August 2007 Archives

Unlike

The girlfriend waits out a brief afternoon shower during a visit to L.A.'s Getty Center.

My only non-wedding related goal in L.A. last weekend was to make a first visit to the Getty Center, especially because it is currently exhibiting some great photography, including side-by-side exhibitions of Weston and Delahaye (how much more diverse can you get?). Luc Delahaye's work has long since been a huge inspiration to me (as I've said before, Winterreise is one of the best photo books ever produced) and I was really pumped to see his newer "historic" panos up close and huge.

Love him or hate him, Delahaye is a fascinating figure in contemporary photography for his work and viewpoints. After shunning photojournalism and Magnum, Delahaye gave an interview where he attacked the presumption that Bresson is as important or ground-breaking as everyone gives him credit for, a position that is as close to heresy as you can find among our godless lot (I agree with him, in part), and declared himself an artist(e). Reincarnating his career he mentally and physically took a big step back and began exhibiting large scale post-modern, documentary photographic art that was immediately embraced for its sensationality and craft. Now these prints, often panoramic, seem to be selling briskly in the 5-figures range.

So yeah, I was pretty excited when we arrived in the morning at 'Da Getty and began to wander around the immaculate grounds. As it turns out, whether you make any attempt to see the wonderful collections at the museum, just being there surrounded by the incredible architecture, gardens, and views is a perfect way to spend a day (especially because the center, like all great ones should be, is free.)

The way into the Delahaye exhibit was through the Weston galleries (Fun, simple, graceful, fruity, incredibly rich, soft prints, and ultimately boring), and then suddenly there were the large images from the Frenchman (the contrast all the greater because of the tiny size of all of Weston's prints). On first walk through its just a delight to see these pictures so big and present. You can watch people walk by looking, and then stop and step back again to find more and more detail that is rewarding in the Gursky sense. The editing of the dozen prints shown was strong and graphic, but also pretty diverse, pointing me towards the still thin line between Delahaye's competing roles as artist and journalist.

On my second walk through I began to begin noticing little cracks in the magic and also stopped to read the accompanying text stenciled in on the walls. That was a mistake. Here is one sentence from the exhibit (written by the Getty?): "Unlike the sensational, hurried representations of international editorial news, [Delahaye's] photographs depict the long-term consequences of those events on ordinary life." (The website puts in a slightly different, more stomach-able way here).

All I could think was, well, that's too bad. Galleries and museums will be galleries and museums, and that sort of text is always sort of ridiculous. But fuck, "unlike the sensational, hurried representations" ??! Um, aren't you forgetting that Delahaye was/is a member of that teeming mass we throw the label "Media" at. Isn't that how he got access to photograph Milosevic's trial? Doesn't his transformation make that claim a hell of a lot more complicated, and isn't the fact that current events are so much more complicated than a daily newspaper, weekly magazine, or yearly report can ever really demonstrate that someone like Delahaye would be tempted to break away from journalism all together to find a different approach and scale??!

And after that I was also dealt the blow of learning that my favorite picture at the exhibit, the incredible panoramic of the OPEC meeting in Vienna swarming with members of that same wild and crazy media, is a digital composite of multiple different frames that Delahaye combined in post-production (I know, I know, its "art"). This was probably already well known, but I missed hearing about it and have been admiring this image for quite some time.

I think the text should have left the media as culprits out of the equation and instead focused on something more personal to these images and Luc's situation which has a lot more impact, namely that so many members of the media are constantly frustrated by how focused and narrow the coverage must be on any given story, and the tremendous loss of context and subtlety that it mandates. Several of the images are a literal and physical metaphor of a photographer simply stepping back (and amping up the resolution for maximum detail) to show the vast scale of these landscapes that they work in.

We are shown the Jenin Refugee Camp in an awkward view from a hillside, instead of a tight shot of kids throwing rocks, or fathers picking up debris from another Israeli rocket attack. In an image from Eastern Chad (the only vertical) there is so much detail that not only can we clearly see all of the faces of the women lining up to register their names as displaced people, but we can actually read their names from the clipboard that the man is writing on in the lower right corner. Think about that: fuck captions!... their names and faces are right there; its beautiful.

The use of the word sensational in the text is not only irresponsible, it's dismissive (which is worse). News coverage by its very nature is extremely focused, often down to just a single hour, press conference, or day, which makes finding context nearly impossible. This is why every major magazine in the world is doing 2-year Katrina issues this month -- to try and step back and deliver a wider view of what happened, why, and what it means to our lives. "Ordinary" is not necessarily the opposite of sensational, its just different, and in choosing to make ordinary or mundane images of giant world events, I don't think that Delahaye is actually showing their effect on our everyday lives. What he is doing is showing that war, famine, evil men, and everything else is also just life, and that by always narrowing our view and excluding the un-dramatic, we lose the more accurate pictures of what it was really like to be there.

The other problem with mundane/ordinary is that it is anything but these days as represented by art photographers. Celebration of the mundane is everywhere, and its very rarely as thoughtful as it is in Delahaye's exhibit. And ultimately that's the split between the two shows: Weston finds delight and wonder in the ordinary and daily, and Delahaye steps back far enough to view the extraordinary through the filter of life (to so many very, very deep sadness and regret) as normal.

Ultimately its wonderful for Delahaye's work to be exhibited and seen. After a chat with one of the salespeople in the gift shop, I learned that my favorite little book is also a very hot item as well (wahoo!). I'm not going to hold my breath that art institutions are going to catch on to the ironic stupidity of their grandiose text, trying to exclaim a photographer who shows the depth and complication of current events while ignoring the same in the process and production of the pieces (while simultaneously ignoring almost all true documentary work by people who are even more independent from the Big Bad Media Machine). Cheers to you, Luc - congrats on your success! Why don't you start a grant with all of the 5-figure checks!

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Hotel ghost

Room 405, Holiday Inn Express, Pasadena, CA

After dropping off the girlfriend and friend Anu at their bachelorette party Friday night in L.A., I made a beeline for the hotel. When I opened our room and found a light switch I was struck by the strange/beautiful play of air under the thin curtains of the bedroom. I've seen variations on the same thing dozens of times in rooms across the world, but rarely stop to photograph them. Until now.

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On Assignment: Davie, FL

The Redux finale ended up being one of those assignments that is just a mess. I got a call about the job last week, a portrait of Miami Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor for The Sunday Times Magazine, right after another gig fell through for the same day. Great, no problem... but the next day the problems began. First the shoot day was moved to this week, which was already pretty full. After learning that the flat fee was less than inspiring, I quickly demanded more money thinking that I would either be making my schedule easier or my life a little more profitable. The picture editor responded in one of those split-second, I-don't-even-have-to-ask-my-boss-about-that replies to my 60% increase (I should have made it 100%!) and that was that.

Minutes before boarding our plane to L.A. I made the final call to arrange this week's shoots to include the new portrait, and minutes after landing 5 hours later all of that was fucked again. The P.R. dude was now pushing the lunch-time shoot 4 hours earlier, which over-lapped with a portrait series that I'm working on for another client. But now its Friday night and I'm on the West coast, so all I can do is wait. On Monday morning I'm up early to try and reschedule the displaced morning shoot (which was a pain to schedule in the first place). After some give and take the shoot is back on (I shot it this morning), and the Dolphins gig is a go.

Of course I then made the giant mistake of getting on a plane. After landing back in the East coast on Monday night, yup, everything is sideways again. Dolphins P.R. dude has moved the shoot time again (!) and now its in the later afternoon, fucking up yet another shoot. Shit. It's 10 p.m. and I can't do anything about it until the morning. In the morning the very nice assistant tells me that the afternoon slot was the only time that subjects could possibly do it in the foreseeable future, so I'm stuck either way. I can either throw a fit and cancel the Dolphins shoot (which is not the last impression I want to leave at Redux, of course), or hope for a change of heart with the other assignment. The Dolphins won out, despite the fact that I still had no clue what the story was even about until an hour before the job (via a pay phone call from the writer in London).

My buddy Josh and I arrive an hour early to the team's training camp near Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon to set-up. In the lobby we page our P.R. dude contact (who I'm already feeling unfriendly to) and he sends down one of an apparently giant staff of 22-year old, frat boy P.R. interns to show us to the interview room where we'll be shooting Jason Taylor. In the small room there are two big lockers that have been wheeled in for us to shoot in front of (as per the art direction from the magazine, to re-create the locker room). I immediately ask the intern to go round up at least 1 more locker. "Oh, there are only two... sorry." Fine, whatever, I'll make it work.

A couple of minutes later another P.R. intern dude comes by and starts to basically yell at Josh and I as we hurried set-up stands and lights for (a hopeful) 3 different set-ups. "Woah, you guys can't be in here! This is not your room!" Yeah it is, I reply, Harvey said we are supposed to be here, these are our lockers, this is where we are shooting! "Wait a second, wait a second," he replies, and leaves the room. Apparently they've double-booked the room with Sky Sports who needs to do interviews that they weren't able to get time for the previous day. Instead of waiting a second, we keep setting up. Back come 2 or 3 different intern P.R. dudes, scratching various parts of their bodies. Houston, we have a problem.

After a 10-minute argument where I insisted over and over that I absolutely had to have both lockers for the shoot ("Jason Taylor is a giant man! Jason Taylor is a GIANT man!"), it is decided that we'll have to share the room and we will go first since we already have our stuff set-up (which is why we didn't hold on). We are ready to shoot, light checked, card formatted - locked and loaded - and still 15 minutes before our 3:15 shoot time. And then we waited.

Thirty minutes passed. And then another thirty. Every once in a while a P.R. dude would stop by and make up some number of minutes before Jason would be ready. Another thirty minutes passed. Josh eventually found some free food in the media room to nosh on (he was starving). I drank 3 bottle of water. We waited. At around 5:30 another group of media guys passing our room asked who we were waiting for. "Jason Taylor?! Dude, he's in the locker room (yes, there is actually a real locker room in the same building, which we were not allowed to shoot in) playing dominoes for the past hour!" Completely pissed, I call the main P.R. guy on the phone and finally get his secretary to agree to call him on his radio.

Several minutes later another intern stops by to tell us that Jason was almost ready. "Are you fucking kidding me that Taylor has been playing dominoes instead of doing his fucking job over here?!" The intern was shocked long enough to make it obvious that his forthcoming declaration of Jason's time in a meeting is a total lie. Fifteen minutes later we finally have all 6'6 of the linebacker and are ready to shoot, over four hours late.

The shoot went fine and I got all three set-ups completed in under 13 minutes, helped along by the fact that Jason only has one face that he'll give to the camera. Actually, I got him to laugh twice after making a lewd joke about a funny Pittsburgh-area (Taylor's home turf) town that a friend of mine is from. Thank god I held tough about the two lockers, because 4 would have been barely enough. Ten minutes after the shoot the gear was packed back up in the car and Josh and I had decided that a few beers was warranted and needed. And that was the last one.

After a burst of energy following dinner, I edited, toned, captioned, invoiced, and transmitted the under 100 frame shoot (first in a long time) and sent them off to the client. Despite the waiting, I got a couple of frames I really liked, and today I got a call back from the other subject that they found some time for the shoot tomorrow afternoon. Life goes on.

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Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

And then all of a sudden, next is now.

This afternoon will officially be my last shoot in association with Redux Pictures, who I've had the pleasure of working with for three years. I've decided to leave the agency for a lot of reasons - personal, practical, and professional - but I will always have a ton of respect and love for the wonderful people there. Many thanks to you all, and I'm sure we'll be in touch (god knows photography is a small world!).

At some point in the future I'll try to use this change as an opportunity to discuss the role of agencies in the editorial market, and my thoughts about what makes the relationship between agency and photographer so complicated. But right now I'm still just trying to let it all sink in and sort through my plans.

Soaring many thousands of feet above the Gulf of Mexico last night, on our way back from a quick trip to L.A., the girlfriend was asleep on my shoulder and jazz was in my ear. Being out West with Judy was a great way to find some perspective and peace after a couple of weeks of distraction, and I felt like I'm returning home (to a really busy week) with a buzz and energy about moving forward.

And since change is in the air, I'm also happy to unveil another new project of sorts that I've been slowly working on for the last few months. There is still a ton of work to be done for sure, but here is a very small taste of the new wing of JLPFL headquarters devoted to advertising and commercial photography. There will be much more to come on this development. All in good time...

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Little things

From bottom, clockwise, new apple keyboard, watch, Moleskine to-do lists, custom pad w/ mighty mouse.

My friendly UPS guy just dropped off the newly designed Apple keyboard that I ordered last week to replace my clunky and grimy old one (which was a backup to the one that came w/ my G5 which I somehow managed to destroy). Obviously a new keyboard, even a really cool one (much better feel, similar to the MacBook laptops) isn't a big deal... but its one of those little things that keeps me going.

The bigger deal of the past week (which allows me to buy expensive replacement keyboards in the first place) is that all of the photo editors and art directors seem to have returned back to their offices all of a sudden. Vacation is over, the kids are back at school, and its apparently time to go back to work publishing magazines! By week's end I'll have shot multiple jobs for clients and a little personal portrait on the side. Hopefully this means that the annual summer slump is over for South Florida creatives. Finally!

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Next

Road to nowhere, Western Montana

My sister woke up to sunshine and cool weather this morning 1,448 miles north in Northampton - god that sounds sublime. Energy in the air; the hint of what's next. Anything different sounds nice right now... instead of our constant 93 degrees, humid, and sunny week after week down in Miami, waiting for a hurricane to come a-knockin'. The girlfriend is in the kitchen preparing for a little barbeque we are having this afternoon. I'll shortly join her to fire up our glorious Big Green Egg (oh yeah, the BGE!) for a few quality hours of smoke. But my head is elsewhere: 2 months and dozens of steps away.

We get to certain points in our lives and careers where we have a hard time in the day-to-day focus of things. There are to-do lists in front of us, assignments to be completed, oil changes to remember, but we are ahead of ourselves. Right now I'm in one of those places; deep in the struggle not to drift off and relist mental pro-and-con tallies, weighing the future. Because of the way things are, there is only vagueness to be shared here; gray thoughts and asides. In that future it'll become clear, and hopefully so will I.

But between the arguments and devil's advocacy, there is the often missed truth that it is a blessing in itself to be free enough in life and work to actually change. I'm in that happy position, and I can charge ahead and can do whatever makes me happy. As much as I am grateful, I also see that that freedom doubles as a harness for the fear that my choices will be the wrong next step, and the fault solely mine.

Next month will mark a full year of blogging at DwaDM and I suppose not much has changed as much as I feel on the edge of something new. Miami is still challenging and exciting (and exceptionally frustrating) to live and work in. Judyta and I are still (and ever more) wonderful together. I'm still shooting 98% editorial assignments for a large cast of extremely diverse magazines, making my portfolio of work still pretty lacking in focus to some potential editors and art directors. Still the same struggle to find time, money, and motivation for my personal projects, but feeling the deep need to continue to try and push.

And still the fascination with what comes next: the next city for Judy and I, the next client and assignment, the next opportunity for expanding my vision, the next collaboration with a new friend, the next effort to push into new markets, the next tools to help get my name and passion out there, the next next.

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As seen in

Also in the Sept. issue stacks was a little package that I did earlier this year in Dallas for Architectural Digest. The actual clip isn't really worth making a fuss over and posting here, but these little contributors' page write-ups that I have every once in a while really crack me up.

As they come, this one isn't too bad (doesn't make me cringe). The only slightly off bit is at the end about my multiple book projects... if only! If there is a book publisher reading this however, and would like the honor of buying my "book/s" sight-unseen (maybe a nice advance is in order), I'll get right to work on something.

And because I don't like to post short little bits, let me also share a recent out take from an assignment that took me out to an abandoned juvenile prison in the middle of the state. I made this picture in the now overgrown parking lot on our way out... just fun to look at, but you just might see it again soon once its time to unveil my new baby.

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Monday poem: Charles Bukowski

After a few dead weeks (appropriate, eh), the Monday poem is back with something which dovetails nicely into an earlier post about music and passion. It's incredible that its taken me this long to post a work by Bukowski - I, like so many of us, was consumed by his rambling music during the hazy, coffee-and-beer-fueled days of mid-college - but I could never find the right piece for the right day. This poem isn't quite right either, but its damn good and a little different, and so here we go.

For those of you playing at home, I'd like some style points for moving from The Donald to Mr. Barfly himself. A thanks is deserved to Tony Towle who was kind enough to write a nice note to me (my first from a featured poet!) in the small hours of the morning (sorry again about the mistake in your piece!) which got my juices flowing. I like the idea of a NY-guy amping me up to publish a L.A. story. Thanks again, Tony - I hereby dedicate line 19 (if someone can do so from a poem that isn't theirs) to you. Sorry Mr. Trump, no dice for you.

Charles Bukowski | me and Faulkner

sure, I know that you are tired of hearing about it, but
most repeat the same theme over and over again, it's
as if they were trying to refine what seems so strange
and off and important to them, it's done by everybody
because everybody is of a different stripe and form
and each must work out what is before them
over and over again because
that is their personal tiny miracle
their bit of luck

like now as like before and before I have been slowly
drinking this fine red wine and listening to symphony after
symphony from this black radio to my left

some symphonies remind me of certain cities and certain rooms,
make me realize that certain people now long dead were able to
transgress graveyards

and traps and cages and bones and limbs

people who broke through with joy and madness and with
insurmountable force

in tiny rented rooms I was struck by miracles

and even now after decades of listening I still am able to hear
a new work never heard before that is totally
bright, a fresh-blazing sun

there are countless sub-stratas of rising surprise from the
human firmament

music has an expansive and endless flow of ungodly
exploration

writers are confined to the limit of sight and feeling upon the
page while musicians leap into unrestricted immensity

right now it's just old Tchaikowsky moaning and groaning his
way through symphony #5
but it's just as good as when I first heard it

I haven't heard one of my favorites, Eric Coates, for some time
but I know that if I keep drinking the good red and listening
that he will be along

there are others, many others

and so
this is just another poem about drinking and listening to
music

repeat, right?

but look at Faulkner, he not only said the same thing over and
over but he said the same
place

so, please, let me boost these giants of our lives
once more: the classical composers of our time and
of times past

it has kept the rope from my throat

maybe it will loosen
yours

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Trump this

This is the time of year when many photographers wait patiently to finally show off the work they've done for the September "the summer is almost over, lets go back to work and sell, sell, sell" issues on the newsstand. And so it was again today when I spied the new issue of Golf Magazine with an assignment that I shot back in May.

As the recap suggests this was a weird gig, with a weird-ish guy (with weird hair), on the very edge of a strange misfitting part of DR (Punta Cana). I tried for months to figure out what the magazine was thinking (do they hate it? love it?) and still don't know. I guess I'm happy with what they used, but wish the play had been a lot more dramatic, especially considering that I was shooting especially for a double-truck slot that the art director asked me to pay careful attention to (therefore limiting other better options that they may have ultimately liked more?!).

It's a tough call on pressure situations like this job: do you follow your client's stated wants (which have and will change, morph, get forgotten, and fall apart), or do you try to take control and make the call yourself artistically. In a perfect world you have time to do both. Honestly, with The Donald I really wasn't able to break through to him in a formal situation (which came at the very beginning of our many hours together; may have been different later) and get the lit portrait that I think Golf was hoping for me to capture. But on the other hand, I got a TON of stuff they never expected. Anyway, its over now... congrats to writer Mike Walker for a really fun Q&A. Here are some of the other pics that I liked:

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Heroes among us

On my way to see the new Bourne movie (holy shit, I'm happy I survived without having a heart attack!) this morning I stopped by the bookstore to grab some joe and see what's what. Sure enough I found a couple of new clips buried in the stacks, one of which was from a recent People assignment, my 4th or 5th "Heroes Among Us" profiles in the last couple of years, that was really an honor to be involved with.

Tim Miller is the director of Texas EquuSearch, a non-profit search and rescue outfit based near Houston founded by Miller in 2000, with which he's conducted 730 searches for missing peoples on behalf of grieving famlies and overworked police departments in 30 states around the country. During that time he and his team have found 200 live people and 71 dead bodies to return home. What makes Miller successful and down right incredible to be around (it was certainly a real honor for me to meet and photograph Tim) is his unrelenting drive in this difficult pursuit. The passion really comes from his trying to make peace with his own daughter Laura's 1984 abduction and murder. From the short article: "Now everytime we find someone, I say, 'Laura, your death was not in vain.'"

I spent a few hours on 2 days with TES at the Big Cypress National Preserve near Everglades City, FL, hunting for the body of Heather "Kitty" Riggio, who went missing on May 6, 2007. Following Tim and other members of the team, along with local and state authorities, as they search was pretty hard even if I wasn't shooting, but with gear (even the very limited amount I used) was dirty, sweaty, bug-infested stuff. This is where TES lives and works though, using any and every tool they can to find success.

I'm planning on trying to continue to do some work with Miller on my own; maybe try to flesh his work and story out beyond what a 1-page feature can deliver. In the mean time, as per tradition, here are a few other out takes from the shooting that I liked.

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Baby steps

(NOTE: I'm getting ready to send out the August newsletter from JLPFL headquarters. If you would like to subscribe to everyone's favorite monthly update, just click here. Thanks!)

I didn't sleep well last night, and after just a few hours of sleep my body woke me up at my normal 8-ish feeling pretty crappy... its the sort of feeling that I have come to expect when spending dozens of hours designing web sites (which only exhausts ones eyeballs and mind, and not at all their body, so sleep doesn't come easily). So after a short round of NYT, Miami Herald, and blog online reading, and an e-mail or two, I was back under the covers for take 2. When I was jarred back to alertness at lunchtime I could barely make out the twin rings of both my office line and cell phone. Nearly falling over on the way out of our bedroom, I missed both calls.

The voice mails alerted me that both were related to a last minute bid that I was asked to make on a pretty standard PR job. The terms were clear, and the usage was very demanding, and after 5 mins of running some numbers with Maria at Redux, we had our estimate in a couple hours before the deadline. It was a pretty basic equation: CEO of big company, via big advertising/pr firm, wants BIG BIG usage rights on a simple set of portraits. So bigX + bigY + hugeZ should = hefty photographer's fee. (I learned a long while back a standard measure that a buyout should equal something in the neighborhood of 5x creative fee of standard usage).

A few minutes ago I got a return call from Redux which began with, "are you sitting down?" Hmmm... I'm thinking, that could be either really good, or really bad?! Maria went on to explain that our estimate was at least $17,000 higher than their lowest bid. !@#()#@ $!!*@#$*@ #$*@#$ *@#$*@#$ FUCK! What kind of friggin' moron out there is willing to work at such a giant discount that effectively helps to deteriorate the market he's trying to earn a living from. I'd like to think that this person is a young, up-and-coming guy who doesn't know any better, but I don't think that's the case. This wasn't any ad firm calling, and I don't think they were bothering to call local photo labs looking for some schmuck who actually quotes work by the hour. How can people give away their copyright on an ad shoot for a major company for less than 5k unless there is basically a iron-clad warranty of continued work (which is a myth unto itself).

Salty language and indignation aside, Redux asked me if I would like them to re-bid at a much lower and "competitive" bid and I told them no thanks. I may be a couple of thousand dollars poorer for the decision, but I'm not toeing that line. My rep immediately let her breathe out when I said "no way" with a great big "oh good!" She knew it was a terrible deal (or a great one, depending on how you look at it), and I can only cross my fingers and hope that something fucks up and they have to budget a reshoot. Our initial bid felt a little high to me and purposefully included a few items that weren't incredibly important, but that's the game of negotiation. Obviously the laugh was on us this time.

This scenario is not new to me or anyone else. It happens everyday, in every market, and its pretty sick (especially when a buyout only costs marginally more than if it was actually an editorial shoot). But since the web work I've recently been doing is all connected to a big push that I'm getting ready to make (another fingers crossed for the few thousand dollars I'm expecting to spend to try and get the ball rolling) into advertising and corporate photography, its a pretty depressing first couple of steps. Hopefully as I learn more about the ad world I'll find some clearer weather on ahead.

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