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 MoreWhat I Learned During My Year Off Social Media
Last month, I returned to social media exactly one year to the day after leaving behind 60,000 followers on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. I made my exit for a number of reasons, with anxiety playing the largest role. I didn’t know where the feeling originated, or much less why, but living with it wasn’t worth what social media was offering me in exchange. After I left, many people (myself included) wondered if my photography business could survive the departure. It turns out that not only did I survive, I also learned how to thrive both personally and professionally in the process…
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Zoom Drag
This was a fun, quick session. A simple setup— just one light and a projector— with a dramatic result. I was experimenting with zooming my lens from 35mm to 16mm as I simultaneously panned the camera during the long exposure. The strobe on the background kept her silhouette intact while the projector and camera movement created the wavy, fluid lines.
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 MoreWildfire
I am starting to work more with motion. While part of this decision is strategic (I see a massive shift to video in the commercial and editorial industry), a big part of it is passion. I’ve been obsessed with films since I was a kid. Back in my college days I worked third shift at a video store for just over a year and watched 3-4 movies a shift, catching up on decades of classics. Film is just so immersive for me. It takes storytelling to a whole new level. I love being able to pair image with sound and create a deeper experience for the viewer.
This is a quick piece I put together a couple of weeks ago with Rachel Luree. I concepted, shot, and edited it in less than an hour and am super excited to push more into this new chapter of my craft.
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Seasonal Affective Disorder and Hunting For Light
Lately I’ve been hyper-focused on light and texture. I can get seasonal affective disorder (SAD) pretty bad in the winter when the days are shorter and days or even weeks can go by without the appearance of the sun. When the sun does decide to make an appearance it feels like I’m awaking from a coma. I notice qualities of the light that I would likely otherwise ignore the rest of the year when sunlight is plentiful: how the light looks like water through an old window; the shapes that it creates when it hits a living room armchair; how it moves across nearby buildings until it hits a window and bounces into an otherwise dark corner of my room. It’s magical. I’ve recently taken to carrying a mirrorless camera around with me to make sure I’m ready when the sun hits.
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Gilding Lilies
I’ve never been especially fond of flowers. Don’t get me wrong— they’re pretty and everything, but I don’t stop to smell them, much less know their names. That said, flowers make wonderful subjects. They sit nice and still and always put on a great performance as I take my time fiddling around with lights, gels, and camera settings. Though I suppose any inanimate object would suffice for testing, I find flowers to have a human-like qualities to them. They have a face, a neck, and elegance for days. That’s not to say they’re an easy subject. They don’t bring anything to the table, save for their looks. They don’t have a range of dramatic poses or expressions or wardrobe changes. When working with flowers as a subject you only get out of a shoot what you put into it…
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Shadows and Simplicity
I love the brutality of hard light. Especially when used with a high contrast black and white treatment. Subjects emerge or recede into darkness. Features that might otherwise be missed are accentuated. Everything is stripped down to shapes. All too often I overcomplicate my setups and run the risk of missing the essence of my subject. When I can make myself slow down and simplify, that seems to be where I mot often find truth.
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Trash Talk
These images were created during sessions with three different models. I love the variation between each of them. The textures are just so stunning. I can’t decide whether I like this series better in black and white or color. I suppose it could also work to go back and forth. Thoughts?
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Making it Happen with Ho99o9
I came across an album United States of Horror by Ho99o9 in 2017 by a band that I not only hadn’t heard before but whose name I wasn’t even sure how to pronounce (it’s horror, by the way). I’m not typically drawn to hardcore music but something about their energy was magnetic. The way they merged crunchy guitars with trap beats had stirred up something deep in me. Their messages carried messages of unification and hope by way of rebellion that I found to be especially important, given the current state of affairs in our country. I probably listened to the album 30 times over the span of a month. I listened to it as I walked home from my studio; as I ran errands; as I edited at my computer. Each time I heard it, images would start to form in my head. I had to figure out a way to shoot with these guys…
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Gettin' Weird with Jade
One Man's Trash...
This marks my third shoot with Melissa this year. Though she now lives in NYC, she was in town for the holidays and asked if I’d be interested in doing a plastic-themed shoot. In preparing for the shoot sent me a few images from a recent Vogue Portugal fashion story that implemented single-use plastics into their shoot. I really enjoyed how they repurposed trash into the creation of something new and beautiful. I knew that I would want to take a different approach to the idea by capturing the texture of the materials and experimenting with creating more abstract portraits, and so I asked Melissa to “rescue” a range of plastic from her life over the next week and bring a range of options with her to the shoot…
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Rae of Light
Rae is a dancer with Balletmet and a frequent collaborator with me. She’s as willing to experiment as she is talented, which means we always come away with a great range of images. We started off by creating fragmented portraits courtesy of my broken mirror, before moving on to creating golden images with slow shutter speeds and mylar reflections.
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Color!
Pilar stopped by my studio recently and we knocked out five outfits on as many sets in two hours. She brought a range of colorful outfits and I excitedly picked through my the backdrops to find complements to them. After knocking out a range of vibrant studio scenarios we did a quick set capturing her yoga skills before wrapping.
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Psychedelic Fever Dream
I recently picked up some prismatic window film, which is both reflective and transparent. I experimented with shooting the warped reflections on the surface and then moved on to shooting through it while lighting the model from behind. After going at it a few different ways I decided to start adding layers of texture to it by crinkling the film, splattering water drops on it, and layering up my fingerprints. The best thing about it? It’s portable, rolling up into a small tube…
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Finding Inspiration at the Hardware Store
Over the past year I’ve been pushing my images into more abstract, painterly directions. As digital images seem to be moving into a realm of hyperrealism, I find myself longing for gritty tangibility. Since I have always more in the get-it-in-camera camp, I have been experimenting with a range of techniques and materials to try and achieve the look I’m after. I started off this past spring by adding substances such as coconut oil and honey to glass and then shooting through it. After that I moved on to shooting with imperfect, fungus-covered lenses to get a hazy, dreamlike quality. Next I tried my hand at capturing distorted reflections in mylar. Most recently I explored what broken mirrors can add to an image.
All these experiments have worked together to inform my process in terms of optimal focal length, aperture, and light quality/direction when working with multiple planes, layers, and reflections. Now that I better understand how to manipulate these mediums I can walk through a hardware store, for example, and visualize how certain materials would look when photographed and lit a certain way, which is exactly what I did last week…
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Ransom & Rose
Ransom and I go way back to the JackThreads days. Since we’ve been shooting for the better part of a decade, we have an old, easy rhythm together. I don’t even have to speak as he moves from pose to pose. He’s also a fantastic stylist, meaning that he always brings the best wardrobe to our test shoots. This session was different than any of our prior sessions, however, as this time he brought his girlfriend Rose to model with him…
Read MoreRemembering My Roots with Kate Sweeney
Kate Sweeney is a powerful voice in contemporary photography, who just so happens to live in my neck of the woods. She always brings so much to both sides of the camera. I’ve been fortunate to have collaborated with her a few times now, and it’s always a great time of swapping industry stories or talking about who has been inspiring us lately before moving on to making some new art of our own…
Read MorePhoto District News: Equipment Guide 2019
This was a fun surprise. One of my portraits of Sydney Lafaire made the cover of the new Photo District News equipment guide. I’ve been reading this magazine since I started out as a professional photographer, so this is certainly an “achievement unlocked” kinda moment…
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His and Hers
This was a fun one. Chyna and I have fallen into a nice rhythm with our shoots, as we have been collaborating every 2-3 months. It goes like this: she shows up with several outfits that she cobbled together from her closet or the thrift store; I look over what she brought and quickly brainstorm how to best light/shoot the looks; we play…
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