Last week I had the pleasure of photographing the esteemed president of USC, Steven B. Sample, for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Sample will be retiring later this year after nearly two decades of leadership during which time he has been credited with converting the institution from the “University of Second Choice,” to the premier university in Los Angeles. He has also helped the school shake the stigma it has for being located in a rougher part of the city, just three miles south of downtown.
This portrait idea was that of the photo editor, who was inspired by the powerful simplicity of the recent portrait of Roger Ebert for Esquire magazine, which ran last month. There was some concern that Mr. Sample wouldn’t be willing to sit for it because he is battling Parkinson’s disease, a condition he’s had since 2001. However, once I met him and saw the glint in his eye I knew this portrait would be a great way to convey his personality and intelligence and, with only the tiniest bit of convincing, he was happy to sit for me. The rest of the article was about the campus’s relationship with its urban environment. USC was right in the middle of the area most affected by the Rodney King riots in 1992 and, despite being largely unscathed by the destruction, was known for being situated in a dangerous area. I recall this from my own research when considering schools in the mid-90s. UCLA was known for its gorgeous surroundings, and USC was in the ghetto. As I ultimately went to the University of Pittsburgh, it didn’t much affect my decision making, but I can see the obstacle the campus has overcome. To shoot this I spent a good deal of time walking around the campus trying to find angles that show its relationship to the city. Not as easy as it sounds. Like many universities, the school campus is fairly self-contained, so there are only a few angles, at least from ground level, that show the school buildings in relation to its urban surroundings. After several hours of hiking around the campus, I ended up finding this angle from the median of Figueroa Street and was able to show the Galen Center set against part of the downtown skyline.
Oh, and another fun thing that I found out from the accompanying article, was that Sample, who was an electrical engineer, is the guy who invented the keypad that is now on pretty much every microwave in the world. Pretty cool.

I’ve been bad at posting lately, but do have some new work that I’ll be able to share in the coming weeks. Things have been fairly busy, with a couple magazine assignments for London’s Financial Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, a few fashion portfolio shoots and a wedding this coming Saturday. Hopefully after that I’ll be able to share more. Now that I think of it, it’s not going to get any slower after that, as I’ll be in Vegas for the WPPI trade show on Tuesday and hopefully back there again a week or so later for another SoCal Scene fashion shoot. Other than a quick detour I took while driving west on my move to L.A., I’ve never been to Vegas before! So I’m definitely looking forward to it. Hopefully sometime in there I’ll manage to put up some new posts In the meantime, these are a couple I took last week while scouting locations for other shoots. The top is a surprisingly noisy hummingbird I came across in Venice and the bottom is Erinn strolling through El Escorpion Park in Canoga Park, where I have a shoot this Sunday.

Here’s one I shot for the AP a couple weeks back. Robert Park had just returned from a 6-week detainment in a North Korean prison and wasn’t open to making much of a public appearance to talk about his experience or make a statement regarding his cause. His family was allowed to meet him behind closed doors and leave the airport via a private exit. They agreed to drive him by the baggage claim and roll the window down for about 5 seconds so we could see him. At that point his brother hopped out of the car to talk to the media and the car drove off. So this is about as much as anyone got.

U.S. Missionary Robert Park sits in a car with his mother and father following his return to the U.S. at the to the Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday, Feb. 06, 2010. Park was detained in North Korea after crossing the border from China on Christmas Day. (AP Photo/David Zentz)

I’m excited to announce that the second issue of SoCal Scene magazine was just released and features a fashion spread shot by yours truly. We had a great team and a great time putting this shoot together and we’re happy with the results! The magazine is online at socal-scene.com and should be on magazine racks around L.A. next week. In order to pull this off we put together a great team of people and put in a full-day’s work and then some. The shoot took place north of Los Angeles in and around the town of Piru. I’ll follow up later with some behind the scenes photos I took for Erika Stanley’s SNOB Style site.

Credits:
Photography by David Zentz
Styling by Erika Stanley
Clothing by Black Label by Planet Blue & Planet Blue Boutique
Hair by Kyle Mathis
Makeup by Robyn Fisher
Model – Sharylyn Long
Photography assistant – Matt Levitch

Please continue after the jump to see the rest of the series!

After a long day staking out a second day of possible mudslides in La Canada Flintridge, which fortunately never came, I pulled off for gas in the town of Eagle Rock, just north of Los Angeles and came across some of the most incredible afternoon light I’ve seen since leaving Florida. I hopped out of the car and started pacing up and down the street looking for something interesting to shoot and when I turned around saw this giant rainbow arching over the entire skyline. I was hoping to find some human activity to shoot against this background, but unfortunately there was none to be found. Still, it was a nice scene so I took a few shots. After the light went away I continued walking around and found myself on an overpass looking down at traffic driving east along the highway. I like the shine of the lights on the wet road. After taking a few frames I looked at my monitor and noticed I had a padiddle right up front. That was good enough for me so I hopped back into the car and made my way home.

On looking up the spelling of padiddle, I came across a wikipedia page with some interesting variations on the game I grew up playing on long nighttime drives across midwestern highways. Now that I’m all grown up I like the Canadian version called “beer” as well as the one called “sex.” I’ll have to remember those.

I was downtown for an assignment that went bust the other day and figured I better shoot something to make the trek worthwhile. The Disney Concert Hall is as overphotographed a landmark as there is in LA, but I figured I’d rarely seen it in the rain so I hopped out of the car and took a couple shots as people walked by with umbrellas.

It took me a while, but I finally got my Haiti fundraiser going! For the rest of February I’m selling 8×10’s of a select number of images I took in the sumer of 2008. I’m selling the images for $20 with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Habitat for Humanity to aid them as they work to provide short- and long-term shelter solutions to those affected by last month’s devastating earthquake. Habitat for Humanity is well established in Haiti, having been there for 26 years. And by donating the money through the Los Angeles chapter, all of the money raised will go straight to Haiti, with no administrative fees taken out.

Please go to http://www.davidzentz.com/haiti to view a gallery of available images. From there you will be taken to a portal where you can purchase the prints using Paypal or a credit card and have them shipped straight to you.

If you are in the Los Angeles area, I will be exhibiting about 10 large prints and continuing to sell 8×10’s at the launch party for SoCal-Scene magazine, an upstart magazine I’m working with. The event will be at the Shangri-La hotel in Santa Monica at the end of the month. The final time and date is being determined this week. Check back or go to http://www.socal-scene.com for details.

“Usted no es nada sino un perro de caza Y no es ningún amigo mío.”

Not his words, but from a Spanish translation of Hound Dog I found online. I was walking around Silver Lake last weekend with Erinn and my friend Matt when we came across Raphael “Elvis” Coca, a San Salvadorian Elvis look-alike, sitting on a bench in front of the La Parrilla Mexican restaurant on West Sunset Blvd., where he works. I asked to take a picture and then we spent about ten minutes talking to him in Spanish. Good to know that my language skills are still good enough to carry on a basic conversation, but I do need some work! He was a really friendly guy and a fun person to meet while out for a stroll. The Maybe I’ll go back and watch him perform sometime soon.

For the assignment from my previous post I decided to rent a fisheye lens to emphasize the spherical shape of the light stage. I picked up the lens the night before and decided to go out and play with it on Venice Beach in the waning evening light. There wasn’t much time but these are a couple frames I liked.

I had the opportunity last week, through an assignment for the Chronicle of Higher Education, to spend a little time with Paul Debevec at Light Stage 5 at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) Graphics Lab in Marina Del Rey. Debevec is being honored with an Academy Award for his work in creating the animated faces in Avatar. His research has lead to some pretty significant advances in the realism of digital animation and has been utilized in such films as the Spiderman movies, Hancock, and Benjamin Button. The light stage he’s standing in is comprised of 156 LED lights that enable them to study the way light hits a face from every possible angle and then create a digital representation of it that looks as close as any animation has ever looked to real. It’s also a really fun place to make a portrait. The face in the third photo is “Digital Emily,” an early animation made using the same stage. And the puzzle is made from a photo of Light Stage 6, which is held at another location and is now being used to create full body animations. His research makes me feel like I know absolutely nothing about light, but is really interesting. You can view some samples of his work at www.debevec.org