William L. Palminteri

Who is William L. Palminteri?

William L.Palminteri is an avant-garde graphic designer and musician currently living and working in New York, USA. Having been born and raised it an art and music environment, he was introduced at an early age to the wonders of various artistic disciplines. After extensive schooling in the fine arts, and having worked in the music, television, motion picture and fashion design fields, he has returned to photography as his artistic expression of choice. "My design experience led to a position with Cablevison Systems as the Production Designer for the MSG Metro Channels. That was the hardest I've ever worked, twelve hour days were commonplace, and I put in one twenty three and a half hour day, never seeing the outside of the studio." Mr. Palminteri adds "That's when I coined the phrase 'In the TV world, nine to five is a Baseball score'. We re-invented the educational television format, now its time to rethink the current state of affairs in photography."In a recent interview, Mr. Palminteri said, "Being dismayed and quite frankly appalled at the almost universal use of photo editing programs, I am returning photography to its basic concept of capturing the beauty of life and portraying that beauty in its original state." "When I was learning the craft of photography in the late 1960s, the phrase "Unretouched Photo" was a badge of honor. We viewed photo manipulation as "trick photography", a fun hobby for your kid sister, but not photography."Never without an opinion, Mr. Palminteri says, "Photoshop is like karaoke for picture-takers. Most of those people shouldn't sing either. All that tells me is, maybe you should learn how to take a proper photograph in the first place"."I picked up a Nikon 'Nikkormat FS' in the late '60's and started learning 'Wet photography' with my friends, who were all showing an interest in photography at that time. With the need for an external light meter, this setup forced me to learn the craft from the ground up. We set up a darkroom in the basement of a lifelong friend's home, and developed negatives, made prints, the whole thing" Mr. Palminteri remembers. "Savino and I would spend hour after hour learning the process, and we would go well into the night as a general rule.""That was a very time and labor intensive process, but the discipline was invaluable." "Because of the expense of film and the time required to complete the process, every shot was thought out ahead of time, with close attention given to lighting and composition", Mr. Palminteri reminices. Those were lessons well learnedToday Mr.Palminteri uses a Nikon D70S for most work, though the Nikon E950 still gets pressed into service from time to time. Since I switched to the digital realm, computers now play a large part in photography. "I was introduced to computers through a chance meeting with my soon-to-be mentor, Tanel Demiray. A Computer Scientist by profession, Tanel spent many hours (hours which he didn't have) helping me to learn programming, first in 'BASIC', then 'assembly' language. "Keeping the machinery running is an important part of the process these days, and those many hours spent learning computers have proven invaluable". Mr.Palminteri also has a distinct aversion to flash of any type, except when re-creating that classic seamy newspaper shot of decades past. "Those were great shots, and only a flash will give you that nasty 'flash' look. I like a 'hot set' for indoor work. I can see what I'm going to get without the need for a polaroid, etc. With a flash, by the time you see what you've got, the mood is lost, the model is getting cranky, there's no spontanaity left. Hot lights are definitely worth the extra effort."