, and are they already psychologically inoculated to the point of embedded skepticism regarding all content they may come into contact with? How strong is their confirmation bias? The kneejerk reaction to visual content cannot be underestimated. Many people act on emotion rather than whatever information they receive, because we are emotional creatures, trained by aeons of instinct development shaped by fear and a drive to survive against a constant barrage of challenges.

I am always available and highly motivated to discuss content management strategies which maintain a bleeding edge approach to your marketing, public relations and other communications needs.

PROCESS

DESIGN BUILT ON A SOLID VISUAL MARKETING BACKGROUND

(Click here for my CV)

For your business, you can expect a stainless steel methodology that will yield the uncompromising results your business needs. At minimum, aside from always staying on the same page through mutual access to a dedicated development board such as Trello or or Clickup, I'll stick with you from concept and/or research all the way to prototyping, design, and/or production.

Context, relevancy and human-centered dynamics afforded by empathy, experience and professional, fluid, original creative thought are the crucial elements I have consistently brought to my clients over the decades. This will set you far apart from your competition, beyond any software, AI and other resources businesses have to choose from these days. There is no better software than the human brain! In the end, no matter how much automation enters the process, the final value judgement rests in the hands of your very human audience.

PERSONAL WORK

Outside of design and content production work, a few personal pieces are worth mentioning.

"Faction" was my first real film which ate up much time and prep and was fraught with setbacks. Above is an early sizzle I made originally to raise money but could not use any of the actors due to one of them dropping out at the last minute, forcing a radical rewrite days before production.

I also enjoy making fashion films as opportunities arise.

I am also writing a story of two characters with echoing circumstances, set in Beijing during the pre-2008 Olympics boom. One, a freelance journalist and his relationship with a Chinese punk music icon, developing over the subterfuge of a North Korean intelligence asset's journey to defection as he is shuffled through a CIA-riddled path through Beijing. They all inhabit a multi-national maelstrom that has diplomats, business leaders, spies, gangsters, hookers, celebrities and people on the run all in the same room. Inspired by true events experienced during the seven years I spent there.

Above is a sample of some newer work in Blender, part of a branded content campaign I am developing for an AI governance consulting effort.

Aside from daily creative journeys, I also am on a constant learning streak.