I recently hopped on a FaceTime call with Marissa Nadler to shoot some photos. I’d been a fan of her music since 2006, so I was super stoked to be collaborating with her. I shot through a range of materials, covering five setups in the hour-long session. After I sent over the images she decided to use the above photo for the cover of her new covers EP.
Read MoreRemote Photo Shoot with Code Orange
This past week I had the pleasure of photographing one of my favorite bands, Code Orange. The band was about to perform their album release show for their latest album, Underneath, right when COVID-19 hit the US. Rather than leave their fans in the dark, they performed in the empty venue and live streamed it for their fans. While I not only appreciated being able to experience their performance myself, I also resonated with their quick thinking and willingness to adapt to current societal conditions.
Read MoreIf I Were to Die Today
I recently collaborated with Larry Robertson and we did a bit of everything in our session. The broad range of visual styles that we brought together was a perfect match for Larry who is a poet, clothing designer, musician, and a tour manager amongst other things. After the shoot was over and he had a chance to look over the images we made he said, “If I were to die today these are the pictures I’d want people to see to remember me.” Turns out the images represented the broad scope of who Larry is even better than I had imagined.
Read MoreOld Man Gloom
It’s always great when I get a chance to reconnect with Jim. We worked through a range of creative scenarios in this shoot. I shot his reflection with a broken mirror. I shot through a distressed air filter. I played with mylar. It was my first time splattering water onto the mylar, and found that the warped nature of the material in addition to the water added a nice graphic novel-look to the images. These techniques are all part of a new video series I’m currently working on, titled The Creative Portrait. Keep an eye out for the first episode, dropping soon!
Read MoreRJD2: The Fun Ones Photo Shoot
In late 2018 my buddy RJ (aka RJD2) approached me about shooting the cover art for an upcoming album he was working on. He didn’t have a concrete idea about what he wanted to do but suggested possibly involving his Delorean. He was specific about the images not being about the car itself but rather capturing elements of the cars shape and incorporating them into creative portraits. I was intrigued but really couldn’t visualize what the hell he was talking about. Eight months later he hit me up and told me he was ready to shoot. He said that he had a garage that he’d just painted white that had a 14-foot ceiling with trusses. His plan was to suspend himself upside down above the open doors of his Delorean, and seemed confident that he could rig himself adequately with a climbing harness and some ropes. When I suggested that it may be easier to just shoot him and the car separately and composite them he was aghast. Ok, we’ll do it the hard way.
Read MoreCreative Portraiture Workshop: New York City
It was great to be back in New York, teaching my two-day Creative Portraiture workshop. Photo god Lindsay Adler graciously lent me her Manhattan studio while she was off killing it in Milan. We had a blast experimenting with light, color, and technique.
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The Ghost of Her
I recently scheduled a personal shoot with model Mallory Landis and hair/makeup artist Andi Summer. As usual I went in the shoot with little to no idea of how I would light/shoot it, and unsurprisingly I went with ghosty, hazy images as I’ve been frequently exploring these past few months. The hazy, semi-solarized duotone shots that I came away with made me quite happy. I haven’t made anything quite like it before and am excited to explore it further.
Read MoreShelby
Shelby is one of my favorite people to photograph. She always brings so much emotion to shoots. Going in to a session, I never know what we are going to make. She brought a few black and white garments with her, as well as the idea of making a tear shape on her face. I experimented with projecting a few different images of water drops on her face, but didn’t like the result. I decided to change it up, making simple shapes like circles and lines, which I projected on to her face.
The image of the dot pattern was a bit of a happy accident. During the shoot my laptop was tethered to a projector, with my image files open in Photoshop. For that setup I decided to black out a portion of the file, leaving her nose and mouth unlit by the projector. The fact that her pupil lined up with the dot pattern was serendipitous. When we looked at the back of the camera at the end of the shoot, we both gasped.
When it came to post-processing, I wanted to give the feel of Ming Dynasty porcelain (white and blue patterns). Ultimately I decided to push the whites to more of a peach color.
