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Cousteau vs. Cousteau |
April 10, 2008 |
It's been a good week in the JLPFL mailroom, highlighted by some long awaited checks (straight to the AMEX) and the new (May) issue of Men's Journal for which I shot a really interesting feature on the legacy of ocean explorer and environmental champion Jacques Cousteau. Its a meaty piece and I was very excited to work on it with Rob just before he made his exit (stage West). The shoot was first mentioned vaguely on DwaDM back in November, but there was ultimately a lot more to it. The idea for the piece was to shoot Cousteau grandsons Philippe Jr. and Fabien, and contrast the different ways in which they've used their famous last name in a profile on the bitter family feud that erupted after Jacques death. I was initially only hired to make an "authentic" portrait of Philippe and we went out on a boat off of Lighthouse Point to shoot early in the morning. As I mentioned in the previous point it was gnarly with bad luck, seas, weather, wind... but Philippe was super awesome to work with and despite shooting 6x7 film with lights on a small boat while trying not to be tossed into the rocks, we managed to get some cool stuff. A couple of weeks later Rob was back in touch and I was asked to photograph the other half of the family represented by Fabien. Sweet! Only problem was that MJ wanted to try to exactly match the best selects from the first shoot again for the second shoot of Fabien, and of course I hadn't exactly been taking notes on the positions, angles, lighting, exposure, time of day, etc. from Philippe's session. But no problem, right?! At the very least we were certainly not to get shit weather two straight times! Ah, well, no. Not only was Fabien's shoot extremely tight on time and at a different part of the morning, the conditions were even worse. Immediately upon getting out on the boat with him and his very cool sister (regardless of whatever tension there is in the Cousteau family, I had a killer time meeting and working with everyone), we found out that we didn't have all of the (scuba) gear we would need to really mock up the first session, which sort of didn't matter anyway because the only suits that Fabien had were their very cool new free diving suits (I was thankful that they were different colors, lending to the Spy vs. Spy aesthetic of the final layout). But with 8x10 print outs of my Philippe selects (Rob picked 3 to do our best to replicate), we tried to make the best of it. Out on the water the wind was whipping like crazy and the sun was in a completely different spot and height than I wanted it in (matching would be impossible given our time frame). As soon as we got in position my assistant almost immediately had 2 of the 3 8x10 selects fly out of her hand and right overboard into the rough water. Amazingly we were able to save 1 of them, but there was a very awkward moment when one half of the family was all huddled around looking at these images of Philippe in the exact same setting. I don't think I would have been very cool with this, but they were and I respect them for being open and honest. With a beauty dish being hand held by my assistant Erica off to my right, she holding on to the rail for dear life, I had 15-second window opportunities kneeling in the right position with Fabien in place to shoot before the captain had to gun the engines and keep us from crashing on the rocks. We only had a total of about 15 minutes out on the water, and I had maybe 10 of these 15 second bursts. We only had 2 of the 3 8x10's left to compare with (next time I'll me smarter and laminate and bring extra copies), but with all of the rough water and wind I was trying hard just to get my exposures right let alone match horizon lines and body posture. By the time we wrapped I was pretty bummed that we just didn't get it done. My 6x7 selects of the 2nd shoot got to the Men's Journal office the day before Rob left (bummer), but Jenn Santana picked up the pieces and made some great sense of the images. I was super excited to get a call from her a couple of weeks ago that they loved the results and wanted to get me to get back out on the water for another feature story coming up this weekend (I must be crazy). Nothing better than that though! I'll leave you another frame that I liked of Philippe Cousteau, Jr.
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