At least from my perspective, it wasn't long ago that shooting tethered seemed like it was an approach reserved only for those photographers who had big budgets, assistances and super expensive gear but the more I've educated myself with the technical aspects and creative advantages of shooting tethered, I've come to realize it's nothing to be scared of until you try it.

I've shot numerous times in a studio setting and when you're just starting off, you're perfect find with just glancing at your LCD screen to ensure your vision is being translated to your camera. That's all you know what to do in the beginning. I've yet to shoot tethered but I anticipate to experiment with it on my next shoot and in preparation for that, I found this article by photographer Caleb Kerr extremely helpful on how to get started, especially with the needed and recommend gear.

Alex Silver-Fagan: "Athlete, Trainer, Creator, Personality, Model, Instructor, Speaker, and at the end of the day: Determined."

More of the photos from the shoot over on the Stories section.

2019 has by far turned out to be very amazing with regard to my photography. I keep reciting in my head how it'll be by far the year I've find myself photographically because up until this point there's no question where my passion lies in terms of the type of work I love to shoot. Luckily the fitness community in New York is so vibrant and diverse that working with one person has translated seamlessly to connecting with other trainers who specialize in other areas and who's sole mission continues to be in educating people on how to live a more active and healthy lifestyle. To view the rest of the photographs I shot with Callie along with a short video, visit here.

I’ve never gotten into the ritual of establishing New Year’s resolution the same way I’ve never been great at maintaining a planner. The idea of it sounds great but it just never seems to stick. Instead, I much prefer Julia Rothman’s approach to drawing a line between things she would love to do “more” of and “less” of. On that note, here are mine:

More:

• Reading books on topics I know nothing about
• Educate myself on nutrition
• Allowing time to write
• Learning to be more patient
• Traveling
• Planning of dates with wife
• Speaking up
• Pursuing personal photography projects
• Vocal about my photography vision
• Meet people who challenge me in a new way
• Visualizing
• Investing
• Sleep (more than 6hrs)

Less:

• Negative self-talk
• Social media
• Thinking about ideas and more doing
• Feeling guilty about wanting to spend some time alone
• Talking and more listening
• Waiting for things to happen and take more initiative
• Feeling guilty about investing in things that will benefit me in the long run

In the same way that Eat, Pray, Love has resonated with so many people and for me personally her book Big Magic has, there's never an instances when I don't make the effort to find a quiet corner in the house, put on my noice-canceling headphones and really listen to a latest Elizabeth Gilbert talk and this latest one really set me in place and I really encourage you to view it especially if you're the type that's been questioning your next move in life with regard to your profession.

Elizabeth says, “just recognize your job doesn’t have to be your whole life. Your life can be outside of that.” This is particularly important to recognize because while we may spend more of our day time at work than anywhere else, it becomes easy to identify yourself as someone who just works non-stop and that your are your job/career and so you fail to discover a pastime outside of work to clear you mind. For me it's photography but for you it can be anything else. You are your own person but you'll never conscious of that if you don't take the time to discover it.

During the time when I was planning out the logistics for a 4-day trip to Tulum, Mexico with my wife for her birthday, I came across this absolutely stunning gym located in the heart of the city. "Tulum Jungle Gym is a real life Fred Flintsone gym. Nearly all the equipment is made of wood or stone." Prior to flying out, I reached to Katie Davis, trainer and co-owner of the gym with hopes of possibly securing the opportunity to shoot with her at the gym despite the limited days that I would be spending in Tulum. Luckily we were able to work it out. I ended up taking a taxis to the gym at 6a.m which was 20min away from our hotel.

We shot a total of 3 looks one of which I'm glad to finally share along a short video showcasing the experience. 

I love Jerry Salts description on the correlation I never realized existed between these two very demanding roles:

"Being a parent is already very much like being an artist. It means always lugging things around, living in chaos, doing things that are mysterious or impossible or scary. As with art, children can drive you crazy all day, make you wish all this could go away. Then in a single second, at any point, you are redeemed with a moment of intense, transformative love."

To give you quick overview on how I manage being a parent, working a full time job, being a husband and having a creative outlet on the side: It mostly involves a lot of sacrifice on the social aspect. I really don't have much time to spend with friends as I would like. As for the work I do shoot, I attend to it on weekends while editing any of it after 8:30am once the kids have been put to bed. The entire dynamic is a little challenging but I don't think I would have it any other way because it's a routine I've adapted to.

One of the aspects of working with video which I use to find very intimidating was figuring out a way to retain and apply that same aesthetics I've used on my photos and implement them on to any video I might of shot. I struggled to find a straight-forward process until I came across this video by Elenor which answered the same question I've been having ever since I began using Adobe Premiere as my main video editor: how can I use one of my Lightroom presets to color grade videos without going crazy scouring the web for one that closely resembles my aesthetic?

Elenor does a great job walking you through the process of achieving this by using a pay-what-you-want software called IWLTBAP LUT Generator which is the key element in generating a .CUBE format file which you import into Premiere and contains all the color grading from one of your Lightroom presets.

For the past 2 years I’ve been had the incredible opportunity to work alongside the incredible crew at Solace, a premium health and fitness facility conveniently located in the heart of Manhattan.

Each year they’ve put on a fitness and wellness event called Strong New York hosted by Jen Widerstrom and comprised of workout and seminars led by the most influential health and wellness experts in the industry and benefitting Alzheimer’s Awareness Month.

The permeating frame of mind throughout the entire event was “surround yourself with like-minded people, who motivate and encourage you, who inspire and push you, who see greatness in you even when you fail to see it in yourself.” 

In addition to shooting the event, I also wanted to offer some portraits as well but different from what I had shot the year before with the intent to challenge a bit more.

I’ve never worked with constant light LED panels but I came across a very affordable set on Amazon, so I figured it would be a great time to experiment with them. The setup was pretty straightforward. Both LED panels were gelled and placed diagonally across from each other.

To view the rest of the portraits, head over to the gallery.

I've been mulling over the idea of re-doing my site longer than I like to admit. As it with most ambitions, we tend to procrastinate because we assume there will be this magical time that will come into existence but of course that never occurs because life happens and priorities shift.

For the longest, Squarespace has been held in high regard among the photo community. I've been a member for the past 8 years and while I've never necessarily had anything substandard to say about the platform considering I've recommended it numerous times to so many people, I was simply ready for change. There were a handful of other platforms I was considering when it came to starting fresh elsewhere, none of which supported any type of Squarespace migration workflow so in the end, I came to terms that I would have to shed what I've published in the past and start something new.

After carefully considering my options, I opted to re-create my website using Pixpa. Looking around you may immediately get the impression that my site is more or less the same as before but I can assure you that underneath the hood it's an entire new world. Regardless of which platform I migrated to, it was important for me for any platform to have the ability to continuing blogging because sometimes regardless of how much admiration you may receive from your creative work there's instances when you wish to share more about what went into creating it.

Very often I’ll get the question on how I go about establishing test shoot with models. Do I contact them directly? Do I go through an agency? Quite honestly I’ve never dealt with a modeling agency, mostly because I was unaware that reaching out to inquire about working with someone from their roster was a thing but apparently you can. It’s certainly an approach I’ll hold on to for future shoots but for the most part, 95% of the portraits I’ve taken have been from people I’ve reached out to via Instagram.

“How so?” Well, for me, there's definitely much more than the obvious.

Before anything, I kinda want you to envision this scenario a bit. Imagine you've worked as a construction worker for the majority of the time you've been in the workforce and after much pondering, you're hoping to branch out and explore other career opportunities to be lets say, a cook. So the question is, has this newly found possible profession been something you've actively been working on the side to get to a level where you're comfortable applying for a job and you have the basic skills down? Or is it a skill set that's still in its untimely stages but you're just as eager to polish them to a point where you could live off of them?

What does any of this have to do with portraits or reaching out to people on Instagram?

Well, I bring this up because the instance I discovered that taking portraits was where I seemed to obtain the greatest satisfaction within everything I photographed, that’s the moment I began exhausting the patience of friends to serve as models. This very act in return provided me with the opening to create work which would serve to attract the people I would later reach out to. The way I saw it, I couldn’t be livid about anyone not wanting to collaborate with me on a shoot if when they saw any of my photos, there was complete and total lack of portraits and now all of a sudden I’m reaching out to them without having anything visual to incentivize them to say “yes!"

I’m not saying you can’t reach out to people with the intent to shoot portraits if you don’t have any work to show for it already but I feel as though it helped me tremendously when people saw I was already doing it because it provided them with an idea of what our collaboration could look like.

In addition to making sure I dedicated time to creating a backlog of portrait work, I wanted to share a few other tips/guiding principles that have kinda helped me along the way in working with some pretty awesome people who I probably would have never connected with otherwise had it not been for Instagram.

• Think of Instagram’s Explore page as your best friend. Gone on the days where it was endlessly cluttered with vapid imagery of puppies and rainbows. The algorithm in it since then has evolved drastically and it’s by far been the #1 place within Instagram that I’m constantly browsing through. Intriguing and fascinating people pop up for me a lot and the bonus to this has been that the majority of them happen to reside right here in New York or in some neighboring town. So basically, don’t overlook it because from what I understand, the content that pops in the Explore pages has some correlation to the people you Follow.


• Please don’t be the type of photographer that reaches out to people with a bland line such as “Let’s takes pictures over the weekend.” Not only does it come across creepy but it’s unprofessional. The ideal thing to do and have even before you’ve reached out is to have a detailed vision for the shoot that clarifies your intentions. Spontaneity during a shoot is one thing but not having at least a concept in mind is another. When people see that you’ve already constructed a vision for which you would love for them to be a vital part of, it’ll just make it seem like you have your stuff together. To me, having a concept of what I want to shoot has always served me well because in the end, you have to remember that as a photographer, it’s your vision the reason people will want to hire you for.


• I have a tendency to go back and visually explore a place I’ve popped-in to by using its geotagged location. If I loved a place, say a coffee shop, then there’s a chance already that anyone else who I discover through this geotag and who frequents it as well, loves it too, so right there, I can already start a conversation with someone based on a placed we’ve both been to.


• Instagram Direct Message can reinforce your relationship with current followers, while giving you opportunities to meet new people. The one thing I really never do is assume I can reach out to anyone via Direct Message whenever I want. There’s honestly nothing stopping you from doing so, unless they’ve blocked you for some reason, but I generally always comment on one of the person’s photos asking them if it’s ok for me to reach out to them via Direct Message regarding the possibility of working together on something.

For some people, the whole concept of meeting another person who you've befriended online may still sound creepy, perhaps because they're still thinking back to those creepy chatroom AOL days but I've had nothing but terrific experiences with people I've met. In fact, the majority of them I still keep in contact with on a regular basis. It's generally a good sign when you can establish a friendship with a person that extends far beyond the initial reason you reached out to them in the first place.

When we’re no longer being challenged or when we have become used to the work we are doing, it’s a sign that we are not growing creatively, personally or emotionally. We’ve drained the life out of ourselves.

- Paula, the Mediterranean Wanderer