Genlux Spring Editorial and Video

Got a call from Stephen in January asking me if I wanted to shoot for the Spring issue of Genlux. The theme was Royal. I’ve had this idea in my head that would need a set designer. I wanted to have someone  build a room from scratch to emulate the attic room from “The Little Princess”, a novel written in 1904 by Frances Hogdson Burnett. I read the story when I was a kid and the imagery described in the novel left an impression on my imagination. Of course I didn’t know when I read the novel at 9 that I would be producing a fashion shoot around the story some 35 years later!!!  But immediately when Stephen said “the theme is Royal”, my mind went straight to the story of The Little Princess. The first thing I did was contact a set designer to see if he was available to do the shoot and if he wanted to work on it with me. Jamie Dean agreed to meet with me at my house so I could show him some visuals and we could talk about the kind of set I wanted built and the props I wanted to use. He brought his laptop and showed me his inventory of props while we went through images that I had collected before our meeting that depicted the mood I wanted to recreate for my shoot. Once he agreed to work on the shoot with me, I collected all the images together from his props to the images I had collected and we narrowed the look down so I could create a mood board to send to Stephen.

Read More »

A Model Inspires a Shoot

God, I feel like I shot this so long ago, a whole history book of my life could’ve been written between the time  today when I’m sitting down to write this post and the day I actually shot this editorial. But here goes! Thank God Tyler is in the other room retouching for me. He’s young….he can remember the details!

Read More »

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I recently traveled to Dubai to teach a series of workshops. It was an amazing experience on many levels that was as rewarding as it was stressful. It truly tested my limits—as a photographer, as an artist, and as a person.

It tested my limits physically and psychologically, too—I have had jet lag for so long now that I’m going to have to give it a going-away party when it finally leaves. Dubai is a roughly 16-hour plane flight from Los Angeles, with a 12-hour time difference. 12 hours ahead. I hit the ground running when I arrived, and I didn’t have one day off the entire two weeks I was there—in addition to teaching workshops the first week, the second week I had to shoot three editorial assignments: Two for Harper’s Bazaar Arabia and an editorial assignment for Maniac magazine, the last of which I had no time off to prep or even come up with a concept. Not that I’m complaining, but it was difficult. No sleep doesn’t make for an easy temperament; plus, I had just gotten over a bout of walking pneumonia immediately before leaving for Dubai. The pressure to be creative in those circumstances while undergoing severe culture shock was brutal. But I made it through without too much damage.

Read More »

Now Your Votes will Determine the GRAND PRIZE Winner!

Honestly, there were so many great entries that it was difficult to choose the Top Three! So David and I came up with an idea and we ran it past the people at Etre Touchy Gloves. We asked them to send us 7 more pairs to give away so we can have a total of 10 Winners! Being the awesome group of people they are, they happily obliged! Now each of the 10 initial winners will receive a pair of Etre Touchy Gloves sent to them by me!

But wait, there’s more! We haven’t stopped there. Now we’ve decided to up the game and give away a free ticket to either my LA Seminar or to David’s  2 Day Retouching Workshop to the top winner from the 10 finalists! The winner can choose the dates which work best for him or her on either workshop! You can also choose to give the Ticket to a friend! And instead of me voting for the grand prize winner, I am going to let you guys vote on the winner! So go ahead and visit the forum HERE to CAST YOUR VOTE!!!

Read More »

Ditty Bags! A quintessential part of every photographer’s stock, a ditty bag  holds our essential necessities for a shoot. I don’t know what you guys call it but I got used to the term years ago and always lovingly refer to mine as a ditty bag, even though I get the strange looks from my ’20 something assistants. When researching the reason for the name I found this great little article about ditty bag:  The Ditty Bag is “a small bag in which a sailor keeps small tools and equipment, also personal articles” according to John Rogers in Origins of Sea Terms: A modern Glossary of seagoing terminology. They did and still do have one main purpose: to hold a sailor’s personal possessions and some tools of the trade. They have even been referred to as a “housewife” because they held all the essentials for repairing clothing, personal belongings as well as everything that was needed on deck!

Read More »