That was then, this is now.

My Wife Laurie and I, Palm Springs 2011

When I reflect on the year that unfolded in front of me and now sits squarely in the past, tumultuous is the word that comes to mind. It’s impossible to condense a whole year into a single blog post but as life passes us by the least I can do is point out a few noteworthy markers from 2011. It goes without saying the most powerful force that we all confront in life is death and this last week I unfortunately met him at my door. Three of my neighbors passed away this year and without getting into the details, we discovered that one of them had died alone on Christmas. I was witness to his body and it was unbelievably disturbing. Literally the next day our beloved dog Sunny finally succumbed to a long protracted illness, which was the saddest day I have ever lived through. It’s been a heavy week but it wasn’t all doom and gloom this year for there were a rash of babies being born to many of our friends, most notably my dear friend and ex assistant of many years Danielle St Laurent and her husband Paul, who gave birth to the beautiful Jon Carlo! Also there were several wonderful weddings, including our friends Sheila and Pete’s wedding at Frank Sinatra’s house in Palm Springs. Here is a picture of my wife Laurie and myself in front of the piano shaped pool. We celebrated our 19th anniversary this year, which is nothing to sneeze at. Isn’t life wonderful! My oldest daughter is a senior in high school, which means that we did the college application process this year and anyone who knows me knows that it pretty much kicked my ass. She is a smart kid and will get into a good one I’m sure. Also, note to anyone planning a family: Don’t have your children 4 years apart and live in NYC or you will have to do the college AND the high school application process at the same time. Now you know why I haven’t done a single blog post in the last two months.

And of course I’ve been busy with my photography. I traveled to LA twice just in December, once to shoot the fabulous Maya Rudolf and once to shoot the legendary Ian Astbury and his band The Cult. I had some great assignments this year including the opportunity to shoot the actors Michael Shannon, Kevin Bacon and Jeffery Wright. I had an 8-page fashion story in Esquire with Dominic Cooper and I got to go to Australia to work on the image campaign for the Fox TV show Terra Nova. I spent a fair amount of time working on a short film I made called SWAN DIVE, a dark and tragic tale about a man and a bridge and I loved every second of it. But also this year has been about downsizing and this is the year we sold our country house. We had the house for 14 years and we loved spending time there but eventually it just became too much of a burden and I couldn’t manage it any more. After 6 months of throwing out stuff, packing and garage sales, we finally sold it and moved out. Super traumatic, but what a relief! So yes it was a tumultuous year but now that I don’t have to paint the deck again, all the applications are filled out, and my poor sick dog is resting in peace, I am feeling a strong sense of rebirth and freedom and energy, ready to move ahead into 2012!

For your viewing pleasure I am presenting two short videos that I have recently finished. Both of these videos were shot while on assignment for stills, but due to favorable circumstances I was able to squeeze in a little video on the back end of each of the shoots. The Gisine video was shot for RunnersWorld in Vermont. Gisine was wonderful to work with and an amazing pastry chef to boot. The back story on Gisine is pretty fascinating: she was a big time Hollywood producer (and she happens to be Sandra Bullocks sister) for many years but couldn’t stand the craziness of the movie business so she quit her job and moved to Vermont to become a baker. More power to ya Gesine!! You can check out her blog here. The Harrah’s video on the other hand was an insane (and insanely fun!) trip down to Atlantic City shooting a “lifestyle” story about how exciting it is to hang out at Harrah’s. All I can say is that I now know where they got the idea for the show “Jersey Shore”

To See the Living One Sheet Click Here!

It’s the fall season and the networks are cranking out the hits. Terra Nova is finally being broadcast over the airwaves and the image campaign that I shot for FOX is plastered all over the city! It’s always thrilling to see a bus drive by or a billboard covered with images that you’ve taken. And believe me, we worked hard on this job, going to Australia twice to get all of these images made. I wrote an earlier post of my first trip down under, which you can read here, but I did go back in May to supplement the campaign. The second time around wasn’t quite as rough being that we had a lot of the gear issues worked out. (and it wasn’t raining!) One of my favorite pieces that we made was a breakthrough of sorts for me, shooting video for a living one sheet!

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of my biggest hero’s. Visiting Fallingwater, the visionary house that he built for the Kaufmann family in 1936, has been a dream of mine for many years. The house sits over a river called Bear Run, about an hour and a half southwest of Pittsburg. My daughter is a senior in high school and luckily for me, one of her top choices for college is Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburg. It’s a pretty long drive but we loaded up the car with the whole family and made a road trip out of it. The weather wasn’t exactly on our side and it was a dark, rainy afternoon when we finally arrived for the tour. Whenever I go anywhere of note, I bring my rolliflex camera. I’ve had this particular rolli since the 80’s and needless to say I am very attached. Right before the tour I was loading a roll of film and I noticed that the aperture adjustment lever was broken. Shit! I waited all this time, came all this way and my camera was broken! I surmised that the camera was in fact still working, but that I could not change the aperture unless the camera was open and I was looking through the inside of the lens. At least though, I was able to set the camera once per roll and thankfully, a fair amount of the images came out fine. Despite the rain, Fallingwater was magnificent and spectacular and beautiful and we had an amazing time on our tour. Now maybe if Olive gets into Carnegie Mellon, I might have to opportunity to come back to Fallingwater on a sunny day, and this time I’ll bring my Leica.

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The fashion story that I shot for Esquire with Dominic Cooper came out this summer and I couldn’t be happier! Its always exciting to see your hard work on the stands, and very rewarding I must say. I wrote a bit about the shoot in an earlier post which you can see here but in this post I will make a technical point. For the shoot, I used continuous lighting instead of flash and I really think it freed us up to work more fluidly and fluently. I have been using this HMI lighting for my video work and I am loving how it looks so I thought I’d give it a shot. Unfortunately I did not have a second to spare for video, because it would have been really COOL! As it was, just shooting 10 looks in a day is hard enough. (So I made an animated gif instead) Here are some outtakes…

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The luster of new wears thin quickly in the fast paced world of social media and lately I’ve been having trouble just finding the energy to check my facebook page or even to post a tweet. Its not that I don’t get it, I get it. I’ve spent countless hours lost deep inside comment chains, visiting with old girlfriends from high school, and watching rare music video posts but after a while the inevitable redundancy sets in and I have found myself with a pretty bad case of SM burnout. Or maybe its just that I spend all of my time on INSTAGRAM now. This summer has been crazy and I don’t think anyone would call me lazy but it sure is easy to post my nicely filtered i-phone photos for all to see. You need to be careful as to avoid killing yourself with clichés, sunsets and cats are the deadliest, but that keeps it challenging. And generally I think the visual language spoken on the INSTAGRAM feed is pretty fun to watch. Here are some of my favs…






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Even though we were “working” spending the afternoon with Kevin Bacon was much more fun than your usual day at the office. Kevin arrived slightly shy, but it didnt take long for the formalities to dissolve into a relaxing vibe, more on along the lines of a casual Friday, at the end of the day, when everyone is hanging around and laughing. Kevin was incredibly gracious and we bonded over the fact that his son was in a rock band and had just graduated from Evergreen State College (which was where I went in the 80′s) He was thrilled with my book GRUNGE and he even asked me to sign one so he could give it to him. I know he usually plays the bad guy, but it was obvious that Kevin is a really great dad! (and quite a Rocker himself. The music in the video is Kevins own band The Bacon Brothers)

Last month I was given one of those dream assignments that we all wish for. Esquire hired me to photograph Dominic Cooper for a 10 page fashion story to be shot in New Orleans. The catch: Dominic was only available for one day. We were fortunate to find a great location in the french quarter and with the help of Esquire’s wonderful fashion Editor Wendall Brown, we managed to pull off an amazing shoot. The story comes out in August so I can’t reveal any of the images yet but while I was down there I had some time to shoot some personal work. I made these with my Rollie twin lens and Tri-x film. Old school.

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I get the impression that things have a tendency to happen in threes. Maybe there is some grand “Cluster Theory” floating around the universe and we just dont know it, but for whatever reason, I was given 3 serious illness assignments in a row. Usually I’m just hanging around with the cast of Glee, a celebrity chef or some hairy rock band, but in April I was dealing with people who have cancer, autism and bulimia. For Runners World I shot 8 cancer survivors in 3 different states. The studios in Austin and St Louis were not quite up to the NY standards but let me tell you, people who have beaten cancer have a certain serenity that is unmistakably refreshing.

Then I was hired to photograph the pop singer Demi Lovato for the cover of People Magazine. Demi had just finished a month of rehab for bulimia and was bravely opening up to the public about her personal trauma. She is a wonderfully talented personality who is dealing with a very serious illness and I was so impressed by her dignity and strength.

I have never shot for Parade Magazine but when they called I just assumed it was going to be to shoot Kim Kardashian or some other pop celeb. The assignment I got couldn’t have been any farther away. Instead I went to Bethesda to photograph a low functioning autistic woman named Dana Eisman. Dana is 21 years old but functions as a 4 year old and is managed by her mother Beth who is a saint by any definition. For me, spending the day at home with the Eismans was a crash course in the difficulties of Autism and a profound experience to say the least.

Oh boy, am I behind on my blog posts. Well here is one to get me back in the mood. I shot 6 different artists for this crazy BUST Magazine fashion story last month over several days. As a central visual theme I worked with the artistic fabricators of crafty creations, The Confetti System, to help with the environments for our six musically talented subjects. Bust is exemplary at discovering new talent and if I were you I would keep an eye on these musicians. I went a little crazy with the photoshop layering, but why not have a little fun every now and then!

Peggy Wang of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

Lizzie of Gang Gang Dance

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Not only did I shoot this movie poster but I made the movie too! Thanks to my good pal Christian Struzan and XL for the awesome poster design. unbelievably I am still not finished with the post production of the film but have picturelock and will start submitting to festivals next week. Hopefully one of these days I can have a screening.

I recently had the opportunity to work with the actor Michael Shannon. He is mainly known for his role as Nelson Van Alden, the zealous Federal Prohibition agent on Boardwalk Empire, but I am particularly fond of his performance in the role of Kim Fowley for the movie “The Runaways” We did the shoot in my apartment and we got along swell. He invited me to his off broadway play “MIstakes Were Made” a one man show where he rants into a phone for an hour and a half and it is a truly incredible performance:

a deeply moving character study of a man seeking redemption, but inescapably creating destruction. Felix Artifex, a B-list Off-Broadway producer, gets in way over his fast-talking head when he takes on a gargantuan epic about the French Revolution which he thinks is going to be his ticket to professional and personal reclamation. While trying to land a big star for the lead role, he uses all his powers of persuasion, seduction and intimidation to strong-arm the writer into massively rewriting his play. At the same time, he attempts to reconnect with his estranged wife and untangle himself from a mess involving sheep in a distant war-torn country.

After the show we went out for french food in the Village and talked about theatre. It was awesome. Also just in case you didnt notice the credits in video, The music is from Michael’s own band Corporal. you can buy it on Itunes!!

I shot the image campaign for the FOX television series Human Target staring Mark Valley this last summer and let my tell you, we are lucky to be alive because this shoot was crazy! Thank god Mark was so fiercely strong and rugged because if he would have dropped that poor girl it would have been all over. And to top it off, that explosive motorcycle chase scene left the pungent scent of burning rubber in my nose for days. Just kidding of course. We shot this in the studio with the help of lovely Liz Lang and the set-master Jessy Nemeth. But a big hand must be given to the design and post-production departments at FOX. The do a real BANG UP job!

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RIP the white stripes. For a moment in time, they were the greatest! I made this in the summer of 2001 with a Bolex and one 3min roll of 16mm film, plus a few rolls of good old fashion film.

I thought about writing this post last month but with my trip to Australia and all of the holiday madness I never quite got around to it. But now with the New Year my blog posting motivation has been reinvigorated and I am ready to tell the tale of my shoot with Fran Leibowitz! If you haven’t seen the HBO documentary “Public Speaking” of the New York Icon you really should try. Considering the film consists mainly of Fran talking, it’s amazingly entertaining, (and beautifully directed by Martin Scorsese.) The reason? Because Fran is a brilliant satirist who is incredibly opinionated, has an acerbic wit and seems to know everything about everything. Anyway, she arrived at my studio alone and on time for our BUST magazine shoot and we had a lovely time gabbing about everything under the sun. (We talked about the Chilean Miners, how horrible Times Square is now, how amazing technology is these days etc…) She was friendly and funny and I would venture to guess, a great guest at a dinner party. After several hours of chatting and snapping, I can say that the shoot went quite smoothly. My favorite quote from Fran was “The worst photo taken of you in your 20’s is better than the best photo taken of you in your 50’s!”. Plus as an added benefit, we got invited to the incredibly glamorous premiere of “Public Speaking” at the MOMA, and the after party at the Four Seasons. Let me tell you, it seems no one mentioned to the folks at HBO that times were tough, because that was the fanciest spread of food I have ever seen. There were several “all you could eat” seafood bars stocked with lobster and crab meat and table after table of food each representing a different cuisine. The PDN party would have done well with the scraps.