It’s been a little more than a year since JLP opened the NYC branch (took the plunge?) and my wife and I began our married lives together in the city surrounded by boxes. Now once again breaking down boxes (we only moved 3.5 miles this time to Columbus Circle) I thought it would be helpful to take stock on the grand experiment.
Personally the first year has been fantastic even if I haven’t seen all that much of my beautiful wife as she fought the good fight (and won/survived!) in her intern year in medicine. We both love living in the city and seeing friends (images above from my camping/rafting trip last weekend) and being in the thick of pretty much everything you could ever want to experience. Manhattan is all of the things that you have heard it is (expensive, loud, insane, smelly, etc.) but it’s been beautiful walking these streets, our streets, watching the seasons change and lights flicker.
Professionally it’s nearly impossible to separate and discern what might be you vs. outside factors… did I listen to pop music because I was depressed, or did listening to pop music make me depressed? Same goes with photography and moving and the fucked publishing economies. Things haven’t been crazy busy but I’ve kept working; often back in Miami, often shooting portraits, and occasionally for slightly less than I believed a job was worth. But it’s our Grand Depression, folks, and that just goes with the reality for most of us. I know that relatively I’ve been doing just fine but of course we all want more and better.
During the last year I’ve parted with a rep (no biggie, I’m back on my own), got to do some traveling (Iceland, Haiti, and the American West), have shot more corporate and advertising work, and started/restarted some personal projects. In the categories that matter I’m really happy and am having fun. That’s a pretty simple metric but I’m trying to avoid spending too much time in my head these days. And working hard and seeing results over the last year has been rewarding.
A year later the most obvious spot to improve in is that I haven’t been as smart or aggressive with my promotion as I expected to be mostly because the economy was so ill. I haven’t set up as many meetings or sent out as many cards to really drive home my NYC/MIA twin cities operation as I could have, and hopefully I can change that in the next few of months. But I have been out meeting people, making introductions, and generally hoping to raise my profile a bit in a slow “I’m going to be around for a long, long time” sort of way. And I’ve also been listening to the market and my own creative drive to figure out what sort of career is actually going to continue to make me feel fulfilled.
After a year of working based in NYC – which has been busier of late I think many of us feel – I’ve started to unravel some of the mysteries. And as I mentioned before there really aren’t that many tricks, just a lot of sweat. You start by preparing yourself, then you strip things down both mentally and gear-wise as far as you can, hire more help and also a car, and then get to work. And my clients haven’t said peep about paying more for it. Basically working in NYC is just more legwork; an extra connection when you were used to direct flights.
I’m certainly missing a whole host of things so I’ll open up the comments to any questions that any of you might have.
Last month ESPN the Mag. photo editor Jennifer Aborn tapped me to shoot the east coast half (big ups to team Williams & Hirakawa for the left coast work) of a summer time portfolio of the rising teenage stars of X Games 16 for ESPN Action, formerly titled EXPN (you can find a copy inside each July 26 issue of ESPN). Saying yes was a no brainer not least of which because the first leg of the feature was of motoX stud Ashley Fiolek who I shot the year before also for ESPN.
It’s been quite a while since I really dug into the nitty gritty of the shoot so I think we’ll make this shoot recap a warts ‘n’ all affair. And bonus, there’s even a short behind the scenes video… Enjoy!
The name of the game for shooting Ashley was ice cream (I get that now after seeing the sweet typographical treatment on the opening spread above). But while scouting down in FL the whole idea was killing me, especially since we decided to shoot right on the beach (without a permit), and on a summer afternoon when it was a shade under 5000 degrees in St. Augustine Beach. The magazine wanted the ice cream as colorful as possible so I opted for sherbet hoping it might melt slower (it doesn’t) and we had 2 coolers packed with ice to keep things cold (very much a losing battle). The other prop buy was easy and always fun to expense: plastic beach toys.
The great thing about shooting people like Ashley or Chaz is that from the moment they meet you they are a part of the team and are game for just about anything. Before I even got to say hi to Ashley on set she was running back and forth between the ocean helping to build the castle along with her little brother Kicker and my all-star assistant team Eric & Scott. I can’t stress how rock star these guys were enough because it was a brutally hot, sticky day and they made it possible and awesome.
As I admitted before, we didn’t have a permit for the shoot (you can’t pull permits if the city never answers any the phone), so I wanted to keep things as low key as possible until we were absolutely ready to shoot. But getting multiple lights on stands w/ booms, etc. in place and then moving a motocross bike into position is pretty conspicuous, especially on a crowded beach. So before I had shot a single frame of Ashley we had a member of St. Augustine’s finest joining the party.
With a smile plastered on my face and a single thought in my mind (“I’m fucked”), I went over to casually chat with the officer as if there was absolutely no reason in the world that what we were doing could be wrong. By the grace of god he wasn’t annoyed, just really bored, and he wanted to know if we were going to do tricks off of the (environmentally protected) sand dunes. “No no, we would never…” I started. He stopped me by saying “oh that’s too bad, it’d be sweet!” Even though our slot with the subject was short I took plenty of time to be friendly to the cop and offer him water, etc. Ultimately he stuck around to watch us shoot for a while and then left. That maybe happens once in 100 times. And thank god we were shooting in smaller town FL coast because it would have never worked out so sweetly anywhere near Miami.
From there the shoot with Ashley was smooth sailing. We managed to spill a whole lot of ice cream all over her and her beautiful new practice bike. And then we finished off just as I had entirely drained the 7B packs on our last set-up, which was what the magazine ultimately used. We managed to crank up the video camera at the same time that we finally let Ashley start up the bike to try and destroy her kid brother’s sand castle while he protested behind. We had all been out in the blazing sun for a few hours and I felt like my brain had melted along with the sherbet but the shoot was a lot of fun. Building sand castles for pay doesn’t suck.
With the first portrait in the bag we went through a few scheduling mishaps before I was able to grab a flight to Chicago and hook up with skateboarder Chaz Ortiz in the suburbs. This shoot also had fun accessories, namely kiddie pools (I, well ESPN, bought 2 and gave the one we didn’t use to Chaz’s little sister). At some point in the last 25 years kiddie pools got a whole lot bigger because we ended up with 8 feet+ of pool (and friends) to leap over. Chaz didn’t even blink for a second and just like Ashley was immediately on board.
Physics aside, our big problem in Chicago was rain as the grey skies that had been threatening all day long were now starting to open up as we (including my super helpful local assistants Peter and Daniel) got things set up. It’s always hard to figure out exactly how much you can really get prepped (stands, lights, props, etc.) when it’s pissing rain. On the one hand you want to be ready to jump in as soon as it stops, but on the other hand you can’t exactly sacrifice a head to mother nature. As we finished getting set up Peter used his iPhone to learn that the Chicago area would be under severe thunderstorm watch for the rest of the day.
Despite the rain I was able to convince Chaz and his friends to get things rolling. After only 20 very slow frames (one for each jumping attempt) it started to rain really hard and we had to stop and wait. And wait. And wait. (Thanks to Chaz’s mom who made everyone hot dogs.) Since I had a flight out of Chicago a few hours away it was time to make a decision on whether or not it was worth sticking around to get more (Chaz very kindly offered to get up early the next morning, but both of my assistants were booked for other gigs and I had work back in NYC) or did we already have what we wanted. I was able to edit and tone a select and then sent it to my editor’s phone. She loved it but was worried because now the layout was running vertically (of course that changed later).
Waiting is boring, sure, but it can also be disastrous to the momentum and energy of your shoot. I had to decide if it was worth missing the flight for whatever potential was left in the situation. If I didn’t really believe that there was a much better picture waiting to be made it would be stupid to waste a bunch of money and stick around. However 90 minutes later we got lucky and suddenly the sun came out (from absolutely nowhere) even though it continued to rain. A few minutes later the rain slowed to a drizzle we jumped back into place (many thanks to Chaz’s friends who got back into the very cold water in the pool), ripped the improvised rain covers off of the lights and tarps off the ramp, and then broomed off Chaz’s landing area (I was pretty worried he might hurt himself).
We got “sun” for about 8 minutes and the natural light looked beautiful. Chaz jumped directly at me to get a more vertical composition and didn’t crash despite my ring light blasting away right at him. The major benefit of all of that waiting around was that we found Chaz’s little sister’s pink Escalade big wheel which had to be included. After 10 jumps I told Chaz this was the last and he decided he wanted to go right into the drink. We broke down super fast, hauled ass to my hotel to switch cars but it was pretty obvious that with traffic I was never going to make my flight so I decided to return the rental gear myself. But with all of the bad weather my flight had become severely delayed and very, very late that night I found myself back in a taxi speeding home through the nearly empty NYC streets with the picture in the bag and a smile on my face.
The production aspect to these shoots was fun but what actually makes the images is the energy. In both cases the location and weather made my lighting decisions pretty obvious (I was asked to somewhat match what the west coast team had already done) so it came down to old fashioned cheering and shouting. If you find yourself trying hard to psych up your subjects to give you something big then you are already most of the way there to bringing your own energy to the table and that stuff is infectious. Despite the difficulties this project was personally really rewarding. Many thanks again to both sets of assistants for their hard work and to Jen Aborn at ESPN for another fun gig.
Next month the Social Security Administration turns 75 and for that hefty anniversary I was commissioned by AARP to shoot seniors who can no longer depend upon their monthly checks to cover expenses in their retired years. I traveled into central PA to meet up with Bud Bickley (surprisingly not a professional Ben Franklin stand-in), a retired heavy equipment mechanic, and his lovely wife Tiny. Whenever there is a chance to talk to the subject before the shoot I jump on it, and Bud let slip that they work at the local flea markets twice a week to help make ends meet. Of course I immediately invited myself along and off we went.
Bud sells over-the-counter medications and toiletries while Tiny operates a spice stand across the aisle, and Bud holds shop with the many retirees who work the flea market circuits. The atmosphere of the market was great even if the pictures only revealed themselves reluctantly. After a long day we followed Bud and Tiny home and were blessed with some fickle evening sunlight before saying goodbye to the Bickleys who could have not have been more gracious and fun to photograph. Bud especially just had one of those faces and personalities which make the gig.
Still new-ish to freelancing in the northeast these type of road trip jobs are such a relief and pleasure, and AARP is the perfect client to work for on one of them. Now if the magazine only came out more than 6 issues per year wouldn’t that be great!
Coming back from Chicago last night very early this morning I found the July issue of Maxim waiting in my mailbox, and inside a fun image of Tampa Bay Rays stud Evan Longoria for their monthly Celeb Obsession spot. Evan was super fun to hang out with and gave us great energy which makes my job easy. Seriously… laid back athlete + drum kit + LOUD rock music + devil horns! = rad. If you were wondering, Evan needs to practice his stick tossing skills a little more.
It’s tough to say this because I’m a life-long Yankees fan, but I really love photographing and spending time with Rays players (for non-baseball fans, NYY/TAM are locked in a dead heat for 1st place in the AL East). Each current or past Ray I’ve met has just been good people, and really, really nice.
Maybe one of the nicest people I’ve ever photographed (period) is David Price, ace of the Rays rotation, who I also shot for Maxim during spring training last year. The magazine was looking for an edgy vibe from this phenom hurler who had just helped win the World Series as a rookie, but David would not stop smiling like it was school picture day. “David, dude!, you got to stop smiling… stare me down like I’m the hitter…we want you to look fierce!” I’m trying to but I just like to smile, David said. Smile or not (and obviously he eventually got in the zone on our shoot) Price is having an fine season and deserves it.
Happy memorial day weekend from John Loomis Photography! Have a safe and sunny time whether you find yourself at some glamourous beach locale or maybe just in your own backyard.
