This is an actual cake that was spotted in Chinatown last weekend. I shot it from two different angles so people wouldn’t think it was Photoshopped. Anyone care to guess what it is?

Today marks the launch of our “Marie from the Bronx” anti-smoking campaign for the New York City Health Department. If you’re a New Yorker, in the coming weeks you’ll be seeing a lot of the ads which feature Marie talking about how complications from smoking resulted in her having many of her fingers and her leg amputated. It’s a pretty amazing story, and working with Marie over the last year has been really cool, to say the least.

We just finished creating the DCF Advertising Blog where you can read up on this and some other campaigns we’ve been working on lately. Fun stuff. Now give me a cigarette.

Kidding…

Creating a progressive and abstract print ad can be a good thing. But creating an ad that’s so abstract that the dude putting them up can’t tell the damn thing is upside down? Not so good.

Has anyone else noticed that the displays on the new NYC subways seem to use Apple’s Keynote presentation software? If you’ve ever used Keynote, pay attention to the transitions and you’ll recognize all your favorites – Cube, Dissolve, Pop – they’re all there!

Does anyone know if they actually have a little Mac running the show inside every subway, or if it’s just a video file looping?

Well, I can scratch off another item on my life’s to-do list. Our latest anti-smoking commercials we created at DCF Advertising for the New York City Health Department have pissed of the New York Post’s one-and-only Andrea Peyser.

Not too shabby, although it’s hard to take criticism too seriously from someone who’s job is to get pissed off about something else completely different every day.

(It’s also hard to take criticism from a website with urls ending in .htm. What is this, 2003? Take THAT, The New York Post!)

I noticed something extremely creepy in the West Village last night. I gazed into an upscale townhouse and was shocked to see a giant 1980s era photo/portrait hanging over the mantle featuring a Ron Jeremy lookalike and his seeming Russian mail order bride. Some close-ups are here and here. It’s such a dated portrait that I have to imagine it’s been hanging up there since the 80s. But what’s baffling to me is that they haven’t gotten sick of it since then. Maybe the couple just died, and the portrait is up for the memorial service? That’s the most comforting explanation I can think of. Any others are welcome in the comments.

As far as advertising photography is concerned, there are two main types that stand out for me. The first type is imagery that looks pretty much like it did straight-out-of-the-camera (SOC). These are the shots that get the job done and make everyone happy. The second type are the “it” photographs. It’s hard to explain exactly what “it” is, but like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography – you know it when you see it. These images usually have a slightly hyper-real quality that makes them look “advertising-y”, and are the result of a mixture of complicated lighting setups and skilled time-consuming retouching.

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It looks like the homeless awareness campaign we did at DCF advertising is finally being posted around the city. And if I may say, it’s looking pretty good. One of the benefits of being a creative director is you get to use yourself as the photographer whenever you damn well please. And that was the case here. I’m going to post a step-by-step Lightroom tutorial of how I got the image to look all “advertising-y” from the original photo, which looked pretty ordinary straight from the camera. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Just posted the tutorial here.

A sign of the times.

I spotted this customized Wet Paint sign last night on 14th and 6th. Can anyone offer any insight into just what the hell it means?