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#

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.

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.

]]> http://davidzentz.com/blog/2011/12/a-day-with-occupiers-and-the-preoccupied/feed/ 0 http://davidzentz.com/blog/2011/11/porsche-ceo-matthias-muller-for-the-financial-times/ http://davidzentz.com/blog/2011/11/porsche-ceo-matthias-muller-for-the-financial-times/#comments Tue, 15 Nov 2011 06:55:56 +0000 admin http://davidzentz.com/blog/?p=2057 [...]]]>

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.

Instagram photos of the Santa Monica Pier

After more than a year of opting out, I finally let go of my reluctance to use one of the numerous and extremely popular camera apps available on the iPhone and downloaded Instagram. When I found myself walking along the Santa Monica Pier today with Erinn I decided to give it a try, and found myself really enjoying shooting with my phone for once. It wasn’t that I was against the apps themselves – I think the effects can be cool and always love shooting in a square format – it was just that everyone had adopted these programs so quickly that all of the photos were beginning to look the same and that too many are leaning on the gimmicky color effects to make otherwise weak photos look interesting. However, after taking a couple photos I liked right off the bat I was hooked and decided to make a quick photo project of it, shooting everything I could in the time it took us to walk to the end of the pier and back. Here’s the majority of the shots I took, stitched together in one easy to view pastiche.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

I recently had a fantastic shoot with my new friend Nana at Sunny Bak Studio in Venice. An artist, actor and model with an amazing fashion sense, Nana’s an incredible subject whom I had been wanting to photograph since I first approached her two years ago outside a local coffee shop. She’s one of the few people I’ve ever encountered whose presence can literally stop you in your tracks. The opportunity never materialized and I moved on to other things until deciding to try again a few weeks ago. Although I had never run into her in person again over that time, by then I had connected with several mutual friends and one of them, Sunny, was nice enough to reach out and vouch for me, which led to the shoot at her studio a few weeks later.

When Nana showed up to the shoot I knew she was a committed subject by the fact that, after getting stranded near the airport, she had hitchhiked to make it to the shoot. I was doubly relieved as I was not only looking forward to a much-anticipated shoot, but had also rented some extra gear and purchased film in order to make some exposures on an antique 4×5 camera I own but have never actually used. These photos are all shot on a Nikon D3, but I hope to be able to share the 4×5′s soon, pending positive results.

But even if they don’t turn out, the results of the D3 are enough to have made the shoot worthwhile. As you’ll see after clicking to the jump, I can hardly edit it down below 10 images made during a fun and fortuitous 90 minutes of shooting. The session was laid back and fun from the get go and only got better over time. Nana knows how to work the camera and we had a great time going through a variety of expressions, both posed an natural. Before shooting we came across a book by Robert Mapplethorpe entitled “Some Women.” I was mostly familiar with his more provocative work focusing on erotic male nudes, which is what most people probably associate him with. I was surprised when thumbing through the book to see this collection of beautifully lit portraits featuring young depictions the likes of Isabella Rossellini, Susan Sarandon and Grace Jones, the latter of which is a personal hero of Nana’s. Although it didn’t affect the way I set up for the shoot, I think the book provided a source of inspiration nonetheless, particularly evident in some of the more stoic images we produced.

A bit of luck came our way too when, not long into the shoot, a shaft of sunlight appeared on the backdrop. At first I saw it as a problem, an unsightly blotch of white light smeared across an otherwise even background. Then Nana – also a photographer I might add – pushed her face forward and into the light. I had been stuck on keeping my lighting the way I’d set it up, but when I saw that I immediately changed my tune. Knowing the rays, which were coming from the setting sun poking through the studio’s front door, were fleeting, I quickly started scrambling to take advantage. I wanted to try two things and managed to get a crack at both of them before the light faded away. First, I started working on balancing out the natural light with the overhead studio light so the effect of the sunlight could be seen without being bleached out by the strobes. I managed to find the right balance, so the strobe maintained the shadow detail while the sun lit her face. Then, I took the opposite approach, cutting the strobes altogether and exposing only for the highlight on her face. The effect was to surround just a portion of her face in total darkness. Right after that the sun disappeared and we resumed shooting with my original setup, which was nothing more than a single, super-diffused beauty dish placed over head, and the occasional use of a reflector below. (I’ve actually posted a couple “behind-the-scenes” shots taken by my wonderful intern Shari at the end of this post.) But it was a good reminder to roll with the unexpected rather than fight it.

My original intent when shooting Nana was to produce a couple good portraits that spoke more to her personality. The first shot posted here is probably the closest to my original vision. It’s a moment that’s loose and natural and powerful, and shows her being herself. I’ve seen a lot of amazing modeling work she’s done recently but wanted to go a different direction with her that I hadn’t yet seen, which is more my style anyway. But posed or natural, she was able to help me produce several great images that I’m happy to be sharing here. Hopefully I’ll have more to share after processing the 4×5′s.

Overall it was a great shoot and I look forward to working with her again someday!

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Nana @ Sunny Bak Studio, Venice, Calif.

Setup shots

Lighting setup shot w/ 4x5 camera

Photos and cold beer, nothing better.

Jumping ship

Relaxing on the trampoline

A moment of guilt passes through my mind as I think that while we were out doing this, the majority of the country’s population was still in the path of, or trying to recover from, Hurricane Irene. But when things are perfect in your neck of the woods you’ve got to take advantage. And we did.

Last Sunday we got an invite from our friend, Roger, to join him and others on a sail out of Marina Del Rey. A heatwave that pushed the mercury over 100 degrees in the Valley coaxed the coastal temperatures into a much more tolerable mid-80s. Couple that with low winds and it was a perfect day for smooth sailing.

And we enjoyed every minute of it; relaxing, swimming and laughing with a great group of new friends made up of an impressive assortment of performers, entrepreneurs, adventurers and even a writer from the Daily Show (!). Normally I hate when those guys go on vacation, but when I get to hang out with them on a boat, I’m happy to make an exception. In the evening, several of us made our way over to Michael and Don’s place on the Venice Canals and kept the party going with some great grilling and beverages. If only every Sunday could be this perfect. As that’s unlikely, I took it upon myself to memorialize this one.

More photos after the jump!

Napping on the trampoline

Swimming under the Catamaran

Swimming

Erinn relaxes

Desalinization

Me! (Photo by Erinn D.)

View from the cabin

I agree

James "Whitey" Bulger was arrested in Santa Monica on June 22, 2011. (David Zentz/AP)

The call box at the Santa Monica apartment where James "Whitey" Bulger and Catherine Greig were arrested. (David Zentz/AP)

If crime is an indication of summer, then summer is getting started with a bang. Yesterday I spent much of my day at crime scenes, two while shooting for the AP and at one that just happened to be around the corner from my apartment. The first assignment for the AP came in the afternoon following a shooting on at a baseball field at the Penmar Recreation Center in Venice. There three victims were shot as a game was getting underway in what was believed to be a gang-related incident. One died on the scene, a second at the hospital and a third was expected to survive after a gunshot wound to the leg. The suspect is still at large after hopping into his car and speeding away. Sad news, but it’s also a typical local story with little interest outside of the neighborhood.

The second story was much, much bigger. Later that night I got a call to head over to the 1000 block of 3rd Street in Santa Monica. It was believed, and soon confirmed, that the FBI had arrested longtime fugitive crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger and his companion Catherine Greig at home in an apartment building just a couple blocks away from the bustling outdoor mall that is the 3rd Street Promenade. I didn’t realize at the time the magnitude of the arrest, but headed over to photograph the scene. Bulger was the number 2 most wanted person by the FBI, second only to Osama Bin Laden. He was wanted for the murders of 19 people during his reign in Boston in the 70s and 80s. He’s the basis for Jack Nicholson’s character in Scorcese’s “The Departed.” Bad dude. Right down the street in sunny Santa Monica!

The couple had been arrested earlier that evening, so all we could get were shots of the scene outside, with police guarding the exterior of the building as the Feds worked inside gathering evidence. Neighbors and looky-loos joined the press and police outside, many of them on their cell phones telling their friends “You wouldn’t believe it!” I didn’t have a problem with it until one lady kept asking me why that one camera’s lights kept flashing in the distance. I informed her it was a squad car. The call box at the front door was of particular interest to the media, as we wondered which name was the alias for the infamous gangster, who had apparently resided there for 15 years. It wasn’t officially confirmed, but later that night I was told it was Rozenzweig/Fein. (Just saw on Nightly News that they were going by Gasko. I was misinformed!). Neighbors spoke to the press about their brief encounters with the couple over the years. One guy had shaken his hand. Nothing out of the ordinary.

As the evening progressed the press and crowds dwindled. I hung out until I was released at two in the morning on the off chance that the Feds would soon exit with armfuls of evidence, but when a police officer delivered them food at 1:45 I knew the chances were slim that anything would happen anytime soon. I had worked an 18 hour day at this point and was ready to call it a night. Fortunately, it looks like they waited until daybreak to emerge with the evidence. The front page of LATimes.com has the photo we were hoping for.

After checking today, I can see my photos ran everywhere from the New York Times and Washington Post to the Wirtualna Polska, somewhere in Poland. Probably the biggest story I’ve shot here since Rachel Uchitel.

I still don’t know what the incident was in my own backyard, but I’ll look into. It had died down by the time I came upon the scene. Hopefully, as far as crime goes, the summer will not keep up at this pace!

Follow up: The local event was a bomb scare caused by an unattended package. Not a bomb. http://www.yovenice.com/2011/06/23/suspicious-package-brings-heavy-lapd-turnout/

A view of Griffith Park, the Griffith Observatory and Downtown Los Angeles

I’m happy to have a photo running in this month’s Outside Magazine. Second one in the past year! The photo shows Griffith Park and downtown Los Angeles and was used to illustrate a story called “Welcome to the Jungle” for a series on weekend escapes. Escaping on a weekend was likely why I was there shooting in the first place, so I’m glad the photo found an appropriate home.