I was asked by a writer and book publisher from Japan to meet up with them to photograph Vidal Sassoon. Here I am talking shop with Vidal. Initially I just thought that I would be there for about 1/2 an hour maybe grab some interview shots along with a few minutes with him for the PR shots. When I get there he has the most amazing Neutra I've ever seen. I live in Silver Lake so I've seen a bunch. Thee one and only Singleton Residence. Ronnie was digging my vignettes and ended up shooting the rest of the home. So there we were having lunch when I turned around this is what I saw. The deer. I need to send this print to Ronnie cause it was such an amazing afternoon and great conversations with Vidal.

Flash Skate Mob in Downtown LA last week.

The creative world is small.  So here is a collaboration that Mo and I  did. 
Hmmm....now how do I trick Jes in getting it back to me..

Just when I thought all was lost in 2003 working long hours losing money by the day. But in 2004 I was in a juried show at the Louis Stern Gallery in West Hollywood. That was the year everything started to change. A number of shooters that I had assisted a few years prior participated in the show as well.

Louis Stern, has had a long and successful involvement in the secondary market. With a special concentration in Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Modern and Latin American art, the gallery has offered works by Degas, Gauguin, Giacometti, Leger, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Pissarro, Ramos Martinez, Renoir, Rivera, Tamayo, Villon and last but not least Duarte ;).

This is an image I created in college for a font that I was designing called Flamenco. The assignment was to design an original font, along with kerning pairs and eventually a poster. So one evening I went by myself to a spanish restaurant that had Flamenco dancers and during the break I approached them about the assignment. We ended up using one of the classrooms that I had turned into a photo studio during my senior year. Love this image.

About 10 years ago when I was assisting Michael Grecco he was teaching at the Santa Fe Workshops and let me tag along to help him with the demos. It was like photography boot camp 7am to 11pm we just talked photography. The students were so cool, I loved it

Some photographers are not too keen on showing early work but I'm pretty proud of this particular image. This was shot in a run down building just north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. I remember walking into a room and the pigeon droppings were piled six-inches high. There might have even been a dead rat or two. When I went to Photo East in New York this image was made into a 36 x 48 print that they displayed in their booth. Wow...I forgot about that day.

Polaroids from my days assisting with Mr. Grecco and ABC.

My buddy Ejen who does a great job with the PIX blog mentioned that he likes to see a photographer's space/office. So here it is, my low-tech operation. I'm very specific what I surround myself by like the original Details magazines, Harper's Bazaar circa 92-99, Miles Davis in Fader and last but not least Kandinsky's Point and Line to Plane. The office is located in the Historic Core part of Downtown Los Angeles. My parents met two blocks from here in the 60's and my dad did architectural salvage at Bunker Hill when he was 14 years. So you can say I'm LA to the core. There is another side to this office that is identical. This room is strictly used for shooting. The images on the wall were done there because the light is so fantastic. They are lo-res composites for a possible exhibit. Not only are the compositions perfect but they capture a perfect moment when the hair and eyes are locked right in. When I blew them up it really made a big difference. Get it. Big. Because...now they're big. Forget it.

The title of this blog should really be called Smoke and Mirrors. When I first started assisting/breaking into the photography world I didn't even know what a publicist was or what they actually did. Now shooting PR/direct client is about a 1/3 of my business. Nadia of Wagstaff Worldwide asked me to do a few shots that she needed right away for Red O that was designed by the uber- talented Gulla Jonsdottir. To my surprise the restaurant was lot more under construction than I anticipated. No need to panic since my job is to make the ordinary...extraodinary. So we lined up these shots and they really came out great and if you would have moved the camera even an 1/8 an inch in any direction you would start seeing plywood. The moral of this story is don't always believe what you see.

The Chateau Marmont is one of my favorite spots in the entire city. It’s the perfect place if you want to get into some trouble. Lunch is nice there because even though you’re right on the strip, you can’t hear a thing. Gary Oldman said it all in Basquiat, "Do you know how hard it is to find a decent conversation in this town?"

The shoot took place in the Craig Ellwood bungalow. My buddy Paul Minor who directs commercials and has shot videos for Muse, Glasvegas, etc. etc. etc. tagged along to help out. I shot Rinko Kikuchi from Babel and she did such a great performance that she was nominated for a Golden Globe and eventually an Oscar.

Diego Uchitel is a photographer that I've admired forever (and been known to stalk him on his Bebe campaigns) did this amazing spread in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Rinko was wearing a Coco Chanel dress similar to the gowns featured in Diego’s shoot. So I said to myself, if Diego was here what would he do? Paul and I have similar tastes and we both agreed on the a grey seamless and put it right there on the patio and let the ledge act as a flag to create this nice fall off and shoot it open shade. Teen Vogue was there with all there assistants, HMI’s going through windows, strobes etc etc. Paul and I looked at each other and just shook our heads because we both know you don't need tons of gear to create a beautiful image.

This was shot from a crane 80 ft in the air. People often think that it was shot from another building. No a crane (as you can clearly see). After a quick demo at the rental yard an eighteen wheeler swings by a couple of days later to drop it off. So I put the safety harness on jump in the cage and go up and up and up and up. As I near the top the basket needs to be straightened. While I’m doing this the entire crane shakes as do my legs. When I eventually get back to earth my knees are shaking so much that I walk over to the liquor store next door and down two whiskey sour clubs. Then I say to myself “What the hell was I thinking taking this job”. The client wanted a daylight, morning, dusk and night shots in increments of each floor of a not yet built structure. It was winter so I basically sat in this basket for hours freezing. People often comment on how I'm lucky because of what I do and then I think of this shoot and say. Uhhhh No. Luckily, I got so used to going up and down that it became no big deal.