Putting others on a pedestal helps no one. In some ways you can think you are honoring them, or glorifying them. This can seem like a good thing, why would you not want to honor and exult someone. In fact putting them on this pedestal removes them from connection. You cannot properly relate to someone set at a remove. You can never get to know them truly as a human, properly digging into the mess of their spirit. In particular it makes it very hard to do work with them as you will never properly counter their ideas, or help them grow.
Birthday Thoughts
Today is my 37th birthday. Seems insane to me, but I suppose this is the age in which the numbers seem incomprehensible. When you are younger this seems a lifetime away and now that I’m here it was no time at all. Really makes you think about the ephemerality of life and how you spend your time. There just isn’t enough of it to muck about. Spending time in your head moping about this and that is the absolute worst use of your time. Get out, be in the world, meet others, make and make and make and make. What is life if not to alter the world around you just a little bit? What is living if not sharing it with others? I was incredibly fortunate to be able to do that a lot last year with a bunch of lovely folks. American Ballet Theatre, The New York Choreographic Institute, Charlotte ballet, ballet Idaho, The San Francisco Ballet, PBS, Raja Feather Kelly, Jonathan Coleman, Spider Horse, Arkai, Hamptons Dance Project, Ryan Chun, Underhill Films, and so many more. I really never would have dreamed I would end up doing what I am doing at the level that I am. I always thought I would be a choreographer for ballet companies. But things happened and paths changed and I flowed as best I could with the tides. I suppose you can surf the waves even if you can’t redirect them. Here’s to another action packed year of being a conscious creature in this universe.
Things I’ve learned
Follow your bodies hunger patterns, not society’s schedule for eating.
Save money always, but also know when to spend on yourself.
Love is about letting go, not figuring it out.
Belief in yourself seems to kickstart all things, not ego, just belief.
If you don’t have a plan it won’t happen.
Get TSA pre, it’s worth it.
Trust your instincts when creating at all costs, it will bite you if you don’t.
Respect everyone, you never know what person is getting in your way behind the scenes.
Children don’t understand absolutes and shouldn’t be expected to.
You can put a limit on how much your parents share, and you should.
Test your ideas as much as you can before you get to the shoot.
Try to learn how to not hold onto friends too tightly, the ones who want to be there will be.
Hold doors, lift bags, pick up items, the small gestures matter.
Always, always send thank you cards.
If you repeat something in your head long enough you can interrupt other thought patterns.
listen, deeply and consistently to others, even if you’re tired.
Poor Thing
I went to see Poor Thing last night by Yorgos Lanthimos and was blown away. I often wonder how people make art that is truly outside the box and boundary pushing. This film had all of that. As a filmmaker I would have been terrified that people wouldn’t like it, or think it was ugly. The lens choices, the framing choices, so much of it is wildly unorthodox and frankly incredibly jarring. I would never make those choices because I like making things that are pretty for the most part. Yet when you get to the end of the film, with the journey that its taken you on, you see all of the pieces stitched up into one beautiful whole. In this all the disparate odd parts make a lot more sense. The overall vision pulls it together and makes the thing much more palatable, and I would go as far as to say extraordinary. It is a wild swing for the fences and in that I have deep respect for that. It’s so hard to make something that will upset, polarize, and push the buttons of so many folks. But for those that love it they will go wild for it. I also just had to imagine the filming of so many of these scenes was an absolute romp. It’s wild, outlandish, over the top, and in your face. Highly recommend giving it a watch.
Fallen Leaves, Will Durant
“Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them.”
Will Durant from “Fallen Leaves”
Christmas
A lovely, quiet holiday with my cousin and my lady. Can’t ask for more.
Now is Better, Stefan Sagmeister
I had the plaeasure of listening to Stefan Sagmeister speak recently on his new project “Now is Better”. It is a treatise on how the current world is a better place to live than any time previously in history. Not that there aren’t problems or issues, there always are, but that it is trending in the right direction. As an optimist I love this take, and his artistic version of it is so playful and helps you digest the information beautifully. You can find the book here
Also his FAQ’s on his website are the greatest of all time.
The Where of Happiness
I recently heard someone mention the where of happiness on the Tim Ferris podcast and it struck me. I hadn’t thought about that idea before, about what the location of joy could be. That if you spent a little time could you isolate the places that really make you happy and just decide to spend more time there.
We often focus on where we HAVE to be. Near work, near family, close to opportunity or obligation. Not often do we take the time to isolate that little feeling that tells us this place is special and calming and I should spend more time here. I suppose maybe that seems luxurious or indulgent. But I’ve come to think it may be the simplest way to get to peace in life you can think of.
Image from last year in Lisbon, certainly a place for happiness if I’ve ever been to one.
On love and fear
I think finding love is so much less about learning how to love another human than it is about learning how to be at peace with your own thoughts. I don’t mean learning to love yourself by this. I think the term learning to love yourself is misleading. It’s touted as the only way to let someone else in your life. You have to be “healed” and “whole” first, before you can allow someone to get close. It’s certainly important to learn how to love yourself, but loving another is an entirely different skill set. It requires a whole different toolbox of which one small part is learning to love yourself. Instead one must come to terms with the things that get in the way of them being fully and totally immersed in a loving mindset. The hitches and glitches that get in the way of allowing yourself to be present in love and not judge or evaluate it. You will absolutely have terrible thoughts, you will be weak and broken, you will stray in so many ways. But you can only learn to work through these things with someone else if you are actually WITH someone else.
Keshia Hannam and Star
It is far easier to pin these guilts and flaws on the external. Allow some phantom flaw in the the other person to be the scapegoat. It’s because they don’t like your taste in music. Or they don’t have the right opinion about world affairs so it would never work. Or they could never truly understand you because they come from Jersey. These are excuses to assuage your guilt and conflict and distress. The power comes in speaking these things. It’s so easy for the dark space in your head to magnify these thoughts to real world proportions. The echoes of fear growing louder and louder until they burst into the real world as manifested true issues. You have the powerful ability to make these things real and let them affect the real course of the world you live in. You could end relationships, marriages, friendships because you let them circle too long and they gain escape velocity. But oh the power of conversation, of confession, of bleeding the dark fears into the real world. This is the hard part that we only slowly grow into if we are lucky. All of these ideas start as small dismissible thoughts and so we don’t put them into the world for fear of being judged or thought crazy. But if we ignore them too long they solidify into true objects of destruction. Instead you can set up a pattern of freeing these fears into the light and allowing yourself to see them for what they are, flimsy. More often than not your fears are shadows of opinions or long held convictions that aren’t actually true at all. Allowing them to be shared with others you trust allow them to be reflected back and seen honestly. You can see if any part of it is actually reflected in the real world or instead just manifestations of internal struggles. You can get down to the real work of dealing with the love in front of you and how you can help it flourish in the deepest and most correct way. Maybe that even includes letting it go, but only in love can you reach an honest assessment of that, not fear.
Photographing dancers properly
Obviously this one if close to the heart and one of the reasons I initially got into photography. There was so much bad dance photography out there when I was younger and I was incredibly frustrated by it. It seemed like people were doing the same things they had done in the 80’s and just never bothered to try and innovate into anything new. With the democratization of photography and the cost of entry coming down a lot more people have gotten involved which is great. There is a much more honest and accurate portrayal of dancers in media now. But with the proliferation of anything it also means the bad and tacky work has also multiplied many fold. This post is mainly for people that dont shoot dance often as I think most dancers will find these to be no brainers.
Start with a ton of research, know who you are photographing and what their strengths are. If you dont know dance that well it means researching the style of dance they are focused in and what that general aesthetic looks like. If they are a tap dancer what sort of poses look good in that, if they are a classical ballerina what poses can you pull from to make them look amazing. Dont be afraid to ask questions beforehand. Rely on the strengths you have, ie lighting, composition, post processing, and then have them help fill in the gaps to make the most of the time. Generally most dancers have a good start to what looks good one them, and then you can build from there to your own aesthetic. Dont come in with ideas that are too strong unless you know your talents skills inside and out. In that case it can sometimes be useful to have strong ideas to push them into areas that might be new and more invigorating than usual. Pull some poses beforehand from online to have as references for what you think works well. Its incredibly useful to have a broad selection so dancers can see something and very clearly try to imitate it. We are visual learners so this is crucial to creating quick captivating imagery.
Have the right gear, depending on what you want to do. If sharp images are what you’re after then have lights that can high speed sync beyond 160th of a second. Make sure that you have lenses wide enough to get the full length of their body as they will often stretch out quicker than you think to full length. On the flip side of that if you hate distortion make sure you have enough runway to stand way back with a standard lens more zoomed in. If you are going to use a seamless get a big one, at least 9ft across if not 12. I can make a 9 foot work but a 12 is much more likely to save you from unnecessary photoshop work on the back end. Particularly with any dancer over 5’6. If you are shooting outiside please dont ask dancers to do things excessively on concrete or hard surfaces. They will do it for you over and over again without complaining but it is hurting them. Its not sad and its unfair to them. If you need a shot in that sort of environment, or one thats cold be ready to get it on the 1st try. Dont test, change your settings, move around, try again, change postioin, change again. It’s not fair to them and they won’t complain but they’ll be thinking it.
Music, so crucial. This can completely change the course of a shoot. Of course ask your subject if there is something they prefer, this is always the first option. Having something that splits the mood between artistic and inspiring and then moves to fun can really make things flow incredibly well. Music adds all the subtle nuance of acting and emotion that can be missing in a static image. A dancer will naturally absorb this subtlety and start to play it back to you in the imagery. They cant help it.
Play. This is a big one. Once you have a few test images in the bag and tried a few poses let them go. Ask them to improvise a little from a piece they have done or a routine they know. This allows them a little framework to execute some movement in that is more practiced and they feel comfortable in. This is where your best imagery is going to come from, I promise you. It will be filled with all the kinetic energy that is missing from the posed shots. It has spontaneity, freedom, emotion, and that element of the unknown that makes an image truly special.
On the back end ask the dancers which shots they think are best. Our bodies are our brands and our vehicles for work so we have very specific ideas about how we should look. It doesn’t necessarily always make sense, we have weird insecurities, but we appreciate it deeply if you allow us a once over to approve images. We can easily explain why an image works in the dance world or not. There are certain things with feet and legs that make all the difference. I know its weird but go with it and we will deeply appreciate it.
The First Magazine Cover
This one was a proud moment, fer sure.
I have been photographing for a long time. I started with it more seriously in 2008 and made it more of my full-time gig in 2014. I had been doing a lot of work up until then but never managed to get a cover commission or a really big advertising campaign, two things I very much wanted. In 2018 I made some big changes in my life and decided it was time to leave Chicago and move to NY finally. I had always wanted to live there and after a lot of soul searching decided it was finally time. I moved in late April of that year with very little plan of what to do other than pursue what I had already been pursuing. I will admit not the best idea. I would encourage anyone moving anywhere new to have some set routine in a way to start out. It’s very hard to build a network from scratch and I learned that the hard way in that city. It’s impossible to replicate the work network that years in a place will bring you as a freelancer.
However I had one ace up my sleeve with the dance community. I had photographed for a number of years for Dance Magazine and Pointe Magazine all around the world. Essentially they knew that was deeply involved in dance and I could capture it in an authentic and beautiful way. They had been amazing to me from an early point by giving me opportunities and a lot of trust with direction. When I got to NY I scheduled a meeting with the creative director to check in and let him know I was in town. We had a great catch up and I let him know I was very interested in shooting a cover when it was appropriate, hint hint. I was trying to figure out the most polite way to say how thoroughly stoked about it I was and what a good job I would do. Its so hard to figure out the right tone of asking for what you want, essentially so much of it comes down to who you’re asking so knowing them well is the best option. But its always a tricky and slippery thing to go about doing. I walked away from that meeting feeling good but heard nothing for a while. A month or so later I get and email from the creative director letting me know that he may have a perfect subject for the cover and he would like me to shoot it. I was STOKED. One month into NY and I would be getting to do a cover? All uphill from here bro (definitely not true but I was certainly excited).
He was cryptic for quite some time about who the subject would be but we had a date and managed to lock it in for late June. In mid June he finally let me know it would be a young girl out of LA who was blowing up online with her unusual and fascinating movement, Emma Portner. I’ll babe honest I didnt know who she was at the time as I am someone more steeped in the classical ballet world than the LA scene. I looked her up and realized why they thought I was a good fit, she had all the contemporary and funk that I came from and a whole lot of soul. I got excited.
Planning for the shoot was tricky, I didnt have a great assisting community in NY yet and everyone seemed to be busy that day. I was freaking out. I had a studio lined up and all the gear rented but needed some helping hands. Super last minute and very fortunately my friend Michelle came through after she found out how in need I was.
Setting up for a shoot is always nerve wracking to me. I know how to get things gong on set, how to talk to people, what music to play, and what looks to go for. However all the gear beforehand is a pain, theres always something that breaks and theres always some tiny piece that you forgot thats essential to the whole thing coming together. I absolutely love shooting with strobes for the light they generate, and I absolutely hate shooting with any gear for all its points of failure. We showed up at 9 for a 10am shoot and set things up at the studio. The biggest hurdle we ran into was that the grey seamless I had purchased was lighter than I had anticipated and so I panicked and contemplated sending my assistant crosstown at 945 to get a new one. After speaking with the creative director we decided we would address that if we needed to later but he thought it would be fine essentially.
Emma showed up right on time and I set about trying to get a feel for her. As she sat in hair and makeup she was quiet but quite confident about how she wanted to look. This was a good sign, someone who can state what they do and dont want is generally a good collaborator as there is a little friction to play off of and some good problem solving that happens. We lucked out with an amazing stylist, James Veloria, who brought an absolute stellar assortment of options to choose from. As we began shooting and I had the PE hovering over my laptop I definitely felt the pressure, then Emma threw herself on the floor….. I knew this was going to be good. Anyone who’s that willing to go that extreme early on is a dream subject. She is an infinite well of creative poses and she will try anything to see how it looks. I think something like 15 minutes in I asked the PE if he was happy with the direction and the lighting and if he wanted to change anything. He sort of looked at me with a half smile and said these were absolutely perfect and he already had a half dozen shots for the cover. There is really no better way to start a shoot. The tension was off, we could play, and get really creative. I was very lucky in this respect. Ive had other covers since then not go so well but this one absolutely nailed it and I was so glad. All the stress and sweat beforehand were totally worth it and Im deeply grateful to the whole team for the experience. I still stress on every shoot small or big and I still struggle with getting work. But this one is one of the jewels in the stories of adventure and I am overjoyed with the images in my portfolio.
