More Editorial!

I was called to shoot another editorial assignment. Editorial assignments are great they allow you to really think quickly and adjust to your environment. This assignment is for the October issue of CS,this is not the photo that will running in the magazine. I had seen this guy walking around set with his dog so I asked if I could take his portrait. His name is Dino and he is a Ju-Jitsu instructor,and this is his dog Nola.

Shoot for CS Magazine

I recently received a call from CS editor Greg Gillis for a quick editorial assignment. The shoot, a portrait of Laurent Gras a world famous french chef and owner L2O restaurant in Chicago. Laurent is a serious bicyclist with a carbon fiber bike that cost as much as a nice car. CS was sending one of their writers to take a bike ride with Laurent and interview him along the way. The shot is coming out in CS Magazine in the first week of July 2009. This was a really fun shoot with really great subjects, thanks Laurent and Mark! I also had two of my favorite assistants on this one Zach Johnston and Ely Philips thanks for all your hard work!

Buenos Aires and Mendoza, Argentina

Well I have not updated this blog in a very long time! In the last couple of months I traveled to South America once again to do some digital post production and shooting this time in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Mendoza, Argentina. The job...... shooting wineries. I got the call from my friend Mark and had to decide that day if I could do it, it was a little rushed but spontaneity is exciting! We made our arrangements and in a couple of days I was at O'hare heading south. It was nice a flight at 3:00pm no lines at the airport.........awesome. My connecting flight was in Miami so it was pretty easy I had the same experience about 5 months ago traveling to Bogota and Carracas on a job with Diageo. I arrived at the gate and they had just started boarding 1st class, perfect enough time to run to the bar and order a long island iced tea! The theory here was to get a nice stiff drink and sleep through the 8 hour flight as it turns out it was just a theory. I landed in Argentina around noon got through customs grabbed my bags and went to look for Pedro, the driver Mark had sent to pick me up. Sure enough there he was standing with a print out of my name. Pedro was very cool, there was a language barrier that basically I had built from neglecting to really learn Spanish.....I want to change that. Pedro is a middle aged man that always has a smile and talks very very fast and very loud......I instantly liked him. I managed to get a fragment of a conversation going as we sped down the highway on our way to Palermo, an awesome neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

I stayed in Buenos Aires for about 9 days until Mark came back from Bogota,Colombia then we flew to Mendoza, Argentina. From there we dumped our suitcases in our hotel room then jumped on a bus with all of our gear heading towards the Andes. Along the way we passed many wineries and took a lot of winding narrow roads and just took in the beauty of Argentina. Our job was to hang with a group from Diageo and photograph our adventures, the food and wine consumed along the way..........not a bad gig.

Our first day we went horseback riding in the foothills of the Andes mountains, we also had an amazing lunch with a few wine tastings. Soon we headed to Cavas a hotel in the middle of an enormous vineyard with pueblo style rooms scattered through out the vineyard ,we checked out the the hotel had some food and of course more wine! On our 2nd day we headed to the vineyards of Navarro Correas to pick grapes, photograph the workers in the vineyards and tour the winery. The winery itself is a work of art, a canvas of concrete and steel. We basically went through the entire process of wine making from the harvest of the grapes to the barreling of the wine. We spent about 4 days in Mendoza mostly traveling via bus and photographing the art of wine making, what an assignment!

The Printed Blog Cover Shots

I recently was introduced to website that a friend had sent me. We had been talking about blogging and the benefits and pitfalls of it. He sent me a link so I checked it out. I thought it was a cool idea, taking the information from a blog and making it a tangible item in the form of a newspaper or magazine. I ended up getting in contact with the photo editor and they happen to be looking for images.

I gladly sent them about 5 images in all. I thought, hey this is a cool idea and it's free exposure, not bad if they chose your images. About a week later I went to their website and was very happy to see they had picked three of my images for the Chicago, New York and Los Angles cover shots for issue #8. This is the current issue and they should be at new stands and downloadable as PDF's on their website, www.theprintedblog.com

Shooting Stills for Polish Bar

As I was sitting in bed one night icing my ankle from a skateboard injury I got a call from none other than Ben Redgrave. Ben is a good friend who use to live in Chicago then moved to

LA to pursue his film writing and directing career. Ben Redgrave teamed up with Ben Berkowitz some time ago in Chicago and they have made some really great films together. As it turns out Hollywood has become interested in their scripts so they are back in Chicago filming their latest feature film Polish Bar. Check out their website www.benzfilm.com . Ben called me up and asked if I would like to shoot stills for Polish Bar and I was more than happy to do so. I took this image in between shots as the crew was changing location, one of the actors was on his cell phone. It was morning sun so I knew this would be a perfect silhouette shot and the added flare from the sun running across the word America is nice. You can read more about Polish bar in The Chicago Reader @ http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/ourtown/090319/

Orpheus and Euridice

So while staying my last nights in the over luxurious "W" hotel I got a phone call from a friend of mine Rob Funderburk (http://robfunderburk.blogspot.com/). Rob is a very talented artist and an over all awesome guy. I actually met Rob on a shoot with a photographer Stuart Mullenberg, another talented all around great person. Rob had offered some work to me which I gladly took, a little pro bono project. Rob had created a mural for Chicago Opera Vanguard (http://www.4ringcircus.net/COV/season/orpheus.htm) , a theater group in Chicago. The piece was called Orpheus and Euridice, Orpheus was the son of Apollo was presented with a lyre and taught to play. He played it with such skill that no man,woman,child nor beast could withstand the charm of his notes. In the play the lyre was changed to a clarinet. The production was wonderful, great music, great choreography and in a great space! Rob had created the mural, it had very organic lines and he said he was trying to mimic the lines the actors were creating. I really enjoyed working with Rob and everyone at the Chicago Opera Vanguard.

Mexico City/Day 3

Its now time to do some serious post producing. Mark and I have been putting in some overtime processing all of these files. We have to edit and tweak something like 6000 files! We have already put in a couple of 16 hour days and it looked like we had another long night a head of us! We usually start at around 8:30 and work all day until around midnight hit the sack then wake up and start all over again. We had decided to go out once we had things under control and let our machines do some batch processing while we enjoyed Mexico City. Mark,Rene and I decided to go to the Zocalo and walk around check out some stores and go check out the new archeological find uncovered about 8 months ago downtown. Mexico city is pretty amazing with the Constitution Square, the Metropolitan Cathedral,Presidential Palace and all of the wonderful Mexican people! We decided that it was time to find a nice out door restaurant and get some tequila,beer and food. We found a wonderful place right next to the Metropolitan Cathedral, what a backdrop! Its funny to think that this time yesterday I was drinking in downtown Mexico City right next to a church that was built in the 1500's! Mark,Rene and I sat around for a while finishing off our food and drink and soon it was time to go, after all we still had editing to do! We eventually got back to the hotel drunk on beer,food and the beauty of the city. We were immediately regretting the last two shots of tequila once we got back to the hotel, its really hard to concentrate on editing photos once you got your buzz on. We prevailed, some how we fought off the pleasant warmness of being drunk and flipped our drunk switch off and got back to work. We worked until about 1:30 in the morning we finally finished everything and now we had to start packing , we were leaving for the airport at 7:00am. Gabe had actually met a girl at the show in Mexico City so he was on a hot date and didn't get in until around 4:30 in the morning.......lucky dog. Soon enough the phone was ringing at 6 in the morning giving me a near fatal heart attack as I desperately tried to remember where the hell I was. Oh yes Mexico City damn I have to go back to Chicago today!! I really was not looking forward to the frigid temperatures and the dirty hard snow. We all met in the hotel restaurant for one last breakfast, I felt a bit sad I had really gotten along with Gabe ,Rene and of course Mark. I enjoyed everyone's company everyday of this job ,it was an absolute pleasure and in a few hours the family would be broken up and displaced. I really enjoyed visiting these countries some of them where not the safest and some of their politics I don't agree with but the people I came across and met were wonderful, extremely friendly and warm.