Prosper Magazine Cover

Primate, canine and decisions

TB

LS

WES
A couple hours after commenting on Andrew Hetherington's blog (http://whatsthejackanory.blogspot.com/) abut a recent Larry Sultan photograph (above with hose ) I found myself at an executive's house on a photo assignment. I couldn't get the LS image out of my mind as we walked around the mansion scouting.
When shooting a portrait there are a thousand decisions that we as photographers make and none of them are an accident. A portrait is not a document but a lie that we tell about ourselves or about our subjects. Above is this amazing photograph by Eugene Smith from the '50s. He spent a bunch of time at a spanish village and shot these town guards. He could have shot these guys a myriad of different ways but chose this unflattering approach because he wanted to comment on Franco's regime. A lie for sure but sure has some truth in it.

If it doesn't feel like setting money on fire you are not spending enough

I was taking to Evan Hurd (EvanHurd.com) about self-promotion yesterday and it occured to me that you could buy a pretty nice German luxury car for what we spend every year to promote ourselves. But I guess there is nothing more expensive than not working but there has to be a better way. A photographer just bought a house around the corner from me and he doesn't even have a website. Sounds pretty good.

Back on the Boat

We are going getting ready to go back on the QM2 next week to shoot some ads for an upcoming campaign. We are doing the TransAtlantic crossing from NY to the UK.

The first time we did it a couple years ago I got a cabin with two balconies and my own butler. Last year I got a cabin that must have been in the Coffin Class. Teeny. No window. Comfortable bed.

Copy Stand from Long Ago

This is an image I shot when I was 19. I have been trying to recreate it in the copy stand series.

Copy Stand Edit

I found this image while editing all of the Copy Stand shots.

"I am going to need hip waders, an animal carrier and a sniper"

Today we shot another picture for that story I am working on . A friend of mine from college (Doug Benedict) helped us with the shoot outside of Philadelophia (and shot the picture above).

We reminisced about school and what every one was up to. Dave Yoder is shooting in Venice. Chien Chi Chang is now a full blown member of Magnum. Last heard Tom Hirshfeld was driving a cement truck in Indianapolis. Dave Adams , the publisher of the college paper where we all worked was found face down in his pool in Bloomington last month. I liked him a lot. When I was at IU I ran into him a gay party. I was working on a story for a journalism class about what it was like to be a homosexual on campus. It is hard to believe that any body cared but that is an indication of the time and how conservative Indiana was. Dave saw me taking pictures and made sure I wasn't there to out him. I ran into him years later on the street and he was out of the closet and doing well.

Doug and I talked about the photo trips we used to go on in school. One year there was a monster storm storm brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. The storm of the century they called it. Four of us climbed into a car and drove 24 hours straight from Bloomington to Victoria, TX. We all shared a room in a motel and watched as CNN kept cutting to the same street sign being buffeted by the wind. The sign was not 10 miles away and we figured someone was shaking the sign from off camera because it was completely calm for a far as we could see. The storm petered out in Cuba and there was nothing left to do but get drunk and drive back.

I was in Louisiana a week after Katrina. We flew a private plane into new Orleans and were escorted by a local fixer. It was never clear what he did for a living. I think he owned some gas stations and sat on some county commissions. But His most useful asset was a T-shirt. A few months earlier he had done a good deed for a Louisiana State trooper and the trooper had given him a Louisna State Police shirt as thanks. Every night in the days after the hurricane his wife would wash his shirt and every morning he would put it on and it allowed him to drive freely through all of the dozens of road blocks in Southern Louisiana. He would slow down at a check point and be waved through when the cops saw his shirt. That is how we got from the New Orleans Airport to LAke Charles where we had the shoot. I was riding in the back of his pick up truck when our fixer started to try and make a call. He had a half dozen cell phones non of which seemed to work and finally he got the Sat phone to work. I over heard this conversation." Yeah we need to go in to New Orleans tonight to get some judge's cat that is trapped so I am going to need some hip waiters, an animal carrier and a sniper"

Shooting Film Again

I am working on a story for a magazine and shooting film commercially again for the first time in years. It is slow and awkward but I am liking the process a ton.

Editing Copy Stand

I have been spending a lot of time on airplanes and it has given me some time to edit the copy stand project and see how many final images I have.

Wolfgang Taliban

I created this character -Wolfgang Taliban-at the height of the two wars last summer. One war is is still raging (Iraq) and the other one in my house has died down. I have four girls and last year three of them were under five years old.

Being the only guy in a household of five women I know what it is to live under my own personal Taliban. Creating this character (my mddle name is Wolfgang) seemed to take a little pressure off.


Michael Wertz designed the logo.

Another Fan

I drove past a series of these ticket scalpers outside the Giants ballpark last week. Each one looking meaner than the next. I had the good sense not to photograph these guys but my assistant (and driver) kept goading me into shooting them by pulling up to them and slowing way down. Eventually I couldn't t take her implied assault on my verility
and snapped one frame.
"Get his camera! Rip that camera out of the car! " and then after we pulled away with me having taken my brand new Linhof Master Lecknika off the tripod and clutching it to my chest, he yells "Faggot". The fact that the largest gay pride parade in the galaxy was a mear six blocks away seemed lost on him.

I calmed down, set the camera up again and like a 6 year old insisted we drive by him ( in the far lane) just to prove he wasn't the boss of me.

Would you like to step out of the truck to discuss it?

We were shooting in front of a bar across the street from the Giants ball park last week when a cop came up to the truck.

Cop:What are you doing?
Me:Taking pictures
Cop:What for?
Me:Myself.
Cop: Well you are disturbing some people by taking their picture.
Me: I have a constitutuional right to take photographs on the street.
Cop: Would you like to step out of the truck to discuss it?
Me: Not so much

We drove away and went to Chinatown hoping for a warmer reception.

Prosper Magazine Package

Baron Davis Cover

Copy Stand and The Man

We were out in town again yesterday. A few people recognized us and that was cool. Shooting downtown tomorrow again and then move somewhere else.

We were parked in front of a building with columns when a security guard came out (top photo).

The Guard "You can't take a picture of this building"
Me "Of course we can"
The Guard"You need a permit"
Me"We are in America"
Guard"No we are not"
I take the picture above.
Me"Yes we are"
Guard"Do you have a business card?
Me"No"

She walks back in the building and out comes her boss. A taller male version of her. If you saw them at the Mall you could have sworn they were married.

Boss Guard"You can't take a picture this building"
Me."why not?
Boss Guard "Security"
Me "what does that mean?"
Boss Guard Peering into the truck."Are you with a company?"
Me."No"
Boss Guard."Do you have a business card"
Me "No"
He walks to the front of the truck and asks the driver/my assistant for her business card. She says has none.

Boss guard walking away."Next time have a business card"

Glossary Term #1

We were in Sacramento all day yesterday. 103 degrees literally ankle deep in pigeon droppings in an old factory. No air-conditioning -no electricity. It was so GREAT!!

Which leads us to our first term in our Glossary : Cockrocking.

When one or more photographers get together the conversation will quickly turn to an exaggerated description of the difficulties overcome in a recent job. Like roosters strutting around the farm yard. Extra points are given if a level of indifference can be shown, the client can be made out as the villain in the story, or one of these phrases can be worked into the conversation: "helicopter, motor-home or I almost died." It does not matter if the job is photographing a war, a huge ad campaign or bar mitzvah. The cockrocking principle remains the same.

I was at a party of a local rep and when one of her photographers walked in from shooting a job. He knows no one in the room, yet before he has made it to the drink table he has managed to mention multiple rain machines, closing of streets and catering. He has hit for the cycle and we all stand in awe.

Eating with the ultra rich and then killing their rabbits

I have been following Paris Hilton's tale of woe way too closely. My plate is pretty full but still manage to keep current with all that is going on with her.

I photographed her grandfather last summer for a story on the richest Americans. He has a 1/4 million acre ranch 100 miles south east of Reno. He offered to send a plane for us in Reno but I declined saying the drive would be nice. We got lost and every-time we called the ranch for directions someone else answered the phone and had no idea how to explain how to get to the property. We finally made it to his compound and out he comes wearing a Member's Only jacket with a tomato stain on it. He needed help walking but managed to come looking for us in his helicopter when we were late.

After the shoot he invited us to stay for dinner. We sat at a table of 20 with Baron at the head . They sat us as far from him as we could be but still be at the same table. One of his son's sat directly across from us. Throughout the conversation the son kept interjecting that Paris would not be coming and that he had not seen his niece in some time. Nobody had asked about her but we got the feeling that she was all that people wanted to talk about and he was just used to launching a preemptive strike on the topic. Like when you have some wound in the middle of forehead and you know people are going to ask you about it.

After some time the conversation turned to gambling. My assiststant mentioned that he didn't really like to gamble and would always quit when he lost 400 or 500. We talked the pros and cons of different casino games and then the son interjected,"400 thousand right? You quit after you have lost 400 grand." No 400 dollars" my assistant corrected him. The son got very cold and hardly spoke to us the rest the night. He assumed we were like the other 20 men at the table and leaders of some industry or a whale flown in from one of the casinos for a boondoggle.

As soon as we hit the dirt road on the way out of the ranch we say them. Thousands and thousands of rabbits drawn to the light of our rented SUV and then diving out of the way at the last minute when they see the trouble they were in. For the first few miles I tried to swerve to avoid them and then I realized we had a long drive ahead of us and stepped on the gas. Miraculously we did not hit a single bunny. For 10 miles we drove 70 miles an hour on this dirt road and finally saw the paved road ahead. Then, of course, we heard the faint yelp and felt the slight bump in the right front tire.

If I was a writer I would see the rabbits as a metaphor in this story.This blog would be like one of those opaque poems my 14 year old has to read. Maybe Baron is the rabbit trying to avoid the bright light of his coming mortality. Or maybe Paris is the bunny getting burned by thes searing light of her celebrity. Or maybe the son is the bunny darting in and out of the light cast by his father. Or maybe we are the rabbits all drawn to the light. Most are safe but a few of us end up as stew.

Fam 4

Forbes cover

Figured out that Fresnel light.

Copy Stand Redux

Yestedray was a pretty fruitful day.

Providence, CA

Sometimes you get an unearned gift.

Now its getting strange

I came across this photograph of me photographing a woman for my project on the street while she was photographing me. Strange.

Photographers like nothing better than to take pictures of each other. Walk into any photo dept in any newspaper in the country you will see the walls plastered with images of photographers goofing for the camera. Gone are pictures of fires, riots and war, instead you are likely to find a shot of Gary the old timer on the toilet.

While in college a friend of mine actually talked his professor into giving him credit for a semester long project documenting a ritual called, "White Trash Thursday". He lived in a trailer off campus and with Deliverance playing on the VCR in the background we would all get drunk and photograph each other. This all culminated in him presenting his 'work" to the faculty.

The professors were not great and we all thought the classes were a joke. The extraordinary thing about school was being around a group of people who , for the first time in my life , cared about pictures as much as I did.

We critiqued each other's work, encouraged each other and took turns dating the same handful of female photo students. Every now and then an outsider would come into our group. We had a redheaded roommate for one semester from a farm town in Southern Indiana named Nelson. One night I walked past his room and saw him sleeping on a mat on the floor with his arm over his twin brother Neal who in turn had his arm on their younger brother Ned. Three of them lined up like cordwood.

Now the Work Starts

I am at the point in this project where the big questions have been answered and all that is left to do is take the pictures. This feels shockingly like work and I am not looking forward to spending many hours in the back of that flatbed truck while people yell at me.

I think I have one succesful photograph and four hlaf photographs. Unfortunently this does not had up to three final images.

Is it alive?

That was the question Lisette Modell asked her student Sean Kernan. He was a teacher of mine and explained that the most important question you can ask about a photograph is:"Is it alive?"

The photograph above is not particularly in focus nor are my kid's clothes perfect but it does seem convey an emotion. Jen Small (art buyer and new friend) said after reviewing my work that some of the photographs were so lit and produced that I had managed to beat all the life out it.

When I was in college studying photography an editor came to town to speak and do portfolio reviews. She looked at my work and was super critical. I was devastated and spent an entire season (spring I think) refusing to sleep in my bed instead silently protesting the critique by sleeping on the coach. Needless to say I was being overly dramatic ( i was 20 years old ) and did not endear myself to my roommates.

At 38 years old I still have much to learn and far to go. I cling to the story of the tortoise and the hare rooting myself horse for the little reptile.

Don't Believe the Hype

I was never much of an assistant. I only did it a handful of times and my wife points out that I was over eager and too anxious to please. Apparently I made photographers nervous. There was one guy I worked for a couple times and I was always worried that he would hire someone else.

I ran into him one day at the photo store and asked him how he was and if he had been working. He turned to me and said "I work all the time" and walked away. Panicked, I ran to the lab where he kept his film log book to see when the last time he had processed film. The last entry was six months before and it was in my own handwriting. I was releived and confused at the same time. Thank god he hadn't used another assistant but why had he lied to me? What is it about this business that requires us to constantly beat our chests and always put on an air being incredibly successful at all times? They say the first casualty of war is the truth. That probably holds true for commercial photography.

In that vain here are some of my favorite posts from Rep's blog. Please send me more if you come across any. Names changed to keep people from hating me.



"Bill Johns unique vision and intense creativity has awarded him with incredible projects."

"Steve conitues to shoot constantly. We are excited to work with them:it is a great agency!"

"John Smith's ceaseless shooting schedule takes him all over the world."

"Mark is always busy! If he is not shooting he is traveling the globe for a cause.Very noble and kind of Mark I must say."

Taking your temperature in someone else's mouth

Whenever I see a parent yelling at a kid in a grocery store I always think to myself, "I would never do that." "That is so ugly" "What are they thinking?". Then invariably a week or a month later I find myself in line at the cash register or in the frozen food section screaming at one or more of my children to put that down/knock it off or else face the standard Rolodex of threats we use to get the kids to listen.

I entered a a series of images (The Villa Series) in the local APA show. I think of myself as someone with a national reach and thought for sure I would be a shoe-in. I had already been practicing the humble head nod I would you use as my peers offered congratulations.

Years before when I was just starting out I got a couple images in the same show. My wife and I went together and had a great time looking at all the images together and hopeful of the career I might have. Then a little man with a black beret and cape walks in with many of his minions. My wife asked who is That? I explained he was the local big time photographer. "You will never be like that!" she said. I assured her I didn't even have it in me.

Back to the present. Needless to say the APA only took one image from Villa series and I was livid. I told the poor guy at the APA if he didn't show the whole series then he couldn't show any of them. He explained invitations with my name had already gone out and it was too late to pull the image. He was way too nice about it.

I had become the little man in the beret and the ugly parent screaming at his kids.

So like a good insecure photographer looking for validation I went about scouring the country for a show that would accept the images. I found an APA chapter in southern california that was willing to take a couple of the images. Of course this did not have the intended effect of making me feel any better and just made me feel kind of small.

In a more perfect world knowing that I had created a body of work that I was proud of would be enough. I would not need to take my temperature in someone else's mouth to know how I am doing.

Copy Stand II

Went out last week with the copy stand on the back of a pickup. Scaled down to 4x5 which seemed alot more manageable. Jury is still out and kinks need to be worked out to decide if this is worth pursuing.

100 years old and a Basket of Bread Sticks as Deep as a Well

I just finished shooting a story on golfers who are 100 yerars old and still playing. I went to Chico, Palm Springs and Portland and with all three subjects I found them to be pretty similar. They each palyed at the same kind of run down course and all expected to be treated like royalty at the club. The drove their carts on the greens, failed to stop as other players were about to hit and barked out good natured orders to all around them. "Give me a cart, give me a club, I want a different jacket" rang out acoss little wooden sheds that served as pro shops at these clubs. I found it charming and endearing. Everyone at the clubs knew who they were and seemed happy to oblige.

The day after I graduated from college I jumped on a plane and flew to Sun City, Arizona to begin a documentary project on the largest retirement commiunity in the world. The plan was to spend a year photographing the seniors and then publish a book on the project. It was going to be like a cross between Robert Frank's The Americns and Bruce Davidoin's Subway. It was going to make my career. I would join Magnum and be huge.

I ended up renting a room from a 70 year old man who wore leather skin tight pants, had a house full of driftwood furniture
and smoked pot constantly. I got a job serving lunch at Olive Garden and quickly figured out what a terrible mistake I had made by coming to Arizona. I was 22 years old and the youngest person in a 20 mile radius by at least 40 years. I stopped taking pictures all together.

Then there were the bread baskets. At lunch at Olive Garden you could order a pasta dish for five bucks and get as much salad and warm breadsticks as you wanted. The seniors were lined up out the door when the doors opened at 1130. Back and forth I would to the kitchen to refil that damn basket. They wouldn't touch the pasta but would go to town on the free salad and bread. And right before they asked for the check they would order another round of bread and salad and then ask for foil to wrap up it all up to go. On a good day I would walk with $20 bucks in tips. Like the 100 year old golfers I photographed this week they wanted to be treated like kings and queens. They had seen it all, lived through it all and now was their turn to be taken care of.

20 years ago at the restaurant I found them to be cheap myopic and ungrateful. This week they were liberated and at the end of a long life finally did not care what other people thought about them.

Lighting the Famous and then Eating their Food

I photographed this athlete using a light I saw Andrew Eccels demonstrate. It is a single source way high on a stand. Andrew used a bare head but I tried the Fresnel because I still am trying to figure out how to use it.

The subject was super easy going with a small entourage. When I shot LeBron he rolled 10 deep and Chris Rock must have had at least twice that many. John Kerry peeps came in waves and as the age of the handlers crept up you knew the Senator was not far away.

I have never liked photographing famous people. There are two approaches I have tried. One was to get real quiet and be steam rolled by the process. Then I feel more like the guy picking up the dry cleaning or some other invisible person.

There is that line from a country song. "I come on big when I am feeling small" I have done this as well. Made my personality as big as it can get to be sure to be noticed. This has led to a kind of out of body experience which made me feel a little cheap afterward.

Kerry was kind of a jerk. I had taken the silent but sincere approach and he smelled blood in the water and squished me like a bug. Talking to his staff or on his phone during the few minutes he sat for me and then was gone. While we were pre-lighting the shot and waiting to photograph him in his hotel room a waiter came in and set five course meal for Kerry to eat after he had gone down to the ballroom to make his speech. The waiter was excited because he thought he may be setting the table for the next president.

So while we are breaking down the lighting after the senator has gone down stairs my assistant and I look at each other and without saying a word we sit down and proceed to eat this huge meal intended for the "future president" . When we are done we quickly finish packing and get out of there as soon as we could and call housekeeping anonymously to
clear the room. It was not my proudest moment but can't say I regret it.

Two Days Two Women

I shot these two women on two consecutive days. One was 102 and famous for hitting a hole in one. The other was chairman of the board of a huge company and was indicted for spying on reporters. Charges were later dropped. One was so full of life that I felt dead in comparison. The other felt like some one who would never be able to trust another human being again and was more like a wounded animal than anything else.