DOUG MENUEZ

Sometimes you get the feeling that Doug Menuez might be a little conflicted, but then again, he could be speaking for a lot of us. "We've wasted more time here on new technology than anybody I know, " he says. "It's a nightmare, but I'm attracted to it like a moth to flame." An advertising photographer, who's slowly making the change to digital, Menuez's trepidation is understandable.

Menuez's varied career has brought a lot of those frustrating yet fascinating new technologies into his life. He began as a photojournalist in the late '70's working for small San Francisco Bay Area newspapers like The Antioch Daily Ledger, The Brisbane Bee, and The South San Francisco Enterprise Journal. A typical assignment that Menuez would be given at the Enterprise was their "plant of the week" feature. "My first one was a 6-foot cactus, at noon, in an 80-year old woman's backyard. Shot in black and white, of course."

After several years of paying his dues at local papers, Menuez moved on to shooting hard news for publications like Time, U.S. News and World Report, and The Washington Post. It was at the Post that he used his first non-film camera -- a Nikon still-video unit - while shooting the 1982 Super Bowl.

Menuez's work on the Day in the Life of America book project in 1986 resulted in commissions from both Apple and Adobe to shoot long-term photo essays on the development of new technologies. He first saw Photoshop when version 1.0 was still in beta, and a book he co-produced to benefit victims of San Francisco's 1989 earthquake was, he believes, the first book ever printed using Photoshop for color separations.

Since the early '90's, Menuez based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has been mainly shooting commercial advertising. You can visit his portfolio online a www.menuez.com.

Spontaneity and a relaxed atmosphere on the set are both key to Menuez's working style. He bought a Nikon D1 earlier this year to help him achieve both objectives, and he's happy with how it's working. Menuez uses the D1 as a proofing tool, showing test shots on a laptop set up for that purpose, since the vast majority of his shoots are done on location.

"This tool is very liberating, "Menuez says. "It allows me to build trust with the [ad agency's] art director, but it's also for the client on the set to see that we're going in the direction they think we're supposed to be going. It builds a wonderful feeling on the set. We have the best shoots after they see the images on the laptop, because everybody feels confident."

Compared to shooting tests on Polaroid, Menuez says that the D1 is faster and allows him to be more spontaneous, and the laptop images are much more appealing to clients.

Equally important to Menuez is that the D1's images are good enough to use as final results if need be. "If I have a kid leaping over a campfire," he explains, "and he's got a great expression on his face and they say 'Great. Get me that.' Well, I can't get it right away [if it's] on a Polaroid, but if I shoot it on the D1, I've already got it."

Menuez still delivers his final results to clients on film and expects that will be the case for the short-term future. Most of the art directors he encounters don't quite trust digital images yet. His colleagues, Menuez says, will be the ones that change that. "When enough photographers are satisfied with the quality of digital, they will sell the art directors on it."

As we interviewed him, Menuez and his assistants were in the midst of printing a new edition of his photography portfolio on his Epson Stylus Pro 9000 photo printer. He's had all his previous portfolios printed by high-end pro labs, but the Epson's output quality convinced him he could do this one himself. His plan, if he can find the right paper stock, is to print images on both sides of each page. "Then," he explains, "we'll take the pages to a bindery where they'll cut them and stitch them together like a real book. Basically, we have our own printing press. It just takes a long time."

As Menuez talks about the portfolio printing project, the frustration/fascination dichotomy is clear. Ask him about color balancing the Epson 9000 and he rolls his eyes at the horrifying memory: "We spent thirty solid days in hell. Rounds and rounds and rounds of tests. CMYK versus RGB: What will work the best for each situation? That was a lost month." But 10 minutes later, when you ask him if there's anything particular on his shopping list, there's no hesitation: "We're gonna buy whatever's new… the minute it comes out." As he says, like a moth to a flame.

PORTFOLIOPROCESS

Doug Menuez's impressive list of clients includes Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Northwest Airlines, Disney clothing, Amazon.com, Reebok, and Pellegrino. He's also working to become better known at editorial fashion and portraiture photography and has shot for magazines like L'Uomo Vogue (the Italian edition of Vogue for men). His photojournalism background has been a strong influence on his fashion and advertising pictures. In fact, Menuez says, "I think of myself as a traditional documentary photographer." His images, partly because of his documentary style, are emotionally evocative, imbued with a strong sense of storytelling, and are often funny.

DIGITALEQUIPMENT

Cameras: Nikon D1, Nikon Coolpix 990 Printers: Epson Stylus Pro 9000, Epson Photo Stylus 1270, Epson Stylus EX
Scanners: Nikon LS-2000 Super Coolscan II film scanner, Epson Expression 636 flatbed
Computer software and hardware: Macintosh G4, Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Canto Cumulus 4.0