tearsheet: cover to cover

It's been an epic and busy few months, but I can't think of a better way to wind down the year.

When I got my first assignment for Fader back in late '08, I never dreamed I'd get to shoot a cover feature, much less two in a row! I had the pleasure of running around LA with Zola Jesus (and, for a minute, with the lovely writer/editor Amber Bravo), then back to SF for an impromptu hike in a torrential downpour with Cass McCombs (you should read Daniel Arnold's story here, it's beautiful. Honestly.). Every shoot is a new adventure, and I'm forever grateful to JFP and the gang for giving me such an epic entrée into segments of the music world I'd never otherwise have thought to explore.

So, in the interest of keeping things short and sweet, here's a couple galleries of some of my favorites from each shoot.

Tearsheet: Huck, Rivers

In April, I had a chance to photograph someone who's music always reminds me of summers during high school, of friends and soccer practice. Even though I eventually "grew out" of regularly following the band, albums like 'Pinkerton' will always have a fond place in my heart and my CD collection. So I was pretty excited to find out that I'd have a chance to meet Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo and photograph him down in LA for a cover story for British magazine Huck. Even though I wasn't able to have a conversation with him beyond an introductory "hello," it was really interesting to see behind-the-scenes of a few hours in the life of a rock star... especially when part of that time included a shoeless soccer practice.




The other awesome thing about this issue of Huck was seeing that once again I got to share the pages with a couple of my friends and fellow photographers. Bryan Derballa was sent to New Zealand to photograph surfer Cory Lopez, and Mustafah Abdulaziz pulled double-duty, photographing Slavoj Zizek and also having a small article about his personal work. It's always nice to see page after page featuring the work of good friends, and it leaves me with a warm feeling of camaraderie that I've missed since my days at the paper in Stockton. So I scanned each of our articles (since it's a little tricky to find the actual magazine in these parts), and you can check out more on the Huck website.




And one last bonus: the photo I shot for the story ended up on a limited run of beer bottles, given out at the launch party in London! I didn't get to go, but my awesome editor snapped a picture of it for me (rad!):

tearsheet: wsj, solaria

January has been a crazy month, both personally and professionally. Which is why I haven't been updating the blog with all the awesome assignments and personal work I've been stashing quietly on my little hard drive. I promised myself that this year, 2011, would be different: more posts, more writing, and hopefully more input from everyone following along out there.

So here's some outtakes from an assignment I did a couple of weeks ago for the Wall Street Journal. I had the pleasure of meeting and photographing Steve Andersen, a former employee at the Nummi auto plant in Fremont, CA (This American Life did an awesome piece about the closing of the plant; if you missed it, you can listen here), who now works for Solaria, a clean-energy plant that produces solar panels. Steve was incredibly welcoming, talking about getting hired by Solaria after only a few months of unemployment, and going to work at the old site across the street from Nummi.

If you want to read the article, you can see it online here, or click on the clip above.

verve.

I'm really excited to be featured today on the Verve Photo blog! I read it weekly, and am always impressed with the quality of work of the photographers Geoffrey Hiller displays. Go check it out here! And to see the rest of Elena's story (which is still in the works), take a look at the photos on my website.

tear sheet: wired.com

I was really excited to work with Wired.com on a shoot with Ex-Hacker Adrian Lamo just outside of Sacramento. It was a fun shoot, and definitely a little challenging to try to take interesting and dynamic portraits in a single office-room in the middle of the day, but I think overall it went really well. Here's a couple screenshots of how the photos ran, and if you click on them you can see the whole story. It's an interesting read, for sure, and Adrian is definitely an interesting guy with a wild backstory.

And to close it out, here's an outtake from the shoot that I especially liked. Enjoy!