May 2007 Archives

Monday poem: Dylan Thomas

After two weeks of laziness I'm back with another Monday poem, which despite today's holiday is focused on my vacation beginning this week to the U.K. I'll be away from the phones, e-mail, and blog for 2 weeks while I take a long (figurative) walk from London to Edinburgh (via Bath, Snowdonia, and York, roughly) with two of my siblings. The trip will be our first to the British Isles, and we are very, very excited. Though I'm certain London will be a lot of fun, I'm already dreaming about escaping the city and settling into the drive through Wales and up into lower Scotland, and thus present this favorite from Dylan Thomas.

I'll be back in mid-June with a new set of promo cards (in the mail now), next month's newsletter, and hopefully some nice postcards from the trip. Until then...

Dylan Thomas | "Fern Hill"

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

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On Assignment: Punta Cana

After my dumb post full of gloating last week, I wanted to follow up with a short summary about the strange assignment that reconnected my relationship to Golf Magazine for a last-minute portrait in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) of Donald Trump at his new mega resort development CapCana.

Like most other assignments in the Caribbean, this job proved to be logistically tricky, especially since I didn't get any real details until Friday morning (and still didn't learn some of the most important bits until I had actually boarded the plane at the airport). On Friday morning I was woken up pre-8 a.m. (not a problem because I was already up and waiting for my assistant to arrive to my apartment for another job in Coconut Grove for People) by my editor with the news that I had to get to Punta Cana that night. However, because I was already booked in the middle of that day, I couldn't manage to get the last direct flight to PUJ at 1 p.m., and also could not take a early flight Saturday morning (because Donald wanted to do the interview first thing).

So the remaining option was a late-afternoon flight (which was delayed twice - late arrival and broken cargo door) from Miami to Santo Domingo, followed by a 3-hour drive over the mountains to Punta Cana in a hired car. Further complicating the whole situation was that also at the last minute the art director decided that I really did need to bring a light kit with me (instead of the reflectors that I had already gotten the editor to agree to). We (the girlfriend/assistant (above in the CapCana lobby) -- double duty this weekend! -- and I) finally arrived to our hotel/resort just before midnight and were right away completely disoriented by the all-inclusive surreal-ness of the place.

And that's the thing... Punta Cana doesn't seem to belong in the D.R. at all. It's a weird other place, not belonging anywhere, catering to well-to-do clientele from around the world who would rather experience the Disney version of "the Islands" than actually bare any sort of discomfort (other than the oppressive heat).

After not enough sleep the girlfriend and I lugged our gear to an awaiting SUV and were shuttled with the writer into the CapCana resort. We traded the SUV for a deluxe golf cart and were soon at Trump's villa, where I quickly got to work getting lights and set-ups ready for action. This was one of the kind of assignments where you are warned that the celebrity/big wig subject will give you almost no time or flexibility, "so get everything that you can and just shoot the lights out!" After creating 2 different set-ups within 20 feet of the back of the villa (I wasn't allowed to bring Trump far), I went back to shoot some "Playboy-style" interview shots of him gesticulating and making various faces. Ohh, ahh... serious Trump, laughing Donald, pensive Trump, etc.

Somewhere in here is where the shoot took a strange turn. Simultaneously it seems like Trump decides that he likes us (especially the writer and my girlfriend/assistant -- who caused him to stop in mid-sentence when she came in to the villa to ask me a question during the interview... you are right, Don, I am a lucky guy!) but doesn't really dig the formal interview/photo shoot dynamic. After the short talk with the writer he reluctantly follows me out for the formal portraits. I got a total of maybe 15 solo minutes, most of which was spent with Trump asking if he could wear a hat ("no" but then he stopped asking and just did), and how much he hates wide angle lenses (the widest I shot with was a 28). Before I could say "we are done" he was already sort of walking away from the 2nd set-up.

To be fair Trump had a busy day lined up -- giving tours to investors who had gathered at CapCana to take part in a lottery to win the pleasure of spending millions of lots of land in the exclusive resort (the development group made more than $300 million that afternoon). But because he apparently liked us (not so much me!), his people called us 5 minutes after he left us that morning to ask if we want to hang out with Trump and sort of tag along. Duh. Of course. Hopefully this was a chance to get something of him that was not perfectly automatic and plastic.

Ultimately though I didn't get nearly as much as I wanted from the formal lit portraiture, I spent another 5+ hours shooting documentary stuff of Trump on the move. Schmoozing, selling, doing quick video spots during a long tour (it was his first time at CapCana also), eating, playing golf, shaking hands, posing for pictures, waxing poetic on his "empire." The writer and I ended up getting a TON of stuff. And by the end of the day we were both invited to play golf with Trump and his golf course's pro (I was invited to play, not shoot, and I don't play golf).

Exhausted and very-red from the tropical sun (I didn't put any sunscreen on because I didn't expect to have more than 30 mins of exposure), Judy and I retired back to the resort. We spent the rest of the weekend enjoying ourselves in our Disney-fied "paradise," and then managed (despite a very close call) to make our flight back on Monday having completed both a successful job and mini-vacation all at once.

The story won't be running until the fall so I'll have to wait until then to share some pics. After spending most of the day with Trump I don't really know him anymore than I did before this trip. For my part he was generous to us and everyone around us (but he also had something to gain from each of us, even if that gain didn't amount to that much for a guy in his position). I can say that it is impressive to be around a guy like Trump, who lives and operates on this huge scale, with dozens of giant projects going on simultaneously. He has vision and his business acumen is incredible, but I wouldn't trade shoes with him.

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Two paths

This portrait of Little Jimmy Reed, an Alabama blues musician who was given his name by the legendary Jimmy Reed, marked a turning point in my early career and has since served as a reminder about what really matters to me in photography. I made the picture while I was an intern at the Birmingham Post-Herald, an afternoon daily that has since ceased production, in the fall of 1999.

After a music program for elementary school students that Little Jimmy was invited to participate in, I nervously asked him if I could make his portrait. He agreed with a smile and I led us outside of the small gym to an overhang on a rainy day. Still holding his guitar and harmonica, the only thing he said to me during the short session was "I don't talk, I sing," and immediately began playing a song, eyes closed.

Part of my decision to take a semester off of school to take the internship in Alabama probably stemmed from the fact that I had just had a bad break-up from another photo student at Mizzou (some advice: in general, photographers should not date each other). She and I used to talk a lot about the ways that people enter into the photography and the transformations that lead each of us down one of two paths. Her idea was that some people become photographers simply because its something they are good at technically (me), and are often immediately drawn (early on) into sports or fashion photography because of the ways that it is technically challenging.

Then there are others who begin by having something inside them they want to say, share, or document through some medium, and they ultimately find photography as a way to express themselves and their view of the world around them. Their early work is filled with content and heart, but often almost barely technically proficient (her). Even so, these blurry pictures make people feel something and its a bit confusing to the photo jocks in class.

What Little Jimmy means to me is the place where the two paths overlap, and each side finds a way to marry the technical means of photography with the personal story-telling from each individual. When I began photography my greatest ambition became sports photography; all of the sweet gadgets, the big games, the stress of getting the peak action, the boys club. I wanted to make bad ass snaps, and that ex-girlfriend wanted to save the world, or at least understand her own world a little better through the development of a personal vision. Two paths.

I gave up on sports as a career shortly after this internship and have been chasing the soul of my own work ever since, often reflecting upon this one portrait (a moment where I was so caught up in this life, this music, this man that the camera was invisible) as a happy accident that breathed some very important life into my perspective on photography.

A year or two later during a special portfolio session for students who had helped out with the Pictures of the Year competition at Mizzou, Jean-Francois Leroy, the founder and director of Visa pour L’image, reviewed my work. He very quickly glazed over almost the entire sleeve page worth of slides on a light table but stopped several times to look at this portrait and then turned to me grinning. "These all are shit," he said, flashing his hand at the sleeve. "But this one, it's beautiful. I would put it on my wall at home." That is still one of my favorite critiques ever.

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Goes, comes around

It's Beer:30 right at this moment in Miami (as if a freelance photographer ever needed an excuse), and I'm celebrating a cluster of new calls from editors about upcoming assignments. More than just the potential work (though it has been too quiet down here lately), I'm drinking a toast to myself for out living an extremely, um, difficult editor at one of my former top clients. Advantage: Loomis!

Everyone has their handful (small or big) of photo editors and art directors who they have bad or strange relationships with, either because of a personality conflict or something that goes wrong on a job. I worked with this particular editor (who I won't name out of professional courtesy) on a half-dozen shoots to great success until suddenly all hell broke loose on 2 or 3 stressful assignments in a row completely destroying my relationship to the entire magazine.

The first bad job seemed like a hiccup in the road... maybe I should have read the writing on the wall? We talked for 2 months about one big shoot during which time I asked again and again for specifics about what exactly she wanted (it seemed like the perfect gig, and I was suspicious there wasn't a catch hidden somewhere). I basically had total freedom to cover an event in my own unique style and do whatever I wanted. Wrong! After getting my film she totally changed her story and claimed that she had told me again and again that I had to follow a certain script, and announced that I had screwed up the assignment (They ended up using the work as a double-truck... go figure). Same basic story on the 2nd job... horrible communication and then complete hysterics.

On the final straw I was sent to do a portrait of this famous person who proceeds to completely fuck the assignment because he is a giant asshole and also suddenly realizes that he hates the magazine and staff writer there with me. OK whatever. Not much I can do there and certainly not my fault! I call the editor from the location and tell her the bad news. She responds by changing the whole assignment and asking for a GQ-style shoot of another subject also at the same event on the fly, complete with props, etc. Sure, I'll do the best I can I tell her... I shoot for over 2 hours with a very cool subject and get some fun stuff. She ends up hating everything despite my being extremely helpful and flexible with her. And to top it all off she throws a fit when she gets the bill from Redux that she was charged for TWO shoots! In the end I was only paid for one.

So a toast... not really to out living this one terrible editor... but instead to all of the many other editors out there who are super cool, amazingly professional, real human beings. You have no idea how much we photographers appreciate you! And another toast... to me... who will be heading down to the Dominican Republic this weekend for the now fired editor's very cool former assistant. Life is sweet.

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TV

It's been a quiet week at Lake Wob... er, JLPFL headquarters. I spent most of the week bothering the girlfriend while she finished up the last bits of her 2nd year of medical school (leading up to a month of feverish studying for the epic USMLE Step 1 exam this summer). Good luck babe!

Besides some office work (with several swim breaks), designing and ordering 2 new promo cards to coincide with the launch of Redux's revamped website (finally!), and a quick assignment on Wednesday for Every Day... I mostly used the week to explore a great new way to waste time (I prefer to think of it as exercising my hand/eye coordination).

If this was a Garrison Keillor dispatch, then the most important recent news would no doubt be the purchase of a television for the house. The girlfriend and I have been living TV-free together for 2 years, and I have lived without one for several years before that, so the new installation (just a small flat screen in our bedroom) is something of a revelation. As a new owner and viewer it is my duty to say how great and terrible the box is... though we haven't been watching that much. Mostly we watch a show here and there before bed (reruns of Seinfeld or something in the food/home design categories).

Ultimately my reason for having TV is to have a simple way to turn my brain off and bask in the glow of artificial dumbness. Being freelance is great, but I can't turn it off and have a hard time taking my mind away from it. Taking a walk or reading a book doesn't help much (though both are great). A little bit of TV seems to be just the ticket.

The obvious risk is that my moron break turns into the full-time job, or worse (for Judy) that I am somehow reborn as a devoted sports fan with a schedule of games that I must see (which would probably mean that we NEED Tivo, of which my Mom has already told us we can't possibly live without it). Luckily cable television, in the years that I've not been watching, has amped up the insanely stupid factor way past 11... so that its almost impossible to keep watching beyond an hour.

During college I spent so much of my time getting into passionate debates with over-caffeinated friends at our favorite coffee shop, lining up to see independent films that were stimulating and challenging, and reading important and rich literature. Now I rarely want any of those things, and I really expected it to go the other way since I am still without children, pets, or an official wife. Judy and I do check out art shows from time to time (we'll be at Second Saturday tonight in the Wynwood Arts District, our old stomping grounds), but more and more I don't want to be challenged by media... I want to be entertained. I want to turn off and be transported. I want Harry Potter!

This is depressing to think about... maybe I should try to find "Spies Like Us" somewhere on the tube (I already saw bits of it twice this week).

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Monday poem: Tom Waits

In college I found Magnum and Tom Waits at roughly the same time, which was also roughly the same time that I began to drink coffee and bourbon (separately). I was probably at some party at Mizzou, stealing beers from grad students who should know better than to buy a premium six-pack and leave it unguarded in the fridge, when someone put on a Waits album. Already passionate for jazz and blues, I was instantly hooked. Later I remember my friend Travis driving us a ridiculously short distance to Ernie's diner in the morning hungover after several too many, he had a cigarette hanging wildly out of his mouth while shouting the lyrics caterwaul-style, so we could replay a mix CD with "Filipino Box Spring Hog" on it. Damn, that's a great tune.

I'm going to write a longer post about Waits and how I wish I could photograph even a fraction of the way that he can create music... but for now enjoy these two rather short song/poems. The second should be familiar to those of you out there who are (like me) fans of HBO's "The Wire."

Tom Waits | "Frank's Wild Years (for Frankie Z.)"

Well Frank settled down in the Valley
and hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife's forehead
he sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 1/4 % and put down payment
on a little two bedroom place

his wife was a spent piece of used jet trash
made good bloody marys
kept her mouth shut most of the time
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind. They had a
thoroughly modern kitchen
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit)
Frank drove a little sedan
they were so happy

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths
drank 'em in the car on his way
to the Shell station, he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it,
parked across the street, laughing,
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red then

Frank put on a top forty station
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed north
Never could stand that dog

Tom Waits | "Way Down in the Hole"

When you walk through the garden
you gotta watch your back
well I beg your pardon
walk the straight and narrow track
if you walk with Jesus
he's gonna save your soul
you gotta keep the devil
way down in the hole

he's got the fire and the fury
at his command
well you don't have to worry
if you hold on to Jesus hand
we'll all be safe from Satan
when the thunder rolls
just gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

All the angels sing about Jesus' mighty sword
and they'll shield you with their wings
and keep you close to the lord
don't pay heed to temptation
for his hands are so cold
you gotta help me keep the devil
way down in the hole

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Land, air, & sea

After two lazy/busy months of not getting a new e-mail newsletter out the door, I pumped one out yesterday... and buried in the nonsense updates about what I've been shooting was a little note that made me smile to type it in: "I've been spending most of the Spring crisscrossing Florida doing assignments by land, air, and sea (quite literally)."

The crappy picture of my thumbs up was taken from the co-pilot seat of a powered parachute ultralight aircraft, one of 3 different lightweight aircraft that I got to fly around and shoot air-to-air images in on assignment for Popular Mechanics a couple of weeks ago. As any occasional reader to the blog knows, I just got back from Cuba. And in a few more days I'll hopefully be heading down to the Keys to drink my ass off and take some really fun pics again.

In short, this week I'm in the lucky position of realizing just how good my lucky ass has it. I'm making money doing what I love, meeting some very cool and interesting people, and am enjoying the excess of free time to hang out with friends and family. Nearly every photographer is used to having strangers and subjects alike exclaim, "damn, you have a really cool job!" It's so easy to forget though, especially when they mention it in the middle of an assignment that you are busting your ass to try and make something out of...

There are problems. I have problems, we all do. But right now I'm focusing past all of that on the beautiful position that I find myself in on a gorgeous Thursday afternoon in Miami. And with that, I need to go get some flowers... Happy Birthday!!! to two amazing women in my life: Gammy and Judyta!

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Heavy water

The slow boat to Miami finally arrived and I picked up a copy of the new issue of ESPN the Magazine with the Guantanamo story inside this morning. I'm definitely excited about the really cool design of the opening spread (above)... but of course there were a bunch of other outtakes (below) that I liked that didn't make the cut. Thanks to all for the kind words about the feature! Also and lastly, I sent out the May '07 edition of the JLPFL headquarters' newsletter today if you missed it.

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Artifacts

Obviously, this is the coolest coffee mug that either of us have ever seen... and oh yes, it is mine! This is one of the only things that I bought while on assignment for ESPN a couple of weeks ago in Guantanamo Bay, and I'm already kicking myself that I didn't buy a whole case. The feature on the wakeboarding trip to Cuba is in this week's issue (which I still haven't found a copy of down in South Florida), and I'll post a clip hopefully later this week when I finally get my hands on one.

Until then, here is another new clip from the Spring '07 issue of Sherman's Travel with an assignment I did for them on the art & design scene/shopping in Miami. What was especially cool about this job was that it was all located in my neighborhood and I got to meet some new people and learn a bit more about my community, which I always really appreciate. They ended up using pics in the TOC, then a jump page, and then the spread. (Click for a larger version).

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