Getting your Foot in the Door Isn’t that Scary!

One of my blog readers, Troy Copes, wrote to me recently and suggested I write a post about how to approach modeling agencies. In truth, I have gotten a fair amount of emails asking the same question. So I thought I’d try to answer the question and post some of my early work from my first portfolio, the very same portfolio that I used to get my own foot in the door of the modeling agencies. Keep in mind, I first approached modeling agencies back in the late ’80′s and early ’90′s. Also keep in mind that this is just from my personal experience. I can only write about what I have experienced myself. And it’s been a few years since I first started out…….but hopefully you’ll find some useful information in the post!

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If you’re one of my Facebook friends then you must know by now that David and I are moving to New York City. We’re somewhat sad to be leaving LA because it is home to us. We were both born and raised here in LA. But we really want to be in New York now so we’re very excited for the new change. Since we’re going to be based in NY, we know that we’ll have to do the workshops there now.

Check out the recap from our April 2010 seminar video below

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Seeing the Final Image Before You Capture It…

Someone asked me an important question at my last LA Workshop and I thought I would share the answer with my readers here. The question was: when I have an assignment, do I know what I want the finished image to look like before I go to the shoot or do I just wing it the day of the shoot? I’m going to use this recent swimsuit editorial as a perfect example on how most of the time I know exactly how I want the final image to look before I ever pick up a camera to shoot it.

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Figuring out the Flow

Word on the Tweet is that I don’t blog often enough. So I have a question: Would you rather read a blog by a photographer who doesn’t work but who blogs all the time or would you rather read a blog from a working fashion photographer who’s too busy to write that often, but at least when you read the blog posts, you know that the person writing them is actually working in the industry?

I thought so. ; ) Look, I’m up at 5 or 6 AM most days. Today, I was up at quarter to 6. Had a skype meeting with Vincent De Vries who is producing my London Seminar. Put out a casting call for an editorial shoot I’m shooting next Wednesday. Booked my ticket to New York with Delta. Put together the call sheet for Saturday’s seminar. Wrote out an estimate for a potential client’s Look Book. Locked down hair and make up for next Wednesday’s shoot. Spoke to my agent about the flow of my book. Spoke with Debra Weiss about the flow of my book. Spoke to my printer about the paper stock he’ll be using for my book. Saw a new Russian girl, who was exquisite by the way, at my house at noon. Re-negotiated the usage terms on the estimate for the potential client. Looked at hotels in New York. Wrote some friends that I’ll be coming soon. So, I’m busy but I always have that nagging voice in the back of my head…..”need to write a blog post soon!” So just trust me that it isn’t because I don’t love to write for this blog it’s just that I don’t have enough time in my day to update it that often!

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“Princess of Persia”

In my last post I wrote about how I was able to prepare for my Genlux editorial weeks in advance. I met with the set designer, we went back and forth deciding on the right props, Stephen and I scoured model submissions looking for the perfect model, etc, etc. For the first of two Harper’s Bazaar Arabia shoots that I did in Dubai, I had no clue who, what or where we were going to be shooting. So now you can see how sometimes I get a lot of lead time to really prep a shoot. And sometimes, I don’t get any time at all to prep.  And it doesn’t matter at the end of the day, I still have the same responsibility to produce great images for my client. With this Harper’s shoot, I met with Sally Matthews, the fashion editor, the day before we worked together. I met her at her office and she showed me a few mood boards, which she emailed to me later so I could have them to refer to in the evening before the shoot. In her office,  she showed me the models she was deciding between, some of the clothing and she pulled up the location on the internet. Sally procured the Banyan Tree Al-Wabi for our location. The Banyan Tree is a brand new 5 star luxury resort located about 45 minutes outside of Dubai and we were the first official fashion shoot to take place there. From the website I could see the place was gorgeous! But most of the pictures showed the rooms, and most of the shots were taken at night. There were no real good pictures of the outdoor area in the day time, the area that I would be shooting in. I knew that I would have to really scout out the location once I got there and banking on the hope that make up and hair would take a few hours, I could use that time to plot out a shot list while combing the grounds for “photogenic” areas to shoot in.

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