Rambo. Vikings stud Jared Allen as Rambo? Awesome! And I was off and running with pal and ace Maxim PE Stacey Pittman on a super fun shoot with the all-star defensive end at Vikings training camp Minneapolis. Jared is a beast, he's a great guy, and he's up for basically anything. I joked that I should have brought some goat's blood to smear on him and he is all "oh hell yeah, we have goat's blood? Let's do it!" That's commitment... take note future subjects! Our shoot was split up into 2 segments... first a pretty standard shoot in uniform that involved a lot of shouting, sacking me (playing QB Peyton Manning), and actually a bit of dancing. And then we switched gears into full on First Blood mode. The gun, as per NFL and team policy, is of course not real, but the awesome modern version of a survival knife was. Hopefully for the next shoot we'll have a spear. Huge ups to the talented stylist team Hollie Mae & A.J., as well as to hair/makeup artist Kate Erickson for helping bring Jared's alter-ego to life; and of course to my assistant Gene and the Maxim team. The images are out now in both the military tribute issue and the Dec. 2011 issue on newsstands this week.

Picking up from my latest newsletter (want to get in on that? sign up here), fall means football and JLP was busy all summer shooting features and profiles on a variety of college and pro ballers around the country. These few just dropped so I wanted to share some behind the scenes and extra frames. I'll start with the worst, first... I've only shot at Boston College once now, but that was enough... never again. ESPN sent me up to do a really interesting story about how BC has a tough time getting exposure and recruiting nationally in such a pro sports-obsessed city like Boston (story included in the All-Boston issue on newsstands now). The players we shot were also cool (featured are RB Montel Harris and LB Luke Kuechly) however, without going into things, we ran into a gross lack of professionalism in the BC sports department and everything suffered. Anywho, here are a couple more... Next up I spent some sweaty time with Kansas City Chiefs RB Thomas Jones, who Muscle & Fitness (first time client, hooking up with former ESPN louper J-Rod at his new digs!) says has the best arms in pro ball. Dude is crazy strong, and I like his tats; plus his mom was a coal miner which is pretty awesome. This was another weird one (our original location was wall-to-wall soccer moms "exercising" while watching "The View" and drinking Frappuccinos) but we made it work, and then of course finding that awesome Greek statue "fresco" (located in a sweltering stairwell) totally made my day and the magazine found a home for the portrait as well! Note the weight (400 lbs) that TJ is ripping full sets on here... you start to understand how this man survived a dozen years (RBs average 2-3) in the NFL and gained 10,000 yards in his career. Last up is another ESPN the Mag. feature on goals that I was happy to shoot a couple of segments of (not able to share the other part yet). I went back down to my beloved U (University of Miami) to meet DT Marcus Forston whose goals include finishing his classwork and graduating above a 3.0 GPA (he's well above it already) as a criminal justice major. It's pretty cool doing a story on a stud linebacker who is also a smart kid (and a nice guy). In contrast to BC, the Hurricanes sports department came through and helped me talk our way into shooting for a very brief couple of minutes in the busy library stacks on campus (I was actually hoping to do the whole shoot here but it wasn't going to happen... librarians). Because I know you are wondering, Marcus is holding about 75 lbs of books in the shot below (and not breaking a sweat of course).