We were lucky to catch up with David Ginsberg recently and have shared our conversation below.

David, appreciate you joining us today. Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?

In my photographic career I shoot both commercially and fine art images. I was absolutely influenced by the classical realist painters and how their work had an incredible feeling of depth and intricate design.

An instance of this is the way Vermeer handled light and shadow. The flesh tones glowed with luminosity. We, as photographers, paint with light, it is how we see and how we express our imagery, it is the very essence of using that light that illuminates everything that we try to capture.

Early on in my career I tried to make my images stand out from what my competitors were doing, by trying to emulate that same beauty of light and design that made classical paintings so stunning. After graduation from design school rather than take the usual next step of assisting in a working studio, I set out to chart my own course. My fourth portfolio review by an agency in L.A. hooked me into shooting fashion for a national brand.

The Art Director and client were thrilled by how my vision for their fashion set them apart from others in the field. After that I began to get calls from other clients to change up they way they had been presenting their work. That simple innovative twist in how I envisioned fashion photography was soon rewarded with other applications of my work to the product market as well.

It was years later that I applied that same principle to fine art photography. I have often heard from buyers and collectors how my landscape works look like paintings.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I fell into photography by chance. I was in post grad studies and the dean of that department suggested I broaden my studies program by taking another humanities course. He said looking at my transcript I had only ever taken Art History, perhaps I should explore other courses, painting, pottery or any of those offered. I chose photography and fell in love with it. I had never considered nor tried this art form until then. I told the professor, who was also head of the department, that I was interested in taking the next level of training the following semester. He replied that portfolio review was the following week, a one on one review in his office.

Upon reviewing my work he folded his hands, sighed and told me he did not want to teach me. I was disappointed and asked if my work was that poorly executed. He chuckled and answered that question by telling me that indeed it was not. In fact the truth was my vision was light years beyond his and while he could teach my the more mechanical aspects of photography the actual creative vision I had was beyond his abilities and perhaps I should chose this as a career path. He also suggested several design schools to attend to do so.

I followed his advice and applied to several, finally choosing one based on another professional photographers suggestion upon seeing my work. Art Center Collage of Design in California was my choice, little did I know at the time that it was the equivalent of going to Harvard for a law degree. The training was rigorous, the pace unrelenting, no breaks between sessions. A year round program for three and a half years, studying with the best working professionals from across the country and studying with a select group of international students.

Upon graduation I opened my first studio in Los Angles. Three years later I partnered with an incredible illustrator based in Mexico City and opened up a second studio there. We worked for several years with a large group of national and international clients creating award winning work. Eventually the economy took a dark turn forcing the closure of the studio in Mexico City. Having a young family made me reconsider raising them in Los Angeles. Research showed the Twin Cities in Minnesota was the second largest advertising market for product photography in The U.S.

Uprooting my family and closing the L.A. studio down was a difficult choice but one I made, resulting in restructuring my studio and opening a new one in Minneapolis. My work proved viable and the studio grew once more. I have worked with the best and the brightest Art Directors in the area once again garnering many awards for my work along the way.

Eventually I opened up a second business of Fine Art Photography. Traveling for my business afforded my the chance to have days on location in other countries and other locals here, in the U.S. This gave me the opportunity to comprise a wonderful portfolio of work promoting the wonders of the world around us.

One of my finest accomplishments has been being selected to show my work in the Louver in Paris for a huge international exhibition, featuring one hundred photographic artists out of a field of 160,000 entrants from across the globe.

My fine art work is collected nationally and internationally with pieces all across the U.S. and in many countries in Europe and Asia.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Having explored both the my abilities as a left brained, (logic, analytical, side) and right brained (artistic, creative, imaginative) I feel comfortable in either the scientific field or the artistic one. I think because of this duality I actually feel more free exploring the creative side. To open new worlds for myself where the mental imagery becomes a reality. Recently I have begun to explore writing fantasy fiction. It is a genre long held dear to me because it afforded me the opportunity to visit worlds created by others that I could immerse myself in. So far the response to my own endeavors of creating an immersive world has been met with appreciation by my bata readers.

I think my logical analytical side has greatly helped my commercial work in coming up with solutions to difficult problems while shooting jobs, where the ability to solve such problems on the fly has been invaluable at times. It has also become a boon while trying to solve the gapes in plot lines and character development in writing stories.

I absolutely love being able to take ordinary objects and create images that transcend the mere inherent beauty of, say, a single flower in bloom, and turning it into a thing a intricate variety of color and light, shadows and depth, making it more than it was and becoming a study in painting with light. Or capturing a landscape in a way that seems to create a thing of painterly quality.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Of all the possible questions to answer this one is perhaps the most convoluted and relevant to our present time.

I started out my journey in photography in the pre digital age, when film was the only way to capture images. To be more precise, when transparency film was the sole medium for the commercial industry. Pre Photoshop, where if you needed to create extraordinary images a true mastery of technique was required. I think the first hiccup in the industry occurred with the advent and proliferation of personal computers. Suddenly Ad Agencies were discovering that the ease of acquiring stock images could be obtained more quickly than slogging through hard copies and catalogues of imagery and hiring someone to manipulate them in photoshop was, to them, less expensive than hiring a studio to shoot specific image for an ad. I would say we saw a 30% drop in business across the industry because of this.

The second advent was the generation of digital photography. Before long all of the investment in film cameras 4X5 large format, 2 1/4 medium format, and 35 mm became obsolete. Having to make the change over to digital required a significant investment in both a financial way and learning curve.

Giving the dual introduction of both, the industry was decimated. Processing labs began to go out of business, color separation business ceased to exist, type setting became a lost art, and suddenly the market was flooded with people who owned cameras, but lacked the training to understand difficult lighting techniques and problem solving. I saw many of my peers give up their studios and turn to other means of making an income.

I was still in demand because of the quality of work I could provide and my ability to solve those very real issues of problem solving on the fly. Yet now I had to learn working digitally to get the same results I could get from using film. The beautiful transition of silky looking images from the harsher one of hyper sharp digital became a challenge to figure out just how to maintain that look and style I had created.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://Eclipseproductions.org http//:thejourneyinlight.com
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