Thank you Kate Steciw

Rachel at APB turned me on to Kate Steciw's Friday Round Up, which is the best Friday thing ever. I love crappy paintings and hack photoshop jobs, especially when they make me laugh out loud. To sign up, just send an email to kate@katesteciw.com and include Friday Roundup in your subject line.

A few gems from this week:

Art & Copy - the movie

Promo time

It's that time again, to pick images to go into AtEdge. I always have a difficult time making these decisions. Maybe because it is so difficult to say all that I want to say with a single image.

I haven't had time to shoot an image expressly for this. Which is bad. But on the other hand, the editorial work has been really interesting lately, so I am happy with the work that has come from that side. A that I am considering:

ESPN Mag Hot off the presses!

Thanks for the full page, Jim! Here is a little more info on this shoot.

Photo God / Feature for Esquire

A few months ago I got a phone call from PE Michael Norseng at Esquire. He wanted to know if I was free to shoot a portrait of Francis Ford Coppola. It was the first time that Esquire had called me. Um, yes? Who wouldn't want to shoot FFC at his Napa Vineyard? Esquire has a rich history in photography and design (George Lois Esquire covers now on display at the MOMA....), and I have always hoped to be a part of it. Yes Mike, I will drop everything and get to work on that immediately.

So.....I turned the job down. My wife and I were due to have our second child that week. There was just no way that I could safely commit to the shoot date. Which was a bummer. (The job part, not the having a kid part)

Oh well. Mr. Norseng understood, and said that he would call again.

Sure enough, a few months go by, and he calls again. My belief in a photo god is restored. This time it's to shoot a portrait of Dr. Warren Hern, one of the last living doctors that has the skills to perform complex late term abortions. The other abortion doc George Tiller had just been murdered, and Hern was next on the Pro-Lifers' hit list.

The shoot was insane. Between having no time to scout, Dr. Hern's busy schedule and intense personality, and the incredibly tense environment, made even more tense by six US Marshals partrolling the office (which is enclosed in bulletproof glass), I was starting to feel a bit panicky. I wanted to hit this one out of the park, and I could see these things working against me. Then Mr. Norseng calls to tell me that the story has been upgraded to a feature. Which was amazing, but had my head spinning a bit, since I had been thinking about shooting a single portrait.

In the end, I just took a deep breath and everything went well. We made an image of Dr. Hern as a prisoner in his own clinic (above) that ran as an opening spread in this months issue, some still lifes of the clinic, and another portrait of him at home. John Richardson also wrote a beautiful article that captures Dr. Hern perfectly. Many thanks to Justin Walker for all the great help on this one! Here are a few more from the shoot:

How did I get here?

I was thinking this morning about how I got to where I am right now. People ask when / how I started or if I went to art school, and there are short answers -- I guess this would be a longer one:

1986 Mom gives me her old Minlota SLR with a sweet macrame camera strap.
1987 My first gig as photographer for HS newspaper The Arrowhead
1989 Went to college. Studied Business, Pre-Med, got a degree in Philosophy, took lots of art classes.
1995 Intern / Employee at F-Stock Photo Agency in Ketchum, ID.
1995 First photo sold to Powder Magazine for $50.
1995 Photo intern at Powder Magazine, San Juan Capistrano, CA.
1996 Employee at Mountain Stock, Tahoe City, CA.
1996 - 1998 First Assistant to David Stoecklein
1998 Moved from Ketchum to San Francicso
1998 - 2003 A whole lot of freelance photo assisting for the likes of: Terry Husebye (that's me on the home page!), Dan Escobar, David Maisel, Hunter Freeman, and a bunch of other shooters that came and went. Also studied Art Direction, Copywriting, Architecture, Graphic Design, and Photography at various times at SFAI, Art Center, and CCAC (now CCA). Spent lots of time at the MOMA bookstore, attending APA events.
2003 I go out on my own. Shooting tiny editorial, misc. freebies. Still assisting a bit to fill in the gaps.
2004 things start to work. Shooting small editorial and occasional tiny advertising.
2005 things are working. Shooting editorial and occasional advertising.
2006 things are working better. Shooting fun editorial and more advertising. Sign with rep Marianne Campbell.
2007 things are working well. Shooting really fun editorial and advertising.
2008 things are still working well, then in June things drop off a cliff.
2009 things are picking up again, love my editorial clients, still focused on getting more fun advertising jobs.

So in 23 years of having a camera in my hands, and working towards being a photographer, what have I learned? A few that come to mind:

There are no shortcuts.
It takes time to build a career.
There is no right way to do it, everyone has their own approach.
Looking at (all kinds of) art helps.
All art (photos included) is 100% subjective.
There is no substitute for time spent shooting.
I still feel like I am just getting started.

Toxic / Richter / Maisel / Gowin

Every time I fly into SFO I look out the window at the mutant ponds of whoknowswhat on the approach from the south. The lines and colors make beautiful abstractions, as they are framed by the oval window. (Why are plane windows so small and low anyway?)

I love watching the paintings shift and flow by as we descend slowly over the bay.These landscapes remind me of Gerhard Richter paintings:

It also reminds me of David Maisel. He has been photographing aerial landscapes on many levels and has a beautiful body of work. Some of my faves:

Mr. Maisel got his photographic start as an undergrad at Princeton, where he studied under Emmett Gowin, who did a few aerial projects of his own.

Mr. Gowin also shot this image, one of my all time favorites:

Which inspired me in the front yard the other day, thank you Mr. Gowin:

inPholio -- Euro Flavor

I'm not sure how I ended up on the InPholio mailing list, and to be honest I don't really know who they are, or what they do, other than that they are somewhere overseas. But I like the picures that they send me. Clever, beautiful, funny, and all with a Euro sensibility that I love. Some faves from the last email:

spilled milk / toilet paper

Got stuck in traffic this weekend, there was a milk truck that had flipped over on the freeway, which caused a massive backup. The scene of the accident was pretty bizarre, a mashed up tanker on its side, with a haz-mat crew scurrying around, trying to figure out what 50,000 gallons of spilled milk actually means.

Afterwards, we stopped at Safeway to grab a bite to eat. I was feeling beat down, and wandered slowly through the aisles, while the resident "sandwich artist" put together my chicken club on foccacia.

Then I saw this:

I've never really paid much attention to the photos that line the miles of aisles of product at a big store. But this time it was different -- I felt like Jim Carrey in the Truman Show when he finally realizes that the joke is on him. Does everyone know how crazy the world is?

There is someone on this planet (my guess is that it was the "client") that came up with the idea to shoot a puppy playing with a roll of Cottonelle toilet paper. What are they trying to say? Do puppies wipe their asses with Cottonelle? Or is the TP soft like a puppy? If so, should one just wipe their ass with a puppy instead? What would that feel like? Which part of the puppy would one use?

Then there is an Art Director out there that has to sketch up this "concept" and suffer through countless excruciating meetings while the details are hashed out: How "soft" should the puppy look? How much paper is left on the roll? Oh, and make sure the paper cover's the puppy's balls!

Then there is a photographer somewhere out there that shot this picture. As well as a retoucher that made the puppy and the TP just perfect. And they were probably paid very handsomely to make this unbelievable image.

All in the name of big, dumb advertising, that looks dumb and treats people like dummies.

swingandamiss!

Just lost a very cool job to Zach Gold.

Which is good, I guess, because it was Zach Gold. And bad, because, well, it was a very cool job, and I lost it to Zach Gold.