Olivia

Yesterday's shoot with the fabo young Olivia Lee, aspiring actress. "She's gonna be big," says we.
Boundless gratitude to Chris McDonald makeup and assistant Stefanie Renee. You guys are the bomba.

Curiosity is What We Share

Yesterday, my assistant Garry and I were shooting a tricked out, all electric Mini Cooper developed at the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis for Sierra Magazine.

We were working in a tucked away corner of the university's arboretum, near one of the biggest collection of oaks in the world. We were just wrapping up, when a curious fellow photographer stopped by to look at our 10 foot scrim. I persuaded him to stick around while we gathered our subjects' model releases and said our goodbyes. Then I nabbed this portrait of him with his homemade portable studio rig.

Allan Jones, our new friend here, takes close ups of specimens from the arboretum's oak trees when they blossom once a year. He's adapted a cardboard box to capture these flowering samples bathed in gorgeous scrimmed and bounced sunlight. My kind o' light.

Here's to curious, crazy shooters. Big, small, cardboard, aluminum. We love our gear, we love our light.

George Steinmetz's horizon line

Great article in this week's New Yorker about George Steinmetz, the first photographer I ever assisted and also one of the hardest working, and most hilarious, guys out there. George taught me how to load a Nikon in an instant, pack a flight case to the max and run for the final boarding call.  He flys an ultralight paraglider over the sunset sands of the Sahara and beyond, shooting down from as high as 1000 feet. He says the best stuff is often at 500 feet, following Robert Capa's advice, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

I shot this pic of him when we had a day off at Barton Springs in Austin, Texas. We were shooting oil field wildcatters, usually at sunset, and back then, from the ground.

Cheers, George! Here's to two shrimp and a granola bar on the next red eye. Long may you fly at just the right height. See George's beautiful work.