Archive for the ‘Magazine Shoots’ Category

Here it is: the 2D cover of the premiere issue of WMB: World’s Most Beautiful! I’m both thrilled and honored to have my friend Kim Kardashian grace the cover of our first issue.

 

Hey guys, here’s a sneak peek at something really cool my team and I have been working on for the past year. This is the most rewarding project I’ve ever worked on, and it’s easily the most fun I’ve ever had as an artist. Thanks to everyone involved, many of whom will likely be familiar faces to you…more details coming soon. Enjoy!

Last week, Kris Humphries asked Kim Kardashian to marry him, and I was asked to take the engagement pictures (ahem…where’s my ring?) I’ve never seen a bigger ring in my life…it was like something from Romancing the Stone. That night was a priceless opportunity to catch the ever-growing Jenner/Kardashian/Disick/Odom family in a genuine moment of surprise and support. As I watched Bruce Jenner share Olympic stories with NBA stars Lamar Odom and Kris Humphries, it also occurred to me how much alpha-DNA is in that family’s future bloodline.

 

Even more awesome was that the story made the cover of People, which has resulted in proud messages from my mother, family and friends who have been reading the magazine for decades. Thanks to People photography director Chris Dougherty for being such a pleasure to work with.

 

Congrats to Kim & Kris on their engagement. Grab your copy now!

In April 2010, I photographed Khloé Kardashian for Celeb Life magazine. I remember this shoot vividly because it was the last shoot before I left for my monthlong trip to Kenya.

 

Khloé’s always been a treat to work with, because not only does she take amazing shots, but she’s also incredibly funny, generous and down to earth. I was excited about this day in particular because it was my first fashion shoot with Khloé. Super-stylist Monica Rose brought amazing clothes as always, and Mario Dedivanovic lent his signature Kardashian-glam artistry to the make-up.

 

The location was a wonderful boutique hotel in Beverly Hills called Maison 140. It also provided me a unique challenge—the smallest spaces I’ve shot in my entire career. And with my lighting setups, it was no easy feat. My superstar Slickforce team kicked butt as always, including lead assistant Christian Arias, assistants Cherry Gardner and Derek Eskridge, and intern Asha Catling.

 

I was extremely happy with the final results of the shoot, and Khloé exceeded my expectations and delivered incredible energy in the pictures. This is hands-down my favorite shoot of hers to date.

 

Great work to Derek Eskridge for capturing these brilliant noir-style production stills.

I suppose it’s every photographer’s dream to travel the world and shoot someplace with crystal waters, perfect weather, and timeless architecture. So when the publisher of SHOW approached me about putting an international shoot together for rising-star-model Laura Doré, I was all too happy to suggest shooting in Italy.

 

I’ve found many excuses to travel to Italy over the last few years, starting with shooting Cities of the Underworld for History Channel in early 2008. Since then I’ve been back 6 times, and have made an effort to improve my Italian with each trip. Once the magazine concept was greenlit, I went immediately into producer mode.

 

The Amalfi Coast is world-famous for its scenic old-world ambiance as well as it’s breathtaking views. I knew we’d have no shortage of places to shoot, so I flew out a week before the rest of the team, scouted some hot spots, and secured lighting equipment in Rome (I was intent on re-creating a full-scale Slickforce-sized shoot, but there was no way I was going to bring all of my equipment from the US). Once the locations were secured, I flew out my best-of-the-best from LA, including make-up artist Gaby Ramos, hair stylist Al Ingram, lead assistant Christian Arias, and wardrobe stylist extraordinaire Diana Chan. I also hired assistants from Italy and London, all of whom I’d worked with on previous shoots in Europe, and a local driver complete with passenger van. We took over 7 cabanas in the small coastal town of Sorrento, where we lived for 5 days.

 

Once the massive logistics were out of the way, I could finally concentrate on the shoot. Since I had my usual gear, most of lighting setups didn’t vary much from the work I produce at home. What I’m most proud of, however, are the setups on the beaches of Capri. Capri is a small island—and there were no docks or piers to the beaches—so we put all the gear on motor-boats, and cruised as close as we could to the coast. Then we loaded the equipment onto inflatable rafts, jumped in the ocean, and literally towed the rafts to land, generators and all. This was simultaneously the hardest day we’ve ever had and the most fun and awe-inspiring shoot I’ve ever experienced.

 

And check out the setups. We had lights hanging off of rocks, ringflashes levitating over the sea, and even lit from moving boats! Christian knows I insist on shooting tethered (I loathe lighting to a camera LCD), so she developed rigs for floating my Firewire and laptop cables back to land, while we all did our jobs either perched on rocks or in the water. These shots make me laugh because my awesome crew is doing the same thing they do at home, only this time they’re in bathing suits and up to their navels in water. This is that shoot that every photographer lives for—the one you will never, ever forget.

 

Thanks to SHOW and Laura Doré for the opportunity of a lifetime, and to Christian Arias, Daniela Guerrero, Hayden Phoenix, Steven Feralio and J.P. Monittola for these amazing behind-the-scenes pics!

I’ve always like shooting with Vida. She’s as pro as they come, so much so that some days don’t even feel like we’re working. She does her thing, I do mine, and we’ve each done it 1000 times. So when the publisher of Vida’s mag (yes, she now commands her own entire title) contacted me with the “after dark” concept, I thought “Well, here’s something new.”

For one, I’ve always shot not only Vida, but nearly every other model either in a studio or outdoors in sunlight. Suddenly with an issue that would predominantly feature outdoor night shots, I had to get creative—especially technically. I decided to reach into my old cinematography bag of tricks and pull out all the “night shot” classics: fog machine, silhouettes, out of focus cityscapes—the works.

We shut down the Highlands club in Los Angeles for day one (it was pouring down rain and my poor photo assistant Ashley slipped 🙁 and fell down the escalator.), and the shoot went relatively smoothly until an hour before wrap. We were shooting the cover shot (cabaret on stage with smoke) and our fog machine tripped the smoke detectors on the entire complex. Though I apologized profusely to the LAFD, one wonders how in fact the club didn’t set it off nightly. Sensitive little buggers.

On day 2 we secured a house high atop Studio City, with a killer view. The owner was, let’s say, eccentric. Naturally, in freezing October temperatures I forced Vida to get in the unheated pool (I’m horrible, I know).  But my favorite setup was the lingerie look on dry land. I had my assistants smoke up the background, but the wind was strong so it kept blowing away. I had them put it on full-blast, but then suddenly the wind stopped, and then the fog was so thick I couldn’t see Vida. So for haha’s I took a test shot—and fell in love with the look. I could barely make out her silhouette, and she was surrounded by an ethereal glow. Magic!

Though I didn’t know it at the time, we were shooting what would become my 100th magazine cover. Though I hardly feel my career has been long enough to look back, moments like these offer a great opportunity to stop, reflect, and realign yourself with your new goals.

Production shots:

SHOWCase #2 was the 4th full magazine issue I produced in its entirety. I think I had gotten the publisher of SHOW hooked on desert shoots just like I was, so we shot the “sequel” to SHOWCase #1 within 60 days of shooting its predecessor.

 

For those of you who know my background as a cinematographer, it’s no surprise why I get so excited shooting on location. I mean, no photographer LOVES being inside the studio every day…it’s like letting a dog out of the house to run free. So as SHOW became more successful (which is 100% shot on seamless), I found myself pushing to shoot the special issues as far away from SlickforceStudio as possible.

 

I had just bought my property in the desert (which would become Ultimate Graveyard), but I hadn’t been able to put any real time into it, so I felt it wasn’t yet camera-ready. Instead, I chose Club Ed, one of my favorite desert locations as a DP. They’ve shot a billion movies here, most notably Rob Zombie’s “The Devil’s Rejects,” and “Nothing to Lose” starring Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins.

 

One of the reasons I like shooting in the desert so much is that it forces you to be on your A-game. You’ve got no water, no power and no restaurants for miles, so you have to run a really tight production. We brought in RVs, generators, and of course I had my crack team of super-assistants making runs around the Antelope Valley all day (my assistant Cherry got a speeding ticket that day too…sorry, Cherry!) I sometimes get a lot of flack for my super-sized productions, but I’ve never been a minimalist—it’s just not my style. My inspirations have always been larger-than-life directors and photographers, like Michael Bay, James Cameron, Antoine Verglas, and Herb Ritts.

 

The models for SHOWCase #2 were soon-to-be-Playmate Jessica Burciaga and urban-superstar-model Jesikah Maximus. I labeled my Capture folder “Jes².” I had worked with them both on countless issues before and I knew they were both great models (J-Max and I were in Puerto Rico shooting her “SHOW: In Paradise” issue exactly one year earlier) so I already had their trust. And that’s very important, because when the models trust you, you can push them very, very far.

 

These girls both had crazy bodies, and when J-Max showed up with her fire-engine-red hair, I decided was going to photograph them as if I were shooting a comic-book. I had them kneel on scorching-hot gas pumps, pour buckets of water on themselves, crawl on trucks, and roll around in the dirt. But man, did this issue kill. I have to say that this is probably the first issue I’ve shot that turned out exactly like I saw it in my head. And that’s not easy for 100+ pages of content. And although the day was long (15+ hours) and everyone was beat to sh*t, it was some of the most fun I’ve ever head on set. I think it was probably in my top 3 days of 2008. It’s one of those rare moments where you stop to reflect, take a look around, and realize you’re doing exactly what you dreamed of doing when you were a kid.

When Maxim en Espanol editor Juan Rotulo called me to photograph Roselyn Sanchez for the Feb 08 cover, I was thrilled. I mean, Roselyn is easily one of the most beautiful women in the world, and from what I’d heard, she was also a total sweetheart. It also seemed unlikely that I could take a bad picture of her.

The trick, it seemed, was actually going to be figuring a way to deliver the publishers a smoking-hot newsstand cover they could sell, while simultaneously keeping the spread classy, so as not to insult the Without a Trace actress (or her publicist. *shaking head*) After all, Maxim en Espanol had always pushed the envelope much further than US Maxim.

I booked the Mayan Theater in downtown LA, now a popular night club, for the shoot. It featured Mayan architecture influences that would make fantastic backdrops, but remained super-convenient for Ms. Sanchez’s travel purposes.

Roselyn was a total superstar on camera, extremely comfortable with herself, and not an ounce of diva in her—very down to earth. She did request her own glam squad (working with new people always adds an extra variable, because I know what my team can deliver,) but I was able to pull in Jenny Ricker from the Wall Group for wardrobe—who had styled my Kim Kardashian shoot a few months earlier.

I was really tight with the guys at Maxim, not only with Juan but with Oscar Saavedra, the Art Director (I always seem to get along with Art Directors). They gave me a lot of input on choosing selects to run in the mag, and happily all of my top choices ran in the spread, including the cover. That said, I still had to get Roselyn’s approval, so I (probably naively) requested that she sit with me to go over the shots. I was stunned when she said yes.

Sitting in my industrial LA studio office, Roselyn Sanchez and I went through each pic, and she even signed off on the near-naked cover shot. Then we sat for an additional 2 hours and talked about the industry and her upcoming engagement. I don’t think I can name a client who was more grounded.

Alas, it looked like I was gonna make both camps happy after all. The cover ran exactly as I envisioned, and I was ready for a year of home-run celebrity covers. Sadly, though that issue was one of their highest-selling issues ever, Maxim en Espanol went under two issues later. (They were dissolved into Maxim Mexico and they now put Espanol covers on the Mexico magazine so it appears to still run as a unique title.)

Roselyn Sanchez was my favorite cover during my 2-year run with Maxim en Espanol.

Lighting & Exposure Tests:

In August 2007, after 2½ years in the magazine world, I was gaining a reputation for photographing beautiful women.  And that year, there was no one with more beauty and buzz than Kim Kardashian.

When I teamed up with the short-lived Coexistence magazine, whose goal it was to introduce notable personalities of Middle Eastern descent to the mainstream public, Kim was at the top of their wishlist. She was the entertainment industry’s “It-girl.” Through a friend of a friend, I managed to get in touch with Kim’s people, and once I had the greenlight, my mind started racing.  I wanted to take her to the desert (surprise!), but her publicist told me it wasn’t happening. Too far, too dirty. Make it local and convenient, I was instructed.

I love contrasting beautiful women with dirty, busted environments, something I did in that same Coexistence issue with my Skid Row Princess fashion spread. I’ve always been secretly envious of photographers who live near desolate, forgotten areas because there are so many old and crappy buildings and environments to place your model. In Los Angeles, everything is, well, new and crappy. We finally settled on The Edison bar in Downtown LA, which was formerly a power-plant in the old Higgins building, built in 1910. Nearly 100 years old, and totally awesome.

I did a ton of prep for this shoot, pulling tear sheets, shooting backplates, and storyboarding.  I was ready to pitch a hard sell, because at that point, Kim didn’t have a clue who I was, and it was clear that her publicist didn’t like me or the magazine very much.

But when it came right down to it, Kim was suprisingly easy to work with—she was even down with all of my poses, as I had her crawl on cold metal boilers and arch her back on cast-iron stoves.  No drama whatsoever—she was a total sweetheart.

Since this was back before I started hiring behind-the-scenes photographers, I managed to pull the next best thing: lighting and exposure tests with my assistants from the shoot, Corey and Zak (known affectionately as “the goons”…note the excited look on their faces). The Edison had lots of moody practical lighting that the cinematographer in me went crazy for, but alas, none of it was gonna show up at 100 ISO.  So I took long-exposure plate shots to allow the practicals to burn in and gauge the actual color temperature, then I gelled my strobes and lit Kim properly, effectively letting the background go F* itself.  Finally, I blended the two shots in post…sort of a ghetto HDR.

When the mag was released in December 2007, some people commented that these shots looked overly retouched. But the truth is that the cell-shading look on her skin is more a result of heavy bronzer (make-up) combined with the oversaturation of my gelled lights. In hindsight, I should have shot her naturally (non-gelled strobes) to preserve the white highlights, and then warmed her mids and shadows in post.  All in all, I still love this shoot.  Due to positive female customer feedback, it headlined the Slickforce.com website longer than any shoot I’ve ever done.

Even better, Kim and I kept in touch after the shoot, and I’ve now shot the entire Kardashian family several times over. When she went blonde in summer ’09, she called me to capture it before she went back to classic brunette. Kim later leaked a photo from that shoot on her blog, which resulted in my first call from TMZ—hilarious. I’ll post more info on that shoot soon.

Production Shots:

I’m terrible at shooting guys. Okay, well, maybe not terrible, but I find it much easier to direct women. Women have a range of acceptable looks to experiment with: sexy, innocent, smart, flirty, badass, adorable, etc.  Men just like to look cool.  And Chris “The Birdman” Andersen was definitely that.

For my shoot with Chris (and models Destiny Daniels (left) and Esther Hanuka (right)) for Rebel Ink magazine, the editor and I discussed recreating the set from Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” video.  We got some old oil drums, a beat-to-shit muslin backdrop, my awesome intern lent me his cousin’s basketball hoop, and we soaked the concrete floor. Anyone who has a studio knows that it doesn’t take long for you to shoot out every possible angle and background, and wish you had a different studio. But this might be the best Slickforce has ever looked.

Chris was cool as hell, and his demeanor put the models at ease as well.  As with nearly all mag editorials, you need a centerfold/spread. And you’d be AMAZED at how hard it is to find a centerfold pose for a guy (try it right now…see? WTF is he gonna do, lie down and arch his back?)  So I was thrilled with how well this 3-shot spread came out (above). It’s one of my favorite shots of 2009, and I’m gonna get a poster up in the studio.

This shoot appears in the January 2010 issue of Rebel Ink, on stands now.