The power of Nice

Last year I was commissioned to shoot a CEO for a major publication. It was a low paying job, I had 5 minutes to shoot and the PR guy wouldn't let me shoot the shot I wanted. I settled for a pretty crappy (IMHO) shot. However, I held my cool and was nice to the PR guy because, after all, he was just doing his job. In fact, I used him as my stand-in and sent him a copy of it...just because. A funny thing happened after that. That same PR guy has hired me 4 times since for 10x the money the initial publication was hiring me for.

That's the power of nice.

Ups and Downs

So, a lot has been going on around here. Ups and downs, which makes the picture above all the more appropriate. First the bad news. Lost my second big job of the year. Well, I didn't lose it...it just went away. I was hired by a magazine to shoot the star of a big movie coming out in the summer for their cover. The star is unknown now, but in big movie directed by a big director at a big studio. The greatest part is that they chose me out of many other local photographers (most of them peers that have been working a long time) AND they chose me for my style. That's really what all photographers work for. We are set except for the scheduling and the movie studio's PR stepped in. They like to keep strict control of their stars and decided to have an L.A. guy that they have a relationship with shoot it. So the job went away. At least they WANTED me, which at this stage of my career is almost as important as money. That little bit of acceptance drives me to keep going. I'm not too upset as I knew before hand that the PR guys like to work this way, just got to figure out how to become the PR guy's "go to guy".

Also, got to shoot a really cool personal project. I met a little girl whose family raises wolf-dogs. We shot a pretty bad-ass series that will be on my site within the next month. Keep looking for it.

Leggo my ego!

A few years ago I'm watching a video called the "G3 Tour". It was a flashy audio assault by three of the most technically proficient guitarist to ever touch a fretboard, Steve Vai, Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen. These guys are fast! These guys know every scale...infact, Vai actually made up some new modes (music talk)! You ask any guitarist who the best whom ever lived and these 3 will always pop up in someone's list. At the end of the show they all three came out for a 3-man jam to really give the audience something to remember. What did they play? Neil Young's "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World". Huh? A song by perhaps the world's least proficient guitarist? They picked that song because sometimes simple is better...and because it rocked. The audience went wild. Three of the best guitarist in the world jam to a simple 3 chord progression. That's what I want my photography to be. Well crafted, but simple enough to stand the test of time. No matter what flash comes and goes, I want to make art that will communicate effectively in 30 years. That's me, that old song that you just can't turn down. Don't stop believing!

Not my style, part deux

Here's another image that's not in my portfolio. It's an ad for foreign drink that I really know nothing about. I have to give most of the credit to my brothers at Image Tap for making it come alive with photochop.