RICHARD ESS PHOTOGRAPHY
© 2012 Photography by Richard Ess – All Rights Reserved – Purchase prints at www.photos.richardessphoto.com
The Everyday Cinderella
The story of Cinderella is an old one. In fact, the Greek Historian, Herodotus, recorded a tale containing the well known plot line around 450BC.
We may tend to remember just the happy ending, but there’s really much more to the Cinderella story.
FROM WIKIPEDIA: “Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper” (French: Cendrillon, ou La petite Pantoufle de Verre, Italian: Cenerentola, German: Aschenputtel) is a folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward. Thousands of variants are known throughout the world.[1] The title character[2] is a young woman living in unfortunate circumstances that are suddenly changed to remarkable fortune. The story was first published by Charles Perrault in Histoires ou contes du temps passé in 1697.[3]
The word “cinderella” has, by analogy, come to mean one whose attributes are unrecognized, or one who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect. The still-popular story of “Cinderella” continues to influence popular culture internationally, lending plot elements, allusions, and tropes to a wide variety of media.
We shot these photos in the Razzle Dazzle Laundromat in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It’s a colorfully painted, clean, and fairly well lit 24 hour laundromat with large clean windows looking out to Main Street. The laundromat serves the diverse Asbury community. While we had the option of shooting when there were few people in the laundromat, we wanted to include random clientele because, without a doubt, there are real Cinderella stories in there every day.
We hope you enjoy this small photo exploration of our Everyday Cinderella.
Photographer: Richard Ess
Model: Anastasia Kryltsova
Stylist: Sandy Foley
Make up: Rachel Kuras
Dresses: Shekhar Rahate
Band necklace and headpieces by Flair Designs
SHOE SHINE
I shot all these shoes using a hand held flashlight and a 30 second exposure. The shoes were “painted” with the light while the camera recorded the image.
Skateboard + Gown
I think the title says it all: Skateboard + Gown
Model: Alicia Bertine
Photographer: Richard Ess
Shot at Holly Gordon Studio in Jacksonville, FL
Portrait – You Can Take the Girl Out of Texas…
But you can’t take the Texas out of the girl!
Jamie sat for this portrait in a beautiful hotel in Asbury Park, NJ. 
The Cure for Anything…
“The cure for anything is saltwater… sweat, tears, or the sea.” Isak Dinesen
Photo: Copyright Richard Ess 2012
35mm film image shot with Canon EOS Elan IIe
8×10 prints available to the public $20.00
There is nothing quite like the sensation of quietly skimming across the surface of the water in a sailboat. If you’ve never done it before, I highly recommend you try it as soon as you can.
-Richard
Watching Birds
“Before I came along, the primary way to observe birds was to shoot them and stuff them.” Roger Tory Peterson.
Model: Cara Kent
Hair: Marina Fuks from Serenity Hair Lounge
MUA: Jessica Roszkowski
Photographed by: Richard Ess
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The Sun Never Sets on the Mighty Jeep
That’s an advertising slogan Jeep used during the 40′s which I felt suited the old style grill on this Jeep… Take a look!
Fluid Drive
Late 40′s Desoto featuring fluid drive transmission. Long Branch, NJ. Shot with Canon EOS Elan lle. 35mm color fujifilm.Copyright Richard Ess 2012
Pinhole Photographs – Thompson Park, NJ
I sat on the tree that had fallen in the woods and pointed the camera towards the roots. Exposure 2 minutes.
Pinhole photographs are created using a light tight container and a piece of film or photosensitive paper. Very basic. No lens, no moving parts. There is no stabilization control, no viewfinder, no shutter button, no film advance. I created a series of pinhole cameras using empty coffee cans and acquired some photosensitive paper (Kodak and Ilford make high quality papers for printing photos). You can find lots of pinhole camera information online. In spite of all the Instagram-ming going on out there, there are a lot of people who are embracing the old analog ways of taking photographs.
I also found recipes online for creating a developing solution using ingredients you can find in the grocery store. My bathroom is now also used for developing pinhole photographs.
So the entire process has taken hours, days. Building cameras, setting up a dark room in the bathroom, finding paper, researching exposure and development, then post-processing in Photoshop. The images that come out on the paper are negatives. I scan the paper negatives and import into photoshop where the negative image is inverted. Then curves, levels, sharpness, and contrast are adjusted. The resulting image is then saved at 300dpi in jpeg format.
The images often turn out looking ghostly, ethereal. Somehow, the direct transfer of light to a piece of photograph paper produces an image with a soul that digitally created images just can’t duplicate.
My Canon DSLR sits quietly in it’s bag…
Below are a series of photos I shot last weekend at Thompson Park (http://www.monmouthcountyparks.com/page.aspx?Id=2539) :
Pinhole images are almost always a bit of a surprise. I’m not sure what that dark cloudy blob is, maybe a leaf sticking up out of the ground too close to the lens hole or….. maybe some kind of ghost!
- I don’t actually remember how I placed the camera for this exposure but it appears to have captured a little of the setting sun.
- A path leads down through the trees to the reservoir. Shoe box pinhole camera, paper exposed 2 minutes, 30 seconds.
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