Dr. Lucy Jones, aka "The Earthquake Lady" for Smithsonian Magazine

Dr. Lucy Jones for Smithsonian Magazine

I recently had the opportunity to photograph Lucy Jones for Smithsonian Magazine. We lucked out with our location, finding a spot at a private residence just north of the city that gave us a gorgeous view of the city, combined with a little touch of nature in the foreground, tying together her job as one of the nation’s preeminent seismologists with her role as a protector and voice of reason for the city’s earthquake apprehensive citizens. Jones, a science adviser for the USGS in Pasadena, has become somewhat of a local celebrity in Los Angeles for her regular tv news appearances where she explains the causes, risks and likelihood of tremblers before and after earthquakes have occurred. The story is an interesting read if you want to check it out. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Meet-Lucy-Jones-the-Earthquake-Lady.html#

Matt Ivester in West Hollywood, Calif.

Matt Ivester in West Hollywood, Calif.

On the last day of 2011 I met up with Matt Ivester for a portrait shoot for the Chronicle of Higher Education in West Hollywood, Calif. Ivester, the founder of the now defunct and controversial JuicyCampus website – on which college students could anonymously post rumors about one another – has just written a book, lol… OMG!: What Every Student Needs to Know About Online Reputation Management, Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying during his summer off as a graduate business student at Stanford. I didn’t want to get too conceptual with this shoot, so avoiding doing anything that would try to illustrate the idea of ‘cyber reputation.’ I decided instead to just go with a straightforward portrait, playing a little with reflections to illustrate the about face he has made in his stance on the subject, but otherwise just trying to show him as is. As he’s from Palo Alto, we really didn’t have a suitable location to shoot, so decided to meet up at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood and wing it. He was easy to work with and we found a few good places to shoot, particularly across the street at the West Hollywood Library, despite not having permission to shoot there. I think it didn’t hurt that it was New Year’s Eve and staffs and security were at a minimum. The top image is what ran, but I like the headshot as well.

Chiara Daraio for STYLE magazine

In November I photographed Chiara Daraio for the Italian magazine STYLE. Daraio, a professor of aeronautics and applied physics at California Institute of Technology, was being profiled for being a leader in her field, which in layman’s terms is the study of how stress waves travel through solid materials, which they will then use to develop new technologies. The shoot was fun and relaxed, using a combination of natural and strobe lighting in a variety of settings in her building at Caltech. Whenever possible, particularly with portraits, I try to research the subject I’m photographing to see what’s been shot of them before and also what’s other photographers have done with similar subjects. In doing so, I found that she had been photographed in the lab before for Popular Science, so I made that shot my lowest priority, not wanting to copy what had been done before. The editors had only asked that it be a photo that shows her as an intellect and a leader in her field, but I was pretty free to take it from there. While I did shoot her in the lab, in a fashion different than what had been done before, I was happy they chose to run this shot which just shows her relaxing in her office, where notes indecipherable by me, but pertaining to her research, were already on the chalkboard. On a technical level, the shot was pretty simple, using only a reflector to bounce a little window light back into the scene, but the results were good.

Venice portrait - 2Much

Venice portrait - Skaters

A couple weeks ago I went out to continue a series of portraits I’m doing with people I encounter on or around the Venice Boardwalk. I’m still not sure where I’m going with this project, but so far I’m having fun doing it. I do know I’m trying to avoid shooting the typical boardwalk scenes, such as street performers, vagrants and various eccentrics, and am mostly shooting people who are just there to enjoy the scene. For now I’m just going to keep on shooting and we’ll see where this goes. Previous photos from this are posted here.

Porsche CEO Matthias Müller for The Financial Times Germany

I’ve never been that much of a car guy, but after an exhilarating assignment last week for the Financial Times I may change my tune. The job was to head up to the Santa Maria Airport, about an hour north of Santa Barbara, to photograph the new CEO of Porsche, Matthias Müller, during an interview the FT had scheduled during a multi-day press event hosted by the company to promote the new 911 Carrera S. The assignment went well. I was able to photograph him during the interview and was also granted sufficient time at the end to shoot a couple of quick portraits, including this one, with him sitting in the driver’s seat of one of the new models with half of the exterior shell removed to show the inner workings. Herr Müller was very cooperative and the result was a cool photo. My plans after that were to hop back into my little Nissan Sentra and hit the road. Then Helene, the writer, asked me if I wanted to go for a test drive. Say what?

At first I thought I actually might get to drive the car, an idea that made me both excited and a bit apprehensive, considering the value. That wouldn’t have been out of the question had I been one of the journalists staying at the local hotel, many of whom, including Helene, were given a vehicle to drive themselves to and from the hangar where the event was hosted. Instead, we were both treated to ride alongs with a guy by the name of Walter Röhrl, who I later found out was once voted the greatest rally car driver of all time, having won 14 World Rally Championships in his career. Now in his mid-60s, Röhrl is the senior test driver at Porsche and the guy they retain to show off the vehicles to journalists and important guests at events such as these. Behind the hangar, they had repaved a section of runway to create a closed course track. Helene went first, disappearing behind the building and returning moments later, saying nothing more to me on her return than “You should be scared.” I smiled and hopped in, still not quite sure what to expect. Walter greeted me and we rolled around to the back side of the building and crawled up to the starting line. He made some comments to a couple of guys tending to the track and then, pressing a couple buttons, informed me of the settings he was changing. I nodded, pretending to understand. He may have, at first, thought he was driving around an auto journalist, but probably not for long. Meanwhile, finally realizing that we were really gonna race this thing, I decided to pull out my iPhone to get some video of the ride from my perspective.

“Here we go,” he said, putting his foot to the floor. Off like a rocket, in seconds we were peaking at 150 mph on a long straightaway that appeared to come to a sudden end not too far in the distance. “Holy shit,” I thought, as my body pressed back into the leather seat and I fumbled to turn on the camera function on my phone without taking my eyes off the road. The camera began to load and then immediately crashed, reverting to the home screen. Damn. The road was about to end, and the car screeched to a near stop twice as fast as it had taken off, pushing me forward into my seat belt, before sending me sideways nearly touching the driver as we took a hard right around a bend and then accelerated into a series of curves. I tried for my camera again, and again it failed. I had just used it to take photos in the lot before climbing in. Why was it failing now!? The car lunged left and, I as soon as I pressed into the door, reversed course and pulled me back toward the middle, accelerating and braking through a series of curves. Somewhere in there I tried my camera once or twice more, but still it failed. Screw it, I thought, I’m not missing this by playing with my phone. At one point, I was certain the car was going to go up on its right wheels, or at least go off course, but decided to put my faith in the driver. Another short straight-away and a curve or two later and the ride was over. Somewhat stunned and not really knowing what to ask, I inquired about the top speed and the horsepower, 150 and 350 respectively, as we rolled back toward the hangar. Röhrl then held up his pinky finger and told me in a thick German accent, “The car is like an extension of my finger. I just think what I want it to do, and it does it.” After that drive, I believed him.

I drove my Sentra with aggression on my three hour drive back home. The next day Helene sent me a link to Rohrl’s Wikipedia page, where I learned exactly whose hands my life had been in the day before. Wow. It was quite the experience riding in a high-performance car with someone who can really make it perform. Time to start saving my pennies. I think I might be a car guy after all.

The camera on my phone resumed working normally later that day. Guess I’m just going to have to remember this one.

Ethan DeLorenzo and Stormi Henley

Dylan Finneran

I’ve had a lot of fun shooting street photography on the Venice Beach Boardwalk, but decided this time to try something different. So, with my intern Nanette and a single strobe I set out to make some portraits. Unfortunately, the hour we had to shoot was cut short by a dead battery in one of my Pocket Wizards. So much for spontaneity. But we were lucky to run into a few cool people in our short window of time and I’m really happy with the results. I’ll definitely be heading back for more in the near future.

Street artist Jules Muck

Earlier this summer I got a chance to photograph local street artist and designer Jules Muck at 1320Main Studios in Venice. I had invited her to shoot for a personal project I’m working on on local artists and thought it would be a great opportunity to shoot some portraits using a couple of large Kino Flo lights that the studio had available. In this instance, I gave Jules very little direction other than where to stand. I didn’t want to do anything too contrived and I thought it would be best to just let her be herself. She showed up wearing a slip and carrying a chihuahua, so that’s what we went with. Other than lighting, the other thing that was important to me was that the background was green, as it’s probably the most common color in her recent work, which can be seen on walls throughout Venice. If you’ve been to Venice lately, the piece you might recognize most is her portrait of Lindsay Lohan with the words “Welcome to Venice” scrawled above her head. I photographed people walking by the piece several months before I had actually met Jules. Anyway, the studio happens to have a large green screen that is used most commonly for video work, so I thought it was the perfect spot to shoot. The shoot was fun, but brief, as Jules managed to fit me in just before running off to catch a flight to NYC. The life of a street artist is changing! Between formal recognition by major museums, such as the current Art in the Streets exhibit at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, to an increasing number of commissioned works on everything from local buildings to major ad campaigns, not to mention the Banksy-directed film “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” street artists are increasing coming out of the shadows and into the limelight. As much of the work is still considered illegal, however, I think the rebelliousness that made it so exciting in the beginning still exists. It will be interesting to see how it evolves from here.

Traceur Brent Steffensen at 1320Main Studios, Venice

Traceur Brent Steffensen at 1320Main Studios in Venice.

I had a unique shoot with parkour specialist (a.k.a. ‘traceur’) and gymnast Brent Steffensen this week at 1320Main Studios in Venice. If you’re not familiar, parkour is urban freerunning, in which traceurs move across typically urban landscapes by running, jumping and climbing over anything in their way. It’s pretty impressive. Check out Brent’s stunt reel to get a taste.

I first met Brent a month ago after photographing him as he was doing corkscrews for a television crew on a grassy berm by the Venice Skatepark. I was just out shooting street photography, not paying much mind to the fact that there was a giant obstacle course set up nearby where contestants were auditioning for American Ninja Warrior. Upon talking to him I found out he was a contestant. The program is based around an extremely challenging obstacle course competition in Japan. Qualifiers in the American version go on to compete in Japan, where few Americans have ever completed the course. That’s an okay description, but follow the link if you want to know more. Anyway, I’ve recently been doing more studio photography at 1320Main and Brent took me up on my invitation to come shoot sometime. To my surprise, when we finally hooked up he asked if I minded if a television crew from the G4 network came along to document the shoot for part of a day-in-the-life segment they were doing on him for the show. Sounded fun to me. And it was. Monday, a crew of 4, plus Brent showed up and we had a great time shooting him doing corkscrews and back flips in the studio and up on the roof. He’s an amazing athlete and it was fun just to watch him go airborne with nothing more than two quick steps. The only thing I wish we had more of was time, as the crew was on a tight schedule. But we’ll shoot again soon. I have several ideas that I think would combine to make a great series of images. And they tell me the show will air on the G4 network and possibly NBC sometime later this summer. I’ll be sure to mention it when I hear.

On a technical note (tune out here if you’re not a photo nerd), the only thing more that I needed was a faster strobe, particularly for the studio shots. Freezing motion with strobes is only possible if the strobes have a fast enough flash duration to only expose the subject for 1/500 of a second or less. This is particularly necessary when someone is doing flips, as the head and feet are whipping around at extremely fast speeds, in which case you need strobes with a flash duration of at least 1/1000 of a second. I shot this with a borrowed Calumet pack as key and my White Lightnings as fill, but I’m not sure that either were fast enough. Thus the motion blur on the feet. It’s not entirely a bad thing, as the blur gives a sense of him flipping through the air, but ideally I would like to freeze it. Should I have done this for a client I probably would have rented a Profoto rig or something similar.

Portrait series from the Venice Art Crawl at 1320Main Studios

Here’s a favorite from a portrait series I did during a photo exhibit we held at 1320Main Studios during the recent Venice Art Crawl. Many more, and additional photos from the Crawl, are up on Facebook.

Susan Metros, associate vice provost at USC

Last week I photographed Susan Metros, associate vice provost at the University of Southern California, for a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the increased use of student-produced video projects as homework, sometimes in lieu of traditional written essays. Although I’m not sure about using videos as a replacement for writing, I do agree that it’s a good idea to go beyond passive media literacy to actually having students produce videos and think visually. And it’s become easier than ever, with the majority of students having computers and at least some form of video device in their possession. Unfortunately, the shoot took place after students were done with any relevant projects, so there was nothing actually happening that I could photograph. But we tried to make the most of it with an empty computer lab and some helpful assistants who logged into every computer for me and put them all on the same website. Here’s a link to the article if the topic interests you: http://su.pr/30S4vM