Richard Jackson for The Chronicle of Higher Education

A few weeks ago I photographed Richard Jackson for the Chronicle of Higher Education. A professor at UCLA and former head of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, Dr. Jackson is the host of Designing Healthy Communities, a documentary miniseries airing on PBS this week and next. He is one of the leading advocates for better urban design, which in turn leads to better overall health for a community’s residents.

Jackson had the perfect place in mind for the shoot, a concrete island outside of baggage claim at LAX, where he says he often waits in a noxious cloud of cigarette smoke and car exhaust for up to an hour for a shuttle bus that will take him up to the UCLA campus. He spends his weekends in San Francisco, where his family currently resides. “This is my idea of hell,” he yelled over a cacophony of  car horns and revving engine noises pinging back and forth between pavement and low cement ceilings as we exited the baggage claim area. He had a point. The place doesn’t exactly scream ‘welcome to paradise.’

Photographing at LAX is fairly easy as long as you don’t pull out any lights and are out in the public area. Swarms of paparazzi and camera-toting tourists are a daily occurrence, so there’s a certain level of tolerance built in for casual shooting. So, I kept it simple, shooting only natural light and using the bounce from the adjacent parking deck to light the subject. We were able to shoot for several minutes without being hassled, which is more than you can say for many public spots in the city.

The following day I went to shoot him as he was giving a guest lecture to a class at the university. The material he presented is pretty interesting, and I found myself sticking around after I’d packed up my gear to listen to what he had to say. Many of us, particularly in LA, are already aware of what poor urban planning can do to impede pedestrians, but seeing it presented in photographs of labyrinthian neighborhoods and charts tracking our nations health decline with the rise of urban sprawl and suburbia was still fascinating and frustrating. It’s amazing to see how an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and asthma can in part be traced back to civic planners from the 1950′s. It also makes you realize the hurdles advocates of cities designed around pedestrians, such as Jackson, have to overcome.

This also made me appreciate living in Venice, which is an unusually walkable and bike friendly neighborhood. In fact, LA has numerous walkable neighborhoods. It’s just when you try to get from one to another that the nightmare begins. Speaking of which, it’s time to get away from this computer and go stretch my legs.

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.

Midnight burn

Well, not really. But a fun way to end the holidays. A few days back I got a last minute notice of a clandestine, late night bonfire on the beach comprised of a collection of Christmas trees set to be collected by the city the following morning. The dried trees were promised to go up in a flash. It seemed too fun not to witness, so we made an extra effort not to fall asleep on the sofa after having attended happy hour earlier in the evening and headed out to the water. When we arrived we were the only ones there, despite showing up ten minutes later than the announced burn time. We gave it a few minutes though, and just as we were about to pack it up spotted a line of people emerging like mice from the shadows, each with a tree in tow. Scurrying through the dark they dragged the trees out across the sand and beyond the berm, piling them out of site of anyone not already out on the beach and just feet from the water’s reach. Beneath the full moon, someone reached in with a lighter, igniting the needles of one of the trees. Within seconds the entire pile was ablaze, shooting sparks 20 feet into the sky as a group of 15 or so gathered around. As promised, the pile burned quickly and brightly and in a matter of minutes had nearly exhausted its fuel supply. By the morning the waves would wash away the ashes. It was a beautiful moment shared by only a few and was definitely worth waiting up for. Content, tired and smelling of campfire we decided to make the short trek home, stopping along the way to photograph our dancing shadows as they reached out to meet the surf. A fun way to officially end the holiday season. (More photos after the jump).

A gift I think

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 Beach sunset

Caught this moment this evening when I stepped out to check out the sunset. The sand dunes created on the beach always make for interesting photos.

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.

Front row seating at the Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade

Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade

Here are a few scenes from the 2011 Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade. Tim Tebow almost made us late for this one, but we got there just in time. This year’s parade was later in the day than last year’s and seemed to have a smaller turnout, but all of the lit floats winding their way through the canals still made for a pretty event.

Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade

Some floats were timely. One of a few "Occupy"-themed floats.

Others, less so. Barry Manilow on a surfboard float.

Checking out the sunset from a rooftop

The sunset (right beyond those power lines)

Venice Canals Holiday Boat Parade

Theresa Reyes, left, Antjuan Roy and his mother Diane Johnson, stand in front of Roy and Johnson's home and Roy's destroyed car in Temple City, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/David Zentz)

Postal worker Edward Tena delivers mail along Live Oak Ave., in Temple City, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011.

Occupy LA protesters march from Pershing Square to the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail where protesters, who were arrested during the arrests on Wednesday, were being held, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/David Zentz)

Occupy LA protesters arrive at the Los Angeles County Men's Central Jail where protesters were being held, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011. (AP Photo/David Zentz)

First the preoccupied: Last Saturday had me busy with two assignments for the AP, first doing follow up on Santa Ana winds damage in the formerly tree-lined town of Temple City. Two days prior, winds reaching 150 miles per hour had blown through town causing extensive damage. When I arrived in Temple City it didn’t look all that bad at first. Traffic lights were out along Las Tunas Drive, the town’s main street, causing traffic to move at a slower clip than usual, but other than a few piles of downed branches on the curbside it didn’t seem that bad. It was a different story though when I turned off into the neighborhoods. On the first block to the south large trees still blocked driveways and entire yards were covered with branches. On Live Oak, the next road south, it really looked like a hurricane had come through town. The entire street had been cast in a net of power lines, as one utility pole after another laid outstretched across the road. The power outage was the most pressing problem for the city, as overnight temperatures were dropping unusually low, into the thirties, making life rough for the local residents. Despite some criticism that power wasn’t coming back on fast enough, it was good to see that the power company had deployed additional forces to address the problem. In 2004 I photographed Hurricane Charley, a category 2 storm that tore a new O in Orlando, and remember it took more than eight days in some areas to regain power. This was in August, with temperatures pushing 100 degrees. I remember visiting families who seemed to be melting into their sofas as they sat in the dark, waiting. Here, I believe all power was restored within the week, but understand why people would be impatient. I shot the workers and the downed power lines, walking all the way around the block each time I wanted to move a block east or west since the road was blocked off. After one or two blocks I grew tired of this and was relieved when a postal worker told me about a car that was still crushed beneath a giant tree a couple blocks to the north. (That sounds bad.) What I was hoping to find was an example of how the storm damage had affected someone personally, and this sounded like it might be the thing. The scene he described wasn’t hard to find. It turns out that not only had the tree crushed the one visible car, but there were two cars in front of it that were also trapped, if not destroyed. The red car belonged to the Antjuan Roy, the 20-year-old son of the homeowner, and was his first car, which he’d worked and saved up for. I was told he only had liability insurance, so it was a total loss. Considering the news, they seemed to be taking it well. As I stood there talking to them, passers by slowed their vehicles, jaws slacked, some pausing long enough to shoot a photo with their phone. Theresa, the homeowner, joked that they should put out a can for donations. In the scheme of things they were lucky. The giant tree had somehow managed to fall directly into the one-lane driveway separating their home from their neighbor’s. A couple feet to the right or left and it would have come down on one of their rooftops. But I wished there was something I could do other than try to get the photo published and hope someone would notice.

On to the Occupiers: After filing the images from Temple City I was asked to head downtown where a group of two hundred or so Occupiers had reconvened. This time they were protesting the

continued detention of some of their fellow Occupiers following the Wednesday police raid of their encampment on the lawn of City Hall, where they had been parked for two months. They had begun their march at Pershing Square and were making stops along the way. First was a branch of Bank of America, where someone was apparently arrested for shaking the front door. Moving on, they stopped again near City Hall, where I caught up to them as they started moving again toward their destination, the Los Angeles County Central Jail. In tow were twenty or so police officers on foot, bicycles and in cars. The long chain of protesters wound their way northeast, stopping occasionally on overpasses to chant and wave their signs at passing cars, past the cobblestone paved Olivera Street where vendors stared and smiled. Having jumped into the fray midway, I wasn’t really sure where we were going. I asked a woman who was marching and she didn’t know either. I wondered if she was an exception. The next person I asked knew what was going on and told me we were headed to the Twin Towers, the correctional facility next to the Mens Detention Center. The police mostly kept their distance, only interacting to tell people to get back on the sidewalk if we stepped onto the road. Despite this, they were shouted at and antagonized much of the way. There were some well documented abuses during the Wednesday raid and I can understand the anger, but I also wondered how much they could be expected to take without something inciting action. No action was taken, fortunately, and the group found its way to the jail, where a group of officers from the sheriff’s office stood waiting in brown helmets. Having reached their destination, I departed to file. Now dark, I was asked to go back to the jail to see if anything was still going on, but they had called it a day and dispersed. I decided to do the same.

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View from Mt. Lemmon

The Salton Sea

Erinn and I had a great trip to Tucson for the Thanksgiving holiday. Along the way I took numerous photos that had a rather quiet tone to them. Thought I’d pull them together for this post. While in Tucson, Erinn and I had a great time feasting with my sister and friends, trying out local breweries and visiting some pretty amazing locations, such as Ted De Grazia’s Gallery in the Sun and Mt. Lemmon. On the drive home we cut north on Rte. 86 for a very brief visit to the Salton Sea, which neither of us had visited in our three years living here. Only having seen images of decrepit trailers and short clips from the film Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, I was surprised to see how many people lived there, primarily in the town of Salton City. We drove up the north shore looking for interesting sites and came across an interesting mix of abandoned furniture, dead fish and numerous birds. The chair I’d seen photographed before in different locations. It must be moved around as needed by the numerous photographers who have visited the site. The dead fish, it turns out, are a result of the ever increasing saline percentages in the water, which are making it harder and harder for the fish populations to survive. We had to stay on schedule to make it home by a certain time that evening for the arrival of some house guests, but I’d like to look into this area more. In addition to the eccentric people who live in the area, there are apparently some significant ecological issues going on there.

More photos after the jump!

Shade - Tucson, Ariz.

Salton Sea

Salton Sea