Rangefinder Magazine
April 2005

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Roger Rosenfeld by Lou Jacobs Jr.
He Shoots Food & Designs Web Sites

In both web site design and food photography, less is more for Roger Rosenfeld of San Rafael, CA. His career began on other paths because his family expected him to follow his father and uncles and become an attorney. In college, he says, “I realized there was no lawyer in me. I tried several majors and arrived at music history. The Music Department insisted I take music lessons. I can’t play anymore, but my studies shaped how I came to view photography and the arts.”

After graduation from the University of Pittsburgh in 1963, Roger managed an office building his father owned. He was made building manager, which meant when something went wrong, the tenants yelled at him. Asked how he got into photography, Roger explains that he went to Israel in 1966 with an 8mm movie camera but decided to shoot stills instead. “I bought a small rangefinder camera and began to play with it. A year later I revisited Israel after the 1967 war, and I was able to document Jericho, Gaza, the Golan Heights and fly over Sinai, places you can’t access today.” That experience had a “visceral impact,” he says. “I remember being very moved by a photo I took of candles in a store window, the colors and design of it touched me on a deep level. It was the same feeling I had when listening to a wonderful piece of music. Along with that experience and seeing the movie Blowup, where the photographer got all the girls, I was hooked.”

He began “a magical process,” making b&w prints in his kitchen, and soon after, shifted from Pittsburgh to Cleveland, where he moved in with his girlfriend, who later became his wife. Roger was doing a lot of photography as “fine art images,” he says, “with the intention of showing and selling my work and the eventual goal of teaching.” He decided to study at the New York Institute of Photography and take classes at The School for Visual Arts where David Vestal and Ralph Hattersley were instructors. He recalls, “Both of them opened me up to new ways of seeing the world.

“I also had the chance to study with W. Eugene Smith who taught documentary photography and showed us incredible slides. He was a master of the photojournalistic essay, and I was privileged to work with him. At that time, a monograph of his work by Minor White was published, and, though Gene had left Life, he became famous again.”

As Roger was absorbing photography, he was also intrigued by pictorial design. While studying with Gene Smith, he photographed Cleveland dock areas for a class project, and when he showed the work, he recalls, “The other students jumped all over me because I had done the pictures with high-contrast copy film, and they said this was not photography. Gene came to my defense, agreeing with me that seeing reality as a pattern of shapes was very compelling.” Roger’s sense of design is mostly self-taught, and, he says, “I trust my instincts to guide me in both photography and web design.”

After graduation from New York Institute, Roger’s goal was to become “another Ansel Adams,” and he started down the art photography track with gallery shows. Then serendipity intervened, and he met advertising photographer Earl Wood who complained about past assistants he had. “Exactly what happened,” Roger says, “is a blur.” But at the end of their first meeting Roger became Earl’s new assistant. “He was really an excellent photographer,” Roger recalls. “He had been at the top of his field in Chicago and San Francisco. Working for Earl and four other photographers, I was immediately fascinated by a new, exciting life. They did Gumps fashionable catalogs and a lot of food photography.

The work was mostly tabletop. I left after a year to share a studio. After a few years freelancing, I accepted an offer to run the photo department at ArtWorks. They did all sorts of production work for ad agencies, and I continued shooting a lot of still life. On my first day, I had a job for Levi’s. I didn’t have time to test the film for color balance; all the pictures came back blue. The art director was great about it, but I still call it my ‘Blue Period.’”

For a while later Roger shared a studio again and did jewelry, glass and other products that require delicate lighting and camera handling. When space became available, he opened his own studio, and then came the evolution.

“In 1989 when I bought my first computer, there were no instructions, and I proceeded to create huge messes.” Roger experimented, read and asked questions to solve computer mysteries. By 1995, “when the Internet as we know it was in its infancy,” he adds, a neighbor taught him some basic HTML, the code that gives a computer browser instructions. “He also got me a job designing a web site, and I did another for a photographer neighbor, then one for myself. After designing sites for other photographers and friends, I discovered my passion for web site design.”

In the beginning Roger didn’t promote his new career path, and jobs came his way by word of mouth. He had hung out with a lot of graphic designers and feels that many of their techniques rubbed off. “I admired their skills,” he explains, “and there are numerous great programs out there, so the more I learn, the more tools I have to be creative.”

I asked what clients give him to work with, and he told me, “My first question is, ‘What do you want your web site to do for you?’ We spend time discovering their needs and what we think will work for them. I believe less is more, so I try to design sites that are simple and easy to navigate. When I go to a site like Microsoft or Yahoo, my eyes spin in their sockets, and it’s a struggle to find what I want. They put so much on one page.

“Web sites can perform a lot of different functions such as being a store, a reference tool or a brochure. I often think of the hundreds of visits I once made to designers and ad agencies to show my portfolio.

Now I can ask prospective clients to look at my web site, and I’ll visit an office to show if it’s more convenient. Since a web site may perform the same function as an initial personal contact, it’s important that it be inviting in design and content. It needs to use persuasive language, just the right words to grab viewers and keep them entering new pages. My background in photography gives me the edge over web designers who were computer people first, and I’ve honed my web design skills. I was an artist first and then a programmer.

“After a client and I decide on the structure of the site, we begin adding the content, which includes copy and photographs, for each page. Every web site has unique needs. One person’s work and personality are different from another’s. I integrate what they give me into the site, then we refine it and install it. The wonder of the Internet is that I can make additions or corrections to the site, and my client can look at them in real time in his office. I work in an editing program that allows the client to see what corrections and additions I make in real time.”

About what he envisions for the future of web site design, Roger says, “The first web site page I ever saw had a gray background with blue headings, black text and no graphics, animation or sound. Changes in just the last decade have been mind-boggling. I believe web platforms will become smaller, and their functionality will continue to grow.

“As a technology freak, I want to own all the web site wonders that keep appearing. They can get expensive, but new techniques enable me to design a larger variety of sites to give clients diversity.”

Roger sums up his dual operations: “I love facing stimulating challenges doing both photography and web site design. On the Internet in California, I can work with a client in Texas. We make changes and publish them to the site in seconds, and then we talk about them on the phone. As time goes by my photography and web design become more entwined. I’ve done sites for other photographers and I do projects with other photographers. It’s a neat way to go.”

Reach Roger the web site designer at www.clickwebservices.com/. To email Roger the photographer contact him at: www.rogerr.com/.

Lou Jacobs Jr is the author of 28 how-to photography books, the latest of which is Studio Lighting (Amherst Media). He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, and his photographs and stories have been published in numerous magazines. He is a longtime member of ASMP and enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad, which is leased through several agencies.