“It’s not going to work!” Thats the first thing David Blaine said to me when he walked into the studio. After explaining our plan and showing him how prepared we were, he then proclaimed that it would take 5 tries to get it right. Let’s just say that David has a “strong personality” and I had to use every trick in the photographic Jujitsu playbook to make it through the day. It’s incredibly physically demanding to hang upside down and I do have to give it to David for delivering a command performance. He did end up inverting 5 times but we actually got the winning shot on the 3rd time upside down. The whole team did a great job, including photo editor Alison Unterreiner, set builder Jesse Nemeth and you can see stylist Wendell T Brown in the BTS photo below. Of course the shoot wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Michael Norseng’s brilliant concept! After the shoot David gathered the crew around and performed some of the most amazing card tricks I have ever seen. Literally cards disappeared right in front of my eyes. That was some serious Magic!
Sometimes I forget to take advantage of the benefits of living in New York and all of the world class art exhibits that the city has to offer. Fortunately I was able to catch the Henry Cartier-Bresson show at the MOMA on the last day of the show, because if I would have missed it, I don’t think I could have forgiven myself. Normally I hate fighting the crowds but I have to say that it was thrilling to see so many people there enjoying the show and really validating photography as an artform. Bresson is a master and a hero of mine and influenced me greatly during my formative years. That said, I was actually kind of disappointed with the curation of the show. I understand that they were trying to express the broad depth of his work, but I feel like there was a lack of rigorous editing and organization of the images. Too much redundancy within the compositions and too all over the place regarding chronology. Anyway, who am I to complain? I felt honored to see the show. As we were leaving we happened upon the exhibit Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography and after the overwhelmingly dense Bresson show this was breath of fresh air. What an amazing group of photographs made by women, many of them I had never even heard of. Don’t miss it!
Ten years ago I shot the cast of Malcolm In The Middle and my most vivid memory of the shoot was how hilarious the dad was to work with. When I was asked to shoot Bryan Cranston for NYM at first I didnt recognize the name but after a checking on IMDB I soon realized that the crazy meth dealer on Breaking Bad was also Malcolm’s dad! Fortunately Bryan was still crazy after all those years and the shoot was a blast. We even had time to make a quick mock book cover that Bryan took onto the DAILY SHOW with Jon Stewart. The video that we made came on the heels of the photoshoot and I will be the first to admit that its a challenge to do both photo and video at the same time, but I think it came out alright. Thank you Bryan Cranston!!!
In February I went to Dallas and shot the Ad campaign for the Fox show THE GOOD GUYS. These gallery sessions are incredibly difficult and complex but hands down, they are the funnest jobs to shoot! The logistics for the shoot involved working around the TV crew’s schedule, setting up several giant sets at once in an empty warehouse, including a 40ft white background for 2 cars at once, lighting several group shots in a different location, almost getting our generator shut down by the City and dealing with the intricacies of armadillo wrangling. Its a huge machine, with 3 different video crews following all of us around, oh and did I mention having the actual Highway Patrol escort us around town while we shot plates of the Dallas skyline? All the actors were fantastic, I was impressed with Colin Hanks’s knowledge of indie music and Bradley Whitford tells hilarious jokes and does a mean splits!
Tilda was wonderfully gracious and the photographs for the article came out beautifully, but the video piece didn’t really turn out the way I envisioned it. I had big plans. I had mapped out several cool concepts involving several beautiful glass vases and water and a Patti Smith poem, but she nixed everything. You never know going into a photo shoot with someone you’ve never met whats going to happen. Most of the time people like to have some sort of prop or element that they can engage with and I always have something to offer my subjects. Obviously my pitch didn’t go over very well, so I’m a little disappointed with this piece. That said, I shot the interview and edited in a few of the images from the shoot and this is what I came up with. I also struggled to get a descent sound recording. We shot this piece at Industria studio 1, which is similar to a cave and is not sound proof, so the banging that was happening in one of the other studios that was unfortunately synchronized with Tilda’s answers really put a crimp in my style. Trying to tack on a video shoot on the back end of a photo shoot is definitely the challenge we all face in todays reality.
Every now and then I get handed a project that is so cool that it sounds too good to be true. When the band Violent Soho asked my to photograph a group of kids dressed in post-apocalyptic attire wearing a crown of thorns and yielding home made weapons I couldn’t believe it. Of course I immediately cast my daughter and her friends for the project and proceeded to put together the costumes and props. We shot the job at Fast Ashley’s in Brooklyn, the first half of the day dedicated to the band photos (which I will eventually get around to posting) and the second half of the day to shooting the kids. It was a memorable day, reminiscent of my days of shooting bands in the studio, with the added energy of all the kids running around in crazy outfits, having the time of their lives.
I am a reasonably healthy person, I don’t drink or smoke and although Im no marathoner, I run about 15 to 20 miles a week. But when it comes to coffee thats where I let it all hang out. Am I a coffee snob? I don’t know. I just prefer my joe to be extremely strong and rich and black. Usually I drink americano’s but occasionally I indulge in a macchiato or even a gibraltar. Anyway to get to the point, I have been working on a series of portraits of factory workers and when I found out that my coffee shop, La Colombe, had a factory in Philly I got really excited and started to plan a trip. I really didnt know what to expect when I arrived and I was amazed by the scope of the operation. Breathing in a fine mist of coffee dust, I hung out with the guys on the floor and really got a sense of the process of roasting coffee beans. I hadn’t planned on it but I found myself motivated to shoot a fair amount of video and together with the stills I ended up with this mashup industrial piece which I made for no other reason except that I LOVE coffee!
Everyone needs one of these. We were in Oakland shooting at Bart Nagel’s studio and he was fooling around with some new toys and he made this time lapse video of our shoot. You cant really notice but about four seconds in is when I fire our assistant. She had said she worked for Todd Hido, who is an amazing photographer, but he doesn’t use lights. She didnt even know how to set up a c-stand. It was a little bit dramatic because our other assistant was awol! We eventually learned that she was in the emergency room with a friend who had had their toe badly cut. Bart and I stepped in at took over setting up and eventually our assistant showed up and we got the job done. Thanks Bart!
I’ve photographed Joan Jett 3 times now over the years, the first time in 1991 for Sony Records, the 2nd time in 1996 for Raygun Magazine and in 2009 for Esquire, and I will say this about her: she is a wonderfully warm and friendly person with an amazingly strong sense of personal style. She is truly an original presence. And she is really intense. I remember for our first shoot, at my studio on Bleeker and the Bowery, Joan arrived with (and I am not making this up) a joint in each hand, both lit I might add, and an Expresso Machine under her arm. Joan was rolling with her own expresso machine!! (I’m sorry, I really wish I had a photo of that!) Almost 20 years later Joan shows up looking more like Joan Jett than I had ever seen her. The only thing different this time was she didnt bring her expresso machine.
Welcome to the future, where every photo shoot is a video shoot as well. I was asked by the fabulous Amy Feiterberg of Outside magazine to photograph a girl named Kick Kennedy. Yea, thats right. As in THE Kennedys. Ted Kennedy’s Granddaughter. We were a little unsure what to expect but when Kick arrived it became clear to me that she was a lively soul and we were going to make some strong images. I had been trying to figure out how to incorporate video into a portrait session for some time and finally all the stars aligned. Along with some beautiful photographs, I was able to sneak in some video footage and cut together this fun and fresh little clip. Shooting video really doesnt take that much more time and if everyone is on board I feel like the potential here is tremendous! You can see it live on Outside Magazine’s site or watch it here.
