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NEW PERSONAL WORK LIVE FROM LA

Tomorrow marks my official one month mark for living in LA! It's been pretty incredible so far in so many different aspects. One of the things that I've always loved about Southern California is its architecture and how it still looks so wildly like the 60's, it's something that I'm not used to having grown up on the East Coast.  I'm looking forward to shooting in these locations that have inspired me over the years!

Since my wife grew up out here, we have a large circle of friends and family that are only a stone's throw away, which makes it easy to round folks up to shoot and test setups with... With that being said, here are a couple of images I did with some of the fam.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

SETH LEAVITT FOR NJ MONTHLY

Towards the end of June, I received an email from Andy at NJ Monthly asking me if I would shoot Seth Leavitt, the CEO of Abeles and Heymann in their hot dog factory in Hillside, NJ. How could I pass up such an opportunity??

You may not know the brand, but if you've ever had a dog at Yankee Stadium, chances are you were eating one of theirs. Abeles and Heymann supply Yankee Stadium along with a number of other large stadiums in and around NY/NJ/PA.

With it being such a small operation, we had limited options on where to shoot, especially since they just had a large shipment go out. That killed any shots in the warehouse, but we made due with what we had. Simple one light in a cool location, literally, we were in the cooldown area where the product comes out of a walk in sized oven. Of my 14 years of kitchen experience, I've never experienced such a setup.

And here is what it looked like in the magazine.

NYC TO LA, I MADE THE MOVE!

Since this January, my wife and I had been playing with the idea of making the move to her home state of California. Me being a New York'er I was adamantly opposed, mostly because I'm stubborn and thought NY was the only place for me to call home after moving around the east coast all of my adult life.  That thought process switched gears with the birth of our son and seeing how expensive NY is with a kid.

Our time frame got bumped around from this Sept. to July. Then her and my son flew out to LA and I spent another week tying up loose ends. Luckily for me, I got to do the cross-country drive that I've always wanted to do. It was a 5-day adventure, and I had to make the most of my time since I hadn't seen my wife and son in almost 2 weeks by the end of it, which took time away from shooting as much as I would have liked.

After packing up the 15' U-Haul, I took off from Brooklyn and drove thru the likes of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana (where the state law says you can't sell cold beer in a store...), Missouri, Oklahoma (where the shower heads are 6" too low), Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and finally into California. All of these states had their highlights, but Texas and New Mexico were something special. The landscape of both was just so amazing and beautiful. Luckily I stopped off in Shamrock, TX to shoot some photos. I only shot film out there because I felt that was more fitting to the area. It was semi desolate and just intriguing.  I'll post those once I get the film processed this week.

Here are a few iPhone snaps I took along the way, mostly while on the move.

PAUL SCHRADER FOR WALL STREET JOURNAL

Last month I had the opportunity to photograph director/screenwriter Paul Schrader at A24 productions offices in Chelsea for The Wall Street Journal. This was a shoot that was on my bucket list. Schrader has directed some incredible films such as American Gigolo (1980), Auto Focus (2002), and Dog Eat Dog (2016).

 

And how it looked in the paper.

LA BOUND AND DOWN!!!!

It's one of our regularly scheduled pilgrimages to LA coming up from Aug. 9th until Aug. 22nd! I'm really stoked for this trip since I've started a new personal project about immigrant entrepreneurs in America and I have some subjects set up to shoot when I arrive. Instead of bringing my Mamiya RB with a bunch of film backs this trip (which is the only one I usually bring when LA bound.), I'm taking along my digital gear (a first for me when not on assignment) to shoot this project. Of course, if any of my fantastic photo editors and art directors wanna throw me any LA work...I certainly wouldn't mind.

Here are a few of my fav's that I shot in LA recently.