Los Angeles

JILL ANDERSON FOR WSJ

A few weeks ago I got a call from The Wall Street Journal asking if I’d like to photograph Jill Anderson, the former CEO of Cianna Medical who had just sold her company to JP Morgan Chase for the tune of $2oo+ Million.

When we showed up, a big part of her family were there and everyone was wonderful and very hospitable. As we scouted the grounds, I noticed a lot of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” posters in the guest house. I asked her stepson who was walking us around if they were big fans of the show, he then told me his brother was an actor/writer on the series…Turns out she is Rob McElhenney’s stepmother. Rob as you may know plays Mac on the show and his brother was the one giving us the tour. That right there made my day, but lets continue.

We found several beautiful locations that worked well for the shoot. Since we had multiple locations and limited time, the lighting had to be easy to move, so we went with a 60” Phototek Softlighter.

And the result.


JONATHAN LEE FOR COMMERCIAL OBSERVER

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A few days after settling into my new place in Los Angeles, Kaitlyn at Commercial Observer emailed me to see if I could photograph Principal/Managing Director of George Smith Partners, Jonathan Lee at his office in Centruy City.

Here are a few of the selects.

NEW PERSONAL WORK LIVE FROM LA

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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.

NYC TO LA, I MADE THE MOVE!

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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.

LA BOUND AND DOWN!!!!

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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.