nathaniel welch

The TV Cop...

2012-01-20T05:34:00.003-05:00

In December, I shot this ad campaign for the 100 Club of Chicago, which is a non profit org whose mission is to provide for the families of Police and Firefighters that lose their lives in the line of duty. When an officer dies, they come in, write a big check right off the bat, and help take care of the family and the kids of the fallen officer. The concept of the campaign was to photograph actors from Chicago, who play cops on TV. The copy was very simple tag lines like "Real first responders have more to worry about than low ratings", and "real first responders dont get body doubles". It was cool to do a very well written, simple portrait campaign like this. And very cool that it ran in black and white. It wasnt supposed to run black and white, but on set between actors, i was editing and messing with my selects and converting to black and white as i felt thats what would make them graphic and strong. The creative director, Joe Stuart from Downtown Partners in chicago, was on set and loved it so they went that direction with the whole campaign. The actors i got to shoot were Gary Sinise, Dennis Franz, Joe Montegna, and Dennis Farina. These guys are all friends in real life, and the best part was listening in to them all catching up and gossiping as they dont all get together like this very often. It was like the rat pack, very quick witted, giving each other a hard time, and the language these guys were using made even me blush. Farina in particular was one funny dude, giving everybody a hard time and having a good laugh all day. These will be running in local chicago mags and on bus shelters this year, so hoping to get there soon and see them on the bus stops...

first published of the year..

2012-01-20T05:12:00.003-05:00

Here's some assorted tear sheets from jobs I did in late november/december....lots of good shoots to round out the year...the fisherman shot was for Money magazine, to illustrate a story about new strategies to increase your investments...the idea was that while in the past we would put lots of money into one big portfolio (hence the marlin on the wall), nowadays you must be more nimble and spread the money around for good returns (hence the group of small fish). It was a blast shooting and concepting this. We had a set built, and styled to look like a stereotypical fisherman. I got to work with creative director Neil Jamieson again, which I can honestly say i've never had a bad shoot for...the next job was for Runners World magazine of marathon runner Desi Davila, shot in detroit...Desi came in second in the boston marathon recently, and was getting ready for the olympic trials for the games in London this summer. It was a great day hanging with her on the shoot..the concept was an homage to the old Rosie the Riveter posters from WWII..SPent all day with her, shooting her training and also portaits. The hardest part of this job is that it was the coldest day of the year. Shot in early december, it was 19 degrees in the morning when we started. For this opening portrait we had to shoot for a minute, let Desi go inside to get warm, shoot for a minute, etc. until we got the shot. Desi is not glam like some of the other women runners, and she kinda came out of nowhere on the elite scene, but in the last year she has been kicking but..and I am very happy to say that she did indeed qualify for the olympic team last week at the trials in Houston. I will be watching for sure this summer crossing my fingers for her...The corporate portrait was for Bloomberg Markets magazine. shot in November in my favorite place to shoot, Central Park. The particular spot in the park I have shot at before, its a favorite for sure. the cool thing about this spot is that you can make it look like its out in the woods, middle of nowhere. Its pretty easy to shoot without showing the skyline in the backround, but for this shot we left a little bit of it in. I love this shot, definitely one of my more fav corporate shoots last year..And the last tearsheet is from Outdoor Life magazine, of bass fisherman Gerald Swindle, shot in Dallas in november. Again, cold, windy, hard conditions, but had to make it work. And make it work we did. Never come home without a great shot, no matter how bad/tough the conditions are, because honestly, your editor just doesnt want to hear it!! heres to another awesome year, 2012....

Day in the life of a football game.

2011-12-25T06:31:00.004-05:00

This story for ESPN was definitely one of the highlights for 2011 for me. The assignment was simple: go to an NFL football game, set up a backdrop, and photograph as many people that were there working that day as possible. ESPN was devoting a whole issue to one football game, The houston texans vs. the pittsburgh steelers. The were sending about 50 photographers and writers to cover the game from all angles possible. Nancy Weismann gave me what i think was the best assignment that day. We set up early in the hallways underneath the stadium, and basically just grabbed anyone walking by and took a super fast portrait of them. I photographed about 75 people that day, from the quarterback for the texans, to a guy that sells beer in the stands during the game. Cheerleaders, cameramen, bomb sniffing dog, policeman, janitor, etc.. so much fun....the highlight of the day is in the video attached to this post. At halftime there was a college marching band that entertained...after they came off the field, we had THE WHOLE BAND march across my backdrop while i shot. So much fun and so cool..after they all went by, I looked at my assistant and remarked how much i love my job...

Redemption....

2011-12-25T05:37:00.003-05:00

Plax. That one name conjured up so much sadness and pity when I got the assingment to shoot him for Mens Journal magazine. Plaxico Burress was one of the highest paid, best receivers in the NFL when he carried a loaded gun into a manhattan nightclub, where it accidentally fired while in hist waistband, striking himself in the leg. NYC has the toughest gun laws in the country, with a mandatory 3 year prison sentence for having a gun in the city. Even you or I, if found with a gun, even if legal outside manhattan, would face a 3 year prison sentence if found with it. I remember when i got the assingment, i remembered very well all the press when he was arrested back in 2008, thinking "what a bummer, from catching the winning touchdown pass in the superbowl, top of your game making millions, and a simple stupid mistake takes it all away." When I photographed him in July, he had only been out of prison for a month, so he was still enjoying all that he lost. His daughter, now 2, he was bonding with, as she was born while he was in prison. No amount of money could ever bring that back...we spent the better part of the afternoon on a football field doing portraits in the 100 degree heat for the story opener, then went inside to do a studio shot on a background as a backup. When he was changing his shirt for the inside shot, i saw the big tattoo on his back, "everything happens for a reason", and instantly knew that that was the picture. I asked Plax if he got it after the gun incident, and he said no, he had had it along time. I really liked him and our time together that day. I fully expected to meet a thuggish guy, with the gun incident and everything, but he wasnt like that at all, just a normal dude that made a major mistake and paid his price, no ready to move on. I've been watching him all season, as he signed with the jets, and have been so happy for him that he had a great season and is climbing back to where he was.

If I had a dime for every billionaire I've photographed...

2011-12-07T13:12:00.003-05:00

The October issue of Forbes with Ronald Perelman and his father on the cover....it's was for the Forbes 400 rich list.shot on location at Ron's office on the upper east side. So cool to shoot a father and son that obviously love each other. I was a bit nervous, as was everyone on set, before they arrived...but when they walked in, Ron and his pops really put everyone at ease because they are so close. It was like shooting a father son comedic act..they were going at it the whole shoot. A real highlight shoot this fall...Its always a bit surreal to photograph people that are worth BILLIONS...literally these guys can and do buy anything that they want. We shot this in late summer early fall, and Ron was talking during the shoot how he had to catch a flight to Venice italy later that afternoon. I was talking to his publicist about it later, and it's nowhere near the same experience that you and I have. He was taking his chauffered black escalade to the airport, where he would not wait in any lines, but walk up the steps to his jet, where his pilots had done all the fueling, planning etc. and his assistants had the trip planned and scheduled once he arrived...then they would take off in the early evening, he would have dinner on board with his family, maybe read or watch tv, then go to bed in his stateroom in the back in his king size bed. He would then wake when they landed, and go look at art (he was going to the biennale) for the day...then he was getting on his gigantic yacht, again all prepared and ready to go with his crew, for a sail around the mediterranean...We shot this on a thursday, so he was leaving that thursday afternoon, and he was going to be back in nyc the following wednesday! Only 6 days! When you roll like that, and the stress of travel and cost are taken out of the equation, I guess it is easy to do super cool extravagant stuff like that for a few days at a time. For the next 6 days my assistant johnny and I during the course of that weeks work would sometimes just look at each other and say "I wonder what Ron is doing today".....

I dont even know where to begin...

2011-12-06T10:28:00.002-05:00

What can I say, the surreal life of this photographer continues to get weirder...but when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro as someone once told me...Herman Cain, shot in Detroit about a month ago, during the height of his popularity when he was #1 in the polls. I love shooting politicians, because they are definitely the wackiest show on earth. I've shot so many of them, from al gore, orin hatch, john kerry, rick santorum, sarah palin, so many of them. And people always ask me what i think is the dumbest question you could ask "was he nice?" And my answer is always "of course, thats his job, was the most popular person in high school nice?" So yes he was nice, i did like him, and if was a fun shoot. We didnt have anything conceptual planned when we left for detroit. I talked to chris, the photo director at people, and he said, "He's part PT Barnum, the ultimate showman, show that in the picture." The idea literally came to me on the plane as we were about to land. Although originally the idea was to get some birthday cake candles that were the #9, and put three of them on a pizza. That morphed into the pepperoni spelling 999, which i loved. And honestly, we made the pizza (we shot at a local pizza place), without telling him or his handlers we were doing it, but i really knew deep down he would do it. And actually he really loved the pizza when we brought it out. After photographing him and the many other politicians I've shot, my conviction that political jobs should be like jury duty just gets stronger. Because we all know that anybody that really wants to be a lawmaker, probably shouldnt be...

the corporate location portrait...

2011-12-06T06:50:00.003-05:00

I was very lucky this fall to be a part of the Bloomberg Markets 50 most influential issue...it's always great to be a part of a best of package in a magazine...everyone from art directors, editors, writers, photographers, try to raise their game past the top for special issues like this..when i got the call from Amy, I jumped right on board and was very excited to hear who I would be photographing. I've shot a ton of business peeps at this point, sometimes its a great experience, sometimes its not. When its not, its usually not because the subject is difficult or mean, its really because it can be so hard to take an interesting, original picture at an office complex..I can tell you how many times i've sighed when the PR person leads me to a conference room and says "this is where you will be photographing Mr. _________ today." But, i get it, they are busy, not much time, etc.. so I always make a great go of it and more times than not hit a home run, even in a conference room...for these guys in this special issue though, we had a little lead time and I had some ideas. The first one was Martin Feldstein, an economist up at harvard in Cambridge. His assistant was very "you can come do it at his office", but I really pushed with the magazine and with him to do something a bit more iconic and interesting. I had shot in cambridge a couple of times before, and while i had never shot on the pedestrian Weeks Bridge, I had always wanted to. I had seen the bridge and kinda just bookmarked it a few years earlier as a photoshoot location wish. Plus the idea for the portrait of him was to photograph him in an academic environment, as thats what he was, up at harvard, and i knew the bridge was so iconic cambridge, and the background would be super clean and great for a full page. Permits were put in place. location scouted. we showed up for the shoot and crossed our fingers the rain that was forecast would hold off for a bit. When Johnny and I got to location, and got our gear all up on the bridge, I had one of my several panic attacks that day, when i realized the bridge railing was SO high, it would dwarf him if he stood against it with his head barely going above the rail. So i decided that he needed to sit on the railing, even though it was up high over the charles river, and he was a pretty old guy. This goes into the "dont ask, but tell the subject to do something." I didnt really give him a choice. when he showed up, pleasantries were exchanged, then i directed him over to the railing, where i had a couple of photo cases for him to stand up on, and i helped him get up on the bridge. He did it, but only because i told, not asked. Lesson #1 today, keep as much control of the situation and decisions as you can. Act like you've done it 1,000 times before..........................................................

My second subject for the issue was Ray Dalio, hedge fund billionaire. His people were much more controlling of location "you will do it at corporate and we will have a room set for you." Ok, got it. so we decided to bring a backdrop and shoot him in a studio setting as we didtn know what we would be getting when we got there. So we showed up super early, loaded in all the gear, set up the backdrop, lit it, and were waiting. I always have a calm nervousness on set and am always looking for photos, so I stepped outside of the room we were in, walked outside, and fell in love with this location by a little pond. Now Ray is scheduled to show in 10 minutes, but i love the location and really want to try an optoin with Ray here too. And the publicist has already told me Ray is always on time or early and wont give me much time. The location was literally a 30 second walk from our room though and i knew i could pull it off. I went inside, told the publicist my plan, again didnt really give him a choice, and had my assistants grab one light each and walk them out with me to this location. Super quick meter reading, test shots, etc. weather getting sketchy, Ray shows up..We chat, shoot outside for 5 minutes, then rush inside with my assistants dragging lights with us. Reset the studio shot, and shoot him there for 15 minutes...both setups looked great. Lesson #2, NEVER be afraid to change last minute, and never stop looking..

perfect

2011-09-06T13:14:00.002-04:00

What can i say...surrounded by beautiful girls all day in a park in New Jersey...hanging out with favorite Photo Editor Andrea Verdone....great pics, great people, great food, great everything...it was a long day but so much fun...

who can you trust

2011-09-06T12:47:00.002-04:00

This image was out last month in the July issue of money magazine. The concept was conceptual, we needed to shoot a half boyscout, half business man image for a story about finding financial advice you can trust. I loved the concept, but was very aware that if done wrong it would look hokey and silly. We spent lots of time doing tests of the model in different wardrobe setups and different lighting setups and backgrounds, trying to find that image that was great and not ironic or silly. The thing that finally sold it for me was when i put a heavy amber gel on the backlight thats lights up the right side of his outfit in the picture. When i saw that one of the computer screen, i knew it was going to be great. It gave the image a "vintage" feel and a bit more timeless overall. I wish i had one where the backlight wasnt amber, so i could put it up here for you to compare, but i dont. Great shoot, great to work with Neil Jamieson again since he left Field and Stream, and got to meet and work with Shayla Hunter for the first time as well. Of course we all wanted to put on the boyscout stuff and do shots of us as well...heres one of me doing my best scouts honor...

2 covers is 30 minutes...

2011-09-06T12:20:00.002-04:00

Out now is the current Golf Digest with my picture of pro golfer Dustin Johnson standing on a poly ball swinging his club...this shoot happened back in march 2011 in Florida. The photo director there, Christian Iooss, told me we had to get TWO cover shoots done in 30 minutes, one for Golf Digest, and one for their sister publication, Golf World. I was super stoked to get the gig, as covers are always a good thing, but was definitely a little nervous to pull off two different covers in 30 minutes. I knew there wouldbt be enough time for two different locations or setups, so decided to focus on getting two different crops on Dustin, one tighter, and one full length..the Golf Digest cover was the priority, and the concept was set, which was Dustin standing on a poly ball swinging his club, as that is one of his workout techniques. I did the Golf World shoot first as it was less complicated, we shot for 10 minutes, then took a five minute break while i re-lit for the full length shot on the poly ball. One of my biggest strengths as a photographer is being quick, decisive, and focused while on set...no wasting time. Usually by the time the talent arrives on set I totally see the shot in my head and give very detailed direction to the talent. This shoot was the same, quick hello's, here's the concept, now lets start shooting. No small talk or wasting time. The shoot went great, all were happy, and we were done in about 40 minutes with both shots...One thing that stuck out in my head after the shoot was watching Dustin chip some balls between shots. We were shooting on a golf course in south florida on an unused tee box, and there was a green with a pin about 100 feet behind us. Dustin pulled a wedge out of his bag and a few balls while we were resetting the lights, and chipped all three of them very casually with no practice swing about 3 feet from the pin. It always blows me away to watch pro athletes do their thing and make is look so easy and flawless..

Old Friends..

2011-07-28T15:00:00.004-04:00

Old friend and collaborator Jesse James for people magazine. I’ve put the people story here as well as a bunch of other stuff from our long journey together these last 10 years. Jesse and I have a pretty great history of creative collaboration..I first met him on a story for GQ in 2000, he was just starting to blow up as his bikes were getting a lot of attention and the Discovery channel show “motorcycle mania” which was about him and was the highest rated discovery show ever, and I think it still is. That show had everyone, including GQ, trying to find out who this guy was..Jesse and I got each other and got along well then on those 2 days together, and the pics were awesome.. ..some subjects you just click with better…maybe it was our similar ages and middle class suburban background. So Fast forward a few years, we reconnected on a cover story I shot for Popular Mechanics magazine about a flying car he built for the show Monster Garage, a show that was created for him by Discovery as he was so popular, and it turned into a hugely popular show also.. When I met him again on that shoot, we caught up, chatted about the GQ shoot and I brought a few prints for him from that shoot. It was then that he said “we should do something together”, at which I responded, “cool, lets do it. I will have some ideas for you and will stop by your shop when I’m in LA in 3 weeks.” It was a vague gesture on both our parts, but I did stop by his place next time I was in LA and told him of my ideas for a book with him.. And that’s how our best body of work ,“Jesse James and his Beautiful Machines” was born. It was great working on that book as Jesse trusted my vision completely, and its still a creative highlight in my life and career. I’m sure even in 50 years it will still look timeless. During the making of the book, design, edit, writing, etc, I kept asking myself, “will I want this on my bookshelf in 50 years?” very simple guiding vision, but crucial. And the truth is that yes, I will be very proud of it even in 50 years..People always think it’s a book about motorcycles, and while motorcycles are all through the book, they are just the metaphor and object that serves as the real subject of the book, which is mans drive, ability, and determination to make things out of metal with their hands and some tools. That’s how I pitched it to jesse, not a boring book about you and motorcycles, but a book about what its like to bend metal into something beautiful and useful. Still stoked about it. And jesse and I became pretty good friends during the making of it.… So when Chris Dougherty from people called to ask if I would head down to Austin to shoot jesse for a feature, I said yes… he had a book coming out and people had the scoop…I was excited to see him again as I had talked and texted with him since the cheating on Sandy scandal happened, but hadn’t seen him and was eager to hang with him a bit again and just see him. I know he was eager to see me too as he was stoked I was shooting the story and wanted me to get there a day early and stop by his house… when I think about it, I think he was looking for pieces of his past that gave him good and pleasant memories, and I was that to him as our history was always about good stuff, and we did the book during his time with Sandy. I’ve gone through the same kind of thing after a love affair gone bad, and grasped at good pieces and memories of my past during the love affair for comfort, and I’m sure that was part of the reason he wanted to see me…to grasp at what was, and see that not all in his life was completely destroyed, that there was still good there. .the pain he must have been going through was certainly profound, and nothing that I’ve experienced…It was great to see him again when I got to his house. He gave a big hug letting me know he was glad I was still there for him. Our relationship has always been rock steady. We weren’t pals or best friends or anything like that, just a constant good thing. When the Sandy thing broke, I instantly contacted him letting him know that a. I was feeling for him and there for him and b. I wouldn’t throw him under the bus and release bad pictures of him for the tabloids to use (I was getting calls, believe me, as no one has an archive on jesse like me). Ultimately I could have made some money off of pictures I had of him when it all went down, but life and friendship and ultimately my work is just too important to sell it for the wrong reasons for money. I thought about it for a quick minute, but just not who I am… It was awesome seeing him for a couple of days, reminiscing a bit, and just hanging out and taking pics like the old days....He was definitely different than before the scandal, he seemed to lose a lot of the anger and edge that he had deep down, I guess all the therapy he went through and pain of it all helped him let go of it..I actually missed the old jesse a bit as that edge and intensity is what made him so good at what he did, and made you want to be around him and his world. At some point though he had to let go of it all and just try and re-ground, which is what he did..…it was great hanging with him and his kids and seeing him as a dad too, which I had never really seen. The shoot was great, jesse has always trusted me and done whatever I wanted him to do (which is hard for him), and generally just a couple of good days. It was great seeing his awesome spread in Austin, a far cry from Long Beach. We even talked about a couple of book ideas again…we said goodbyes, I headed back to NYC and even had a text from him the following day making sure I got home ok…I don’t think our history is over at this point, jesse is the ultimate phoenix, he will rise from the ashes of his self destructed previous life, its just who he is….at one point during the shoot, he said something to me that was so profound and pretty much summed it all up, who he is, why cheated on sandy, and where he will be again someday but a better version... As we walked around he showed me his new shop, which was his garage at his new house, he talked about the 40,000 square foot factory/shop that was west coast choppers in long beach but was now closed. That huge world and business totally gone at this point..He said “it’s funny but I’m back where I started. I started in my moms garage welding and building bikes, and now its full circle, I’m in my garage welding and building bikes, just me.” He never was comfortable with all that WCC had become, and deep deep down I’ve always known he was scared and uncomfortable with the success of WCC, you could always see it in his eyes and I had seen him all along the way and it was obvious…and he always made a point to tell me he was “just a welder”….

The Candy (wo)Man

2011-07-28T14:17:00.001-04:00

What can I say…the gorgeous Dylan Lauren for the cover of Forbes magazine…I shot this at Dylans Candy Bar, her legendary candy store on the upper east side. Really one of the more brilliant ideas that in restrospect makes yo u think “why didn’t I think of that?” So obvious that a story like this will do great, and hers is doing great and growing to more and more locations and a truly global brand…sounds familiar for her family right? Her papa is Ralph Lauren, and I know I don’t need to tell you who he is. The cover story was about success, and is it learned? Or inherited in your genes? What made Dylan successful, besides the obvious, which is great connections, you still gotta produce and have the ideas and instinct..So it was a story about that, is success inherited. It was awesome hanging out in her store that morning before opening, we set up a studio downstairs for the cover shoot. And when it was all over she said “take whatever you want”. And of course we had sweets for the week. The funniest thing I saw were candy cigs…I had no idea they still made them, but they do. It brought me back to when I was a kid and I remember buying them and pretending to be an adult.. but now it seems so insane getting fake cigs for your kid. But it is a free country after all still isn’t it??

Glamour

2011-07-28T14:12:00.001-04:00

This one is tough, and even hard to write about to be honest…it was for glamour magazine, a real people story in Denver about a woman named Kristen Stillman and her brother Will. Basically, they are twins who were born to a junkie loser mom, who ended up giving them when they were 8 to an aquaintance guy and his family who was another loser, mean, nasty person. She was raped her whole life, he was beat. She bore children by the man, etc etc etc. They finally ran away when she realized her kids were in for the same life as her.. It really is the kind of story that makes me deep down question being human and not just giving up on everything altogether. I just lose all hope when I hear about stuff like this.. Again, its about having my own child now. I see it all differently now that I have him. Before I would have thought yea, its awful, he’s awful, I hope he gets the death penalty or worse. But I could have let go after the shoot and moved on. Now I see henry and how could anyone do that to a child. They’re all so pure when theyre born. Not winners or losers, just pure. No hate, no racism, just pure. The real tragedy of this story is that the cops, child protective services, etc, were called many many times to the house by the neighboors, who knew something was up, but every time the system failed them. Makes me really upset and not trust the system even more…I honestly don’t even want to write about this anymore, but you owe it to yourself to read their story…I’ve posted the story here on the blog, so read it if you can, or google Kristen Stillman, read about her story, hug your kids, and wonder how in the hell stuff like this happens….

Beers and Tears on the golf course...

2011-07-28T11:32:00.002-04:00

Here’s a recent tear sheet from Golf Digest of Roger Maltbie, on course tournament commentator extraordinaire…This dude used to be a pro, and was now on the other side of the game now as an analyst and commentator. I knew he was going to be awesome and he was, in spite of our 7am call time for the shoot in Louisville…I knew it would be a good shoot when I showed up at 7 and he was outside smoking a cig and offered me one… He’s one of those guys that everybody likes, players and fans alike. Roger was never an awesome player or force on the pro tour, but he did win a few tournaments, but no majors. But what he did do is he got to play on the tour during the golden age of golf, in the 70’s with Nicklaus and Palmer and Player and Watson and Chi Chi…before tiger ruined it all and made golfers realize they must be in great shape and awesome overall athletes in general and spend lots of time at the gym, not just time on the course…must have been so much fun in Rogers day…. And Roger was known as a guy that lived life to the fullest, you could always count on finding him in the bar after a round hanging with the guys and caddies. The most notorious story of him happened in 1975. He won a tournament, was celebrating in a bar that night, and lost the $40,000 winners check. True story, I asked him during the shoot and he did indeed confirm. Of course he did get them to issue another check, but so funny that he actually lost it in a bar…and roger hasn’t really slowed down much…when he offered me the smoke, I told him I quit a few years ago and he shared with me a recent story…he was at his doctors office and the doc told him he needed to quit drinking and smoking for his health, as his health isn’t great. He told his doc quitting both would indeed kill him for sure, so he would slow his drinking down but he still needed to smoke, quitting both he just couldn’t do…the idea for the shoot was to get him in as many animated expressions as possible, as he is very animated and has been known to cry on camera during an interview. So we had some eye drops to do a crying shot too… ..for 7am he really went through an awesome range of expression…the crying shot was great too, but it didn’t make the magazine, so here it is for your viewing pleasure…

Mens Journal Sports

2011-07-15T21:07:00.009-04:00

Its been forever since i've last posted...i've got lots of stuff to post, just hard to get the mojo to do it with a 3 year old in the house...blogging isnt easy for me, as i like to write a bit about the shoot and not just throw up a photo or two...but this recent shoot out now got me off my butt and i have an hour before i have to pick henry up from camp..this shoot of James Harrison i did for mens journal magazine and michelle wolfe, the photo director over there. The other shoot mentioned here i did for them last fall, of NY ranger hockey player Derek Boogaard. I never blogged about that shoot either so will do it here as well. First up is the Derek Boogaard shoot last fall in NYC....I'll start by letting you know Derek passed away unexpectedly this spring, about 4 months after our shoot, which was a big shock to everyone as he was only 30. I didnt even know he died, but got a suspicious email from my agent at corbis, ben hampel, asking me to send a bigger selection from my shoot with him..of course i instantly knew something was up, maybe he was busted for DUI or something scandalous, and corbis was getting alot of requests...it was only when i googled him did i find out he was found dead in his apartment....very shocking when i read it and sad....it really is always a bit of a reality check when someone you photograph dies, having spent intimate time on a collaborative thing like a portrait. ..i touched on that on this blog when gary coleman aka arnold from different strokes died. just a quick gut check and trying to remember the details of the shoot and my time with them. my memory seems to get worse and worse as i get older, ask jess, she will definately concur...but when it comes to the photos i take, all i have to do is look at it, and i remember everything about the shoot..even a shoot 20 years ago, i may not remember it now, but show me the picture and it will all come flooding back in...this photo of derek i really remember the smell of meat in the locker and the sound of hte huge refrigeration units humming...such a cool way to live life and work life especially. so i went and had a look at this take again and it all came back...We shot Derek in a meat locker down in the meat packing district of NYC, in a sort of homage to the famous scene in rocky where rocky trains by pounding sides of beef...derek was known as a bruiser and keen fighter in the NHL and protecter of the talent....but true to any tough guy i've ever met, he was sweet, quiet, and nice. He showed up with his girlfriend, just coming from a charity appearance with kids, and he and his girl had only been in nyc for a couple months as he'd only recently signed with the rangers..i wrote a list of my fav restaurants down for them, with 32nd street (close to garden) and korea town bbq's as my fav for them to try..and he said any time you want tickets, just give a ring..the shoot went great, we all loved the pictures, and had a generally great time...a fav shoot for sure last fall....and i ended up getting 4 tickets to a game over the winter at the garden, first time seeing the rangers, and henry loved it....very sad when i heard he passed, but another reminder that every day is awesome no matter what....it was very cool shooting in a meat locker too,,,we had to wear winter coats on this warm september day as it was 35 degrees in the cooler...and the guys working at the meat packing house there said "anytime you need a good cut, just stop by", which i havent but a nice gesture....RIP derek, thanks for the experience of meeting and photographing you......now on to my shoot with James Harrison of the steelers, out on newstands now, also for mens journal....this shoot and story is BLOWING UP HUGE right now...and it wasnt a surprise to me as i read the story on the plane to pittsburgh last mont....i instantly knew as i read him say "if roger goodell was on fire i wouldnt piss on him to put it out, thats how much i hate him." Roger Goodell being the boss, the NFL commish...James was fined a ton last year for hard hits... with all the new rules out now to lower injury and brain injuries specifically, the NFL (no fun league), has basically been trying to reign in guys like james who's life passion is to run full speed into guys and hit them as hard as he can. Its awesome to watch....not sure how they can really enforce it as the nature of football is violent....its like when i hear about people or countries complaining during a war that the other side isnt fighting fair....like there should be rules for how you kill people...just absurd...we as a country tend to call them terrorists...gee, thats exactly what england called the colonists back in the 1700's.."those guys arent fighting fair! they're hiding behind trees and shooting and not standing in a line in a field!" duh...dont get me started.... anyway it was an assignment i was a little bit tepid to accept, as it was a reshoot...yes, the dreaded reshoot...not mine though...MJ had sent another photog there the week before to shoot him (note to mj, next time hire yours truly first), and lets just say he didnt come back with pictures the editors were in love with. and in true dont jinx it anymore, i didnt want to see the pictures he took, or even know who took them, too much bad juju....dont ask dont tell.....i told my assistant johnny that this was a classic "sucker" job...going back to photogrpah a professional athlete (notorious "are we done yet" guys), and one as big and angry as james, who had already dedicated alot of time to the other photoshoot...and hes thinking "wtf, cant you mo fos do it right the first time?" But he agreed to let another photog come back, and michelle thought of me...in our pre pro meeting, she finishes with "oh yea nathaniel, we also hear he has a bunch of guns, can you get him to hold one?" great. thanks for making me almost throw up there in your office michelle....of course i said "yep no problem, i can pretty much gaurantee i can get him to hold guns." and in truth i really believed it...i've been doing this so long now, i know how to make stuff like that happen. No secret really, you just dont ask, you tell. i can tell pretty much anyone to do anything, although i do get a no occasionally..I didnt ask james if he minded holding a gun or two, i TOLD him i needed him to hold a gun... So it really wasnt that hard like everyone at MJ thought it would be. I just didnt give him a choice, although he could have said no or looked at me like i was insane, but he was fine with it. And So the photographs came out awesome...once again, the big mean guy couldnt have been nicer or more chill...the magazine FREAKED when they saw the shoot (i knew they would), and the story looks awesome, but i feel bad for james as hes getting hammered in the press for those few sentences out of hundreds that people are latching on to...he did have a some great points though....my favorite was about goodell himself....whats a white rich dude from new york (goodell) whos never played a down of pro football or even college football running the league for?? He has no perspective of what a player needs and wants. good point james....Another point...he says theres an unwritten policy amongst nfl players to hit high on purpose and not tackle below the waist, cause you can keep playing if you get your bell rung a little by a hard hit, but tear an ACL or achilles, and your career and earning potential are OVER. makes sense.....so i think in the broader sense of the story, James will be fine as he has valid points and reason to be so mad. Now lets hope these knuckleheads end this lockout soon, cause fall aint fall without football.....

the awards season has begun.....

2011-03-07T14:59:00.004-05:00

I heard some super good news the other day via my inbox...I got an email from maggie kennedy, the photo director over at Garden and Gun magazine, that a story we did won an SPD merit award!! So very very happy and excited about this, as SPD is the grand pubah (is that correct?) of awards for photography and design...and for those of you scratching your heads, yes there is a magazing called Garden and Gun, and its an awesome magazine about all things southern.... cause if youre from the south, you probably have a garden and a gun, but the magazine goes much deeper than that... This story was about the endangered kemp's ridley sea turtle in the gulf after the oil spill, and the people that were trying to save them...I spent a good bit of time down there on 3 separate trips over the summer on different stories (scroll down to see my oil spill posts), with this story being the last and most uplifting... My first trip down there was still a big question mark...would the oil come ashore and cover the shore and the bayous of LA?? My second trip confirmed that yes, the oil is coming ashore, but not as bad as everyone at first thought. And this last trip was pretty much "the whole gulf coast pretty much dodged a bullet, but who knows what is happening off shore." And i think thats pretty much the thought even today. things are pretty much back to "normal", fishing and shrimping are open again, but nobody really knows what the long term prognosis is for the gulf. But an oil spill like this seemed to happen in the best possible place (if there is such a thing), as the gulf of mexico is like a giant toilet bowl. warm water+naturally occurring oil eating microbes+favorable currents and winds went to work on all of that oil...i still dont think its ok, and still cannot believe that a leak like this could go on as long as it did without a quick way to shut it down. just nuts.... there HAS to be better protocol in place, or just dont drill that deep, very simple. Of course oil today over $100 a barrel and talks of $200 a barrel this summer makes us all want to solve our energy problems domestically. my personal worry from the spill is what will happen to the bluefin tuna. Atlantic bluefin tuna spawn in the gulf every spring, and the hatch coincided with the oil spill..not good if youre a little bluefin fry... so it will be years before anyone knows how bad the tuna were hit. as you know i've caught lots of different kinds of fish over the years as its my passion...but bluefin tuna are on my bucket list and i've yet to catch one. they are a hearty bunch, so I'm hoping they come back strong as well....

Risk Takers...

2011-02-16T12:25:00.004-05:00

Here's some work that just came out in golf digest this month on risk takers in golf...I got a call from Christian Iooss in december asking what If i'd like to shoot a big feature about people in golf that are known for taking risks both on the course and off. When he called, the story was really just getting going and there were no concepts yet for the photos, so we did some brainstorming trying to come up with illustrative metaphors that would be cool and also show "risk" (without looking ironic or hokey, as that is ALWAYS the risk for us on shoots like this)..the subjects were Ian Poulter, Ben Crane, and Donald Tump....Ian was considered a risk taker because he has been a very brash dresser, kinda mouthy, and an early adopter of social media..and he backs it all up with an excellent game and very high ranking...lets just say he's really colorful, and golf needs that. After tossing around some ideas, we settled on putting him on a giant rotating knife throwing wheel, wearing one of his signature loud outfits (that he designs). After Christian and I envisioned how awesome it would be, we realized we only had a few days to prop it, and the shoot was in southwest florida...Miami is close by, should be able to find a knife throwing wheel in miami no problem, right? You know where this is heading,,,couldnt find one in any prop houses, so had to hire a set builder in miami to build one, and oh yea you only have 3 days. Like SO MANY editorial jobs, you just gotta go with it, have faith, and improvise when you need to, but mostly just cross your fingers...got to the location the day before (ritz carlton in naples), scouted the property with the PR girl and had a little panic attack..."you cant put it there. You cant put it there either. nope, no there either. ok, you can put it there but keep quiet about it." The wheel showed up 2 hours before the shoot, and it looked AWESOME. Ran to walmart and bought some knives "call me if he shows up early!" Ian showed up right on time, was an awesome sport and got the concept...great shoot..and we all had the cathartic experience of stepping up on that wheel!....Ok, on to texas now to shoot Ben Crane. Bens shoot the concept was an homage to risky business. The iconic scene where tom dances to "old time rock and roll" in his skivies. Ben has always been a bit of a stick in the mudd on the tour, he lists his hobies as "fly fishing and bible study", not a very polarizing figure. But he recently has been doing these hilarious very dry self deprecating videos of late and putting them on youtube, and he is getting a big following for them. Again, like alot of shoots, i had no idea what the location (his house) would look like or if we would have a location that made sense for the concept. After a quick scout, the coffee table was PERFECT, just like in the movie when tom jumps up on the coffee table half way through the song. I had picked up a classic pair of wayfarers the day before, and the magazine was sending the shirt. me: "so ben, wheres the shirt the magazine sent?" ben: "huh?" uh oh. the magazine forgot to send...panic time again. we went in bens closet, he had a bunch of shirts with loud prints and this one shirt his wife got two days before, and it was perfect, pin stripped just like the movie. The concept was a little risky, i wasnt even sure he would do it. would you get on a table in your underwear and sunglasses and dance in front of strangers while they took you picture? But even ben said "wow, cant believe i have this shirt as i would NEVER wear one like this. This is a sign, its meant to be." So he hoped up on the table, we bought "old time rock and roll" at itunes (your welcome bob seger), pumped it up, and we had a blast for about twenty minutes while bens wife and three year old daughter looked on in disbelief. Again, awesome shoot. The last shoot was probably my favorite, as it was with Donald Trump, and we were shooting it at his club in palm beach, Mar A Lago. I had shot Mr. trump, as he likes to be called, 2 previous times, the last time was just this past august. And let me say, the dude is one of the nicest you will meet. I always gauge how nice a person is in reality based on how they treat my assistants. They are always nice to me (they have to be or i will make them look bad!) but not the case with my assistants necassarily. Alot of subjects are kinda dismissive to my assistants. Not really rude, just not interested. Donald has never been like that on set. he is always genuinely interested and kind to everyone. I think he's just a nice guy at heart. Anyway, Donald is always buying and building golf courses, even in risky times, so the magazine wanted to feature him as well. After lots of brainstorming, we thought a shot of him standing on a ledge on the roof at mar a lago would be a good way to illustrate risk. But we would have to shoot him on white in a ballroom, and shoot plates of the roof top view and drop him in later. So we got to mar a lago early, and scouted, and scouted, (hey isnt that billy crystal having breakfast?) and panicked a bit, and scouted some more...only a couple of places would work, but at least we did have a view and we didnt need to get him up there. So we shot the location plate, (and sat for an hour after to enjoy the view from the roof), and then went back to the ballroom and waited for Donald. He showed up early (he always does), and was as gracious as ever. We had a bit of fun reminiscing about our last shoot in august, i showed him some of the outtakes on my computer, then we got down to business. After the shoot, he invited us to have dinner there at the club. And it was by far the most over the top buffet i have ever experienced. Piles of lobster, prime rib,scallops wrapped in bacon, a whole baked grouper, you name it, it was there. Washed it all down with an excellent bottle of red wine. It was december 23, the last shoot of the year, and an awesome way to end my work year....two days later i was in Cabo with jess and henry.....thanks christian!

100 billion!

2011-01-03T21:19:00.005-05:00

This is my first cover of 2011!! New forbes cover i shot in December of scientist, Dr., and inventor Jonathan Rothberg...very cool guy, I had a great time with him up at his house in Connecticut on a chilly December afternoon...alot of times on shoots for business magazines I spend hours with the people i photograph and still dont have a clue what it is that they do. I've shot derivatives traders for example and spent time with them over a beer after the shoot while they explain derivatives, and I still leave the shoot scratching my head about derivatives...Jonathan Rothberg was kinda like that. I did understand that he invented a technology that does DNA sequencing much cheaper and faster than its done now, but the technology and machine that he uses left me wondering what the heck he did!..... But, the one thing I did really enjoy was my time with him as he was a super nice and cool person.... I spent the better part of an afternoon with Jonathan on his waterfront compound riding around in his "gator" (a small but cool work ATV that gardeners use) and admiring the life size replica of stonehenge that he had installed on his 6 acre lawn. Sounds strange and impossible, but i assure you he actually did pull it off. The other cool thing at his house was his dinosaur T Rex skull that he had, very cool to see that. He also had a skull of something called a Cave Bear, which was a couple of hundred thousand years old, and which I'm holding in the other picture in this post as we used it as a prop for some of the shots....2010 was great, and this shoot was one of the last of an awesome year. I'm looking very forward to all the adventures and pictures that 2011 will bring, the craziness has already started so keep checking back here for more!

100 billion!

2011-01-03T21:19:00.001-05:00

mens health marathon.....

2010-11-19T12:19:00.008-05:00

My summer was excellent to say the least. And one of the real highlights of it was this job for mens health, photographing 4 top athletes for a story titled "are you fit?" As brenda and brandon put it during our meeting for the story, we wanted to look at 4 top athletes in top physical shape, and how that related to the sport that they excelled in. We wanted to shoot them all exactly the same on seamless background paper, so we could look at their bodies in the same way to see what they looked like. kinda like picking an athlete or warrior in a video game. Also I was going to shoot a gorgeous location shot of each athlete training in their own way, near their home. The athletes were patrick willis, 49's superstar, jonathan toews, hockey superstar, josh koscheck, UFC punisher, and craig alexander, premier triathlete. Logistically the job almost put me in the hospital for exhaustion, but thank god i had mark haddad at mens health producing and calming me down whenever i called him panicking. We went to canada to shoot jonathan, then san jose to shoot josh, then boulder to shoot craig, then BACK to san jose to shoot patrick (he couldnt do it the first time we were there). and do it all in about a week while traveling with 6 cases AND a seamless. enough to give even annie leibovitz the shakes......but, like her, i LOVE the location photograph, and couldnt wait to get on the road with my trusted sidekick johnny perez. the seamless shots were all pretty straightforward and easy, the hard part was talking each athlete into their skivvies, and shirtless, but i can talk pretty much anyone into that! the fun part was shooting the location pic of them doing part of their workout routine. I LOVE finding that perfect location..one of my secrets now is to use google maps to help me find the perfect spot. for jonathan, i put in the address of the hockey rink where we were shooting him in canada, then looked at the area around the rink from the sky and the road view. to my pleasant surprise, the rink was out in the middle of nowhere, so i asked his publicist (his mom...sweet right? especially for a guy who was the stanley cup mvp with the blackhawks, and olympic gold medal winner with canada all in one year) to snap some scouting pics around the rink outside to give me an idea. For josh i put in the address to the gym location, and saw this awesome park a few blocks away, so we got a permit to shoot there. for craig we just did a scout the day before in the mountains, and patrick we shot at the 49 practice field... all the guys were really great and put alot into it. even patrick, who was sore from a game the day before, give it his all on his only day off. the highlight of the shoots was josh doing his rope workout. i was laying between the ropes on the grass while he swung them up and down HARD on both sides of me while i shot, hitting me half the time, and it hurt. he actually destroyed a pocket wizard that was mounted on my camera when the rope came down on it at one point, ripped it right off... after the shoot in boulder we had a few days off, so instead of flying home to nyc for a quick minute, we headed north to wyoming to visit my parents in the bighorns (they summer there) and fish for a couple days. if you go to this post you will see and read about my special relationship with the bighorns...it felt so good to get back in a stream with my 4wt, and this time the fish were plentiful and the weather was perfect. i wonder what a fisherman athletes body looks like?? attached are a couple of iphone snaps from wyoming....

busy busy busy

2010-09-28T23:30:00.004-04:00

wow. this summer and autumn have been so so busy, I've had some great shoots and adventures the last 2 months....in this post i've attached a couple of fun shoots for mens journal and people magazines. The mens journal shoot was a photo illustration about the dangers of the sun. the photo editor, jen santana, called and told me they wanted to illustrate the story with a full page picture of a guy with sunglasses, zinc oxide on his nose, just a blue sky behind him, and it cant look like nyc in ANY way (even though thats where we had to shoot it). At this point in my career, after living in nyc for 10 years and shooting almost everywhere, instantly i knew the perfect place to shoot, down on the waterfront promenade in battery park city at the southern most tip of manhattan. Being the outside location photographer freak that i am, i knew that this place would be perfect with a nice clean horizon line with new jersey way off in the distance. We cast a model for this, just a normal looking guy...i was really going for a "crispy" look, very "hot" and lots of good light courtesy of the profotos. it was a good time as usual, the weather gods were on my side and the sun held just long enough before a front moved in, and the lemonade stand was only about 50 feet away. I shot the sun separately and had my retoucher drop it in in post....and of course i wore sunscreen during the shoot!!

The other shoot is out this week in people magazine. When i got the call "can you go to lincoln nebraska and shoot larry the cable guy and his son", i jumped at the assignment. you see, its no secret that i'm a bit of a redneck. just a florida cracker making a living in nyc, and i knew larry and i would be a good fit. His son had hip dysplasia, but is ok now and larry is trying to get the word out that this can be cured if caught early and treated correctly...my family is from lincoln too, in fact the welch clan got their start there and homesteaded back in the 1800's. My pops and i even made a trip there together a few years ago (i was there on a job for rolling stone and he flew in and met me), and spent a day in the library researching old newspapers going through the obituaries trying to find the obit for my great great granpa, who we think was blackfoot indian. family legend has it that he drank himself to death. The indian story has always been a bit of legend in the family, but we've never been able to confirm it %100, just what has been passed down through the generations, getting foggier and foggier as each generation passed..anyway, we wanted to try and confirm that great great grandpa was indeed blackfoot, or at the very least find his obit for posterity. you can see the indian in my dads face: kinda long face and high cheek bones, he looks it for sure. We knew about when he died within about 5 years, so we got the newspaper microfilm for the time period and started looking through them. we also knew his last name was Harmon, so we had that to go on. I know, needle in a haystack, thats what i was thinking too. no way in hell we will find it. plus the family history is so vague that far back, we werent even sure the dates we were looking at were accurate. The good news about lincoln back then is that the newspaper was only a page long and came out once a week, and the obits only had a couple of people in it each week, so it was pretty fast and easy. after a few hours of looking, to my surprise I came across his obit. it read "the man harmon fell off his horse and was dragged to death" or something to that affect. we were super excited to confirm his death, but it still didnt prove that he was blackfoot indian. but we printed out the obituary and had an awesome steak dinner that night to celebrate, we had found the mother load. my dad ended up researching it a bit more when he got home, and talked to an expert that did indeed confirm that great great grandpa harmon was indeed probably an indian. you see, indians back then werent considered equal to whites (ya think!), and the fact that he was addressed as "the man harmon" in his obit and not "mr. harmon" was pretty good proof that he was indian and on the fringes of society. so, he probably drank a pint of whiskey, got on his horse, passed out and fell off and was dragged to death. not a pleasant way to go for sure. also while we were there we went to the one room schoolhouse that my grandma went to, it is now a national historic place. very cool to think of granma as a little girl in that little one room schoolhouse on the prairie. all kids, from k-12, in the same classroom. simpler times for sure..We also took a hike to an ancient cemetery with lots of my relatives in it on a little hill. not sure if great great granpa harmon was in there, probably not, seeing as he was an indian. and in fact i think the reason it was so vague in our family is because it was nothing to be proud of back then or even until recent history. now its kinda cool though, and i wish i would have known 20 years ago so i could have gone to college free or opened a casino!....anyway, back to larry, awesome dude, spent all day with him and his family, and had my favorite food, the famed Runza, for dinner. a very memorable 3 days in the fatherland...just another week in the life....

the baby on the field...

2010-09-16T09:40:00.002-04:00

Awesome awesome awesome....thats how i feel when i see my phone ring and the first three numbers are 515....because that means that ESPN magazine is calling me for an assisngment!! always excited to work for them, and this job was no different..the story was about "the birth of a college football team", about a major college (georgia state) starting a football team from scratch. When Catriona called she told me about the story idea, and how they wanted to shoot a baby on the field sitting on a football tee. It was a great assignment for sure, so we talked about how it would come together and figured it out all before hand...the first thing we did was cast, and that was a blast as i love babies...we had about 40 babies show up for the casting, and they were all so good and so perfect, but we settled on 4 to shoot in the studio. THe little guy that made the cover was named Jared, and he was definitely my fav, as he had the very young but wise old man look...So, we spent a day in the studio shooting babies, then the next day went to a football field and i shot a bunch of "plates" of the field (plates is photo jargon for piece of the overall finished image)....then I shot some skies, and then i went back to a shoot i did last year of a football player on a football field and we pulled the white lines from that shot. it's all getting so complicated these days and conceptual, you really have to think in a non linear way these days on shoots....anway, like i said at the beginning, awesome awesome awesome....had a great time, love the cover, very happy and hope i see 515 on my phone again soon!!!

RHLYR...

2010-09-13T19:12:00.006-04:00

I've always said that being a photographer really isnt about taking pictures at all for me....taking the pictures is just the vehicle that gets me in close intimate contact with people and experiences all over the world, which i crave. And the more i do meet people of all colors, ethnicities, religions, etc. on my shoots, and spend this intimate time with them, the more i realize we are all exactly the same. Same wants, needs, fears, insecurities, desires. I've shot presidents, rap stars, actors, nazis, athletes, business titans, middle class families, billionaires, the poor, and everything in between......and guess what, they were all the same person. I've known this for a long time now, and it's afforded me the ability to walk in and out of vastly different situations with comfort and ease. I've shot huge rap stars one day, and the next day white supremacist nazis. It's all just been part of the education and journey that is my life. And i've always come out relatively unscathed and better from the experience.......But nothing in my life experience has shaken me or made me stare in the mirror and think like the process of taking the pictures in this post. These kids are all orphans, on an orphan soccer team, that i shot last month in ethiopia. Most of them are HIV positive, all of them are playing an unfair hand that life has dealt them, parents dead from HIV, nowhere to go but the orphanage. I was there shooting for the WWO (world wide orphans foundation) and Dr. Jane Aronson, for a week with my wife, shooting Doc doing her work, and generally trying to capture all that the WWO and Doc do in the world of orphans. And these kids believe or not really are the lucky ones. Great health care, good food, an education. But still no family or parents to read to them or tuck them in at night like we do for Henry. Stuff we take for granted but every kid really needs. These soccer pics came at the end of the trip, and I really wanted to show them just like any soccer team, so i got the muslin locally and hung it as a backdrop. It was such an awesome experience as they were so proud of their uniforms and soccer skills, truly inspirational..... In another profound twist of my career, the day after i got back I shot the ESPN cover thats in the next post above this one. I was sitting there in the studio munching on a delicious catered breakfast before the shoot, and ironically shooting kids again, but with far different hands that were dealt to them. That was the moment that it really hit me. Not guilt for being lucky and dealt a good hand, just that profound understanding again of how truly similar we all are, trying to make the best of the hand that was dealt to us. Just remember that.

Da Boss

2010-07-17T15:33:00.004-04:00

This just out in People magazine last week, my shoot with Buddy Valastro, also known as The Cake Boss. The concept for the shoot was to have Buddy and his team make a cake facsimile of him, and see how it looks and photograph it side by side next to the real buddy. Awesome shoot, Buddy and his team of baker magicians did an excellent job as you can see. At the end of the shoot, the photo editor, Brenna Britton, suggested Buddy cut the head off the cake. It sounded a little strange at first, but Buddy really got into it, and yelled "someone get me the Sawzall", which is a cool power saw thing. Buddy got the saw, and went to work on the head. It was strange watching it, as the cake was life size and even though a cake, still looked real-ish. I think it was so cathartic for Buddy, maybe a bit like being an actor in a movie and your character gets killed off. Must be really cool to kill yourself like he did, better than therapy. And of course, being the big italian baking family that they are, they would not let myself of my assistant go home without some major sweets and goodies, and they were definitely yummy. Heres to you Buddy, I hope that self execution was as much fun as it looked....

The war on truth

2010-07-07T22:50:00.002-04:00

was very disheartened to see this video today of andy cooper talking about the new law down in the gulf...seems in their ultimate wisdom, the 'bama admin decided to throw a steel towed boot into the flow of images coming out of the gulf showing the oil damage. Its really taken the wind out of my sails today, heard about it in an aiport this afternoon waiting for a flight, and made me want to just quit taking pictures. But of course after a build up of steam in me, it has me more pissed than ever and want to get back down and get arrested for taking the same pics i took 2 weeks ago just 2 posts down in this blog, and being charged with a felony offense....effing unbelievable...if you havent heard, the feds have decided to not let the press any more than 65 feet from the oil damage down in the gulf. considering all of mine were shot as close as 2 inches an as far as 10 feet, i'd be screwed and arrested. they say its for our safety, but we are so much smarter than that at this point as news and government shenanagins consumers. i'm tired now, time to bed as have a flight to miami tomorrow, but really please watch at least the first 2 minutes of this video of andy cooper on his CNN show talking about this major major decision and now law by the feds trying to shut us out of showing the truth.....sleep well if you can.

Richard Clarke for Discover

2010-07-07T12:53:00.003-04:00

I recent shoot with ex government big wig and counter terrorism czar Richard Clarke....If you ever photograph him, be quick, he's not one to sit for a picture long...

Streetfood Nirvana

2010-07-07T12:41:00.002-04:00

I just had a story come out in men’s health magazine that used 33 pictures for one story, a new record…....I spent a week on the road a couple months ago with writer Matt Goulding, the same writer that I worked with last year on the Mens Health “Beauty and the Beast” story about pork (scroll down for it). That story won a pile of awards both for the photography and writing, so I think the editors wanted an encore to see if we could pull it off again. My gut tells me this one will be well received as well. This story was about the best street eats in the country, and the general acknowledgment that the sidewalk culinary experience has taken huge leaps and bounds in the last 5 years or so. We started in our hometown of NYC, and went to Austin, Portland, San Fran, and LA as well, all cities with stellar streetfood scenes and excellent mobile food. This really was a dream assignment, Lots of great food, in great cities, and getting paid. Some highlights include: in Portland a margherita pizza with fresh basil and homemade mozzarella, made in a wood fired brick oven (in a trailer) that was the best pizza I’d ever had. In Austin, the tenderest BBQ ever out of converted yellow school bus called “old school BBQ”. In SF a succulent heritage pork porchetta sandwich from the roliroti truck and chef Thomas. In Austin, a homemade doughnut called the “porky’s”, with whipped cream cheese, spicy good jalepeno jelly, and Canadian bacon, all served out of an airstream trailer. Also in Austin, easily the best tacos I’ve ever had, the seared ahi tuna taco with pickled red onions, from Izzos tacos. I had sushi out of a cart, foie gras, escargot, a kimchee quesadia, a double cheesburger called the “cheesus”, with grilled cheese sandwiches on either side as the buns. Those are just the highlights I remember. Its really amazing and crazy the stuff we ate while standing at a window to order. I know that I will look back on this one fondly, wishing that we could do it again and again, it was that much fun. The only sad part really is that we ate at so many places every day, that we could only sample and take bites of everything, as we were perpetually stuffed and popping Rolaids to keep going. Work.

LA OIL 2.0

2010-06-19T21:33:00.004-04:00

I headed back down to LA on assignment this past week, this time shooting for environmental group nrdc.org. Last time i was here 2 weeks ago, the shit was just hitting the fan over in grande isle on my last day here. All those shots of pelicans you saw in the oil were from the grande isle area, which is an hour by boat from where I was staying. I didnt get there then, but I did get there this time with the group from NRDC, which included big wave surfer laird hamilton and his wife gabby reece. The pelican island has since been cleaned up and surrounded with oil boom, but we still found plenty of oil in other places. We snooped a bit around the uninhabited islands in the area and also the main inlet, and these pics are what we found. The worst evidence we found was free floating oil in the main inlet. Big chunks of oil, almost lard like, moving in and out of the inlet with the ebb and flow of the tide. super thick and fatty. there were alot of boats skimming oil in the area, but it was still pretty easy to find the oil if you looked in the shallower water that the skimmer boats couldnt go in. Laird put on a rubber glove and scooped some up and help it up for my camera, that guy knows a photo moment for sure. It all felt like a bit of a press junket really, with the 3 boats we had and all of the people we had with us. The next day i went out alone and went over to some small uninhabited islands to see it up close first hand. You have to wander a bit to actually get on an island as the close islands are ringed with boom already and not able to get close. I did find some affected islands, but even those i was kicked off of by coast guard types because of the "nesting birds", but honestly it feels like a bit of a press block to keep us from showing it. I got enough though with the time i had. I still didnt see any major wildlife being affected or dead from the spill, but did see crabs and some fish. I was talking again with cajun fisherman friend ryan lambert, and he noticed the kill seems to be coming from the "bottom up". the dead creatures are all bottom living animals, from the crabs, to the catfish and flounder we saw, which are also bottom livers and feeders. scary stuff as it seems most of the oil is sinking. as you know, i've fished my whole life and killed plenty of fish to eat, but when you see death like this its disturbing because it just isnt supposed to be this way. everything dies eventually, its the natural way, but when you see death like this, it grabs you a bit because it just wasnt supposed to happen in such an unnatural way.....heading back to nyc tomorrow, not sure when i will be back here, but crossing my fingers they get that hole plugged soon and the end will then be in sight...nw

LA OIL

2010-06-13T17:03:00.006-04:00

I’ve been going down to Venice Louisiana for several years now, as a photographer sometimes, but as a fisherman always. I’ve fished offshore for the pelagics like tuna and marlin, and I’ve also fished inshore in the marshes for coastal species like trout and redfish. It’s an understatement to say the fishing is exceptional there. We've caught so many fish and so many different species, I always come back with amazing fishing stories that are so brash they almost sound like “fishing stories”. It really transcends any fishery I’ve ever fished, and I’ve fished a lot. I was down there last week on an oil story, and I can show these on my blog. It was kinda hard to find affected areas as the delta marshes are gigantic, unless you had a boat and some time to get to the barrier islands. We had good friend and fishing guide Ryan Lambert of Cajun Fishing Adventures take us out. The Mississippi river delta is a massive place, it was about 45 minutes by boat through the marshes to the last strip of barrier islands before the open gulf. As we got close to an island on the backside, we started to see the oil slick in the bay, not thick black oil, just a sheen on the water, too subtle to photograph, but you could smell it. We pulled up on the back of the island, got out, and walked out onto the beach on the front of the island. Pretty instantly we started seeing big gooey tar balls on the beach and also coating everything from old beer cans to marsh vegetation. I decided to really concentrate on these objects eerily coated in oil. I didn’t style, pickup, or move anything, just walked along and shot pictures of the oil. The strange thing was the eerie absence of wildlife, dead or alive. We saw a couple of seagulls on the beach with a little bit of oil on them, but mostly the beach was empty of birds. Technically speaking, I dragged along a lighting kit with me, and lit the pictures to give them a bit of eerie style. Ultimately, I wanted the images to be beautiful, and repulsive at the same time, give you a reason to look at them in a very direct and different way. Its strange to photograph a tragedy like this in a place that you are intimately connected to. The truly ultimate irony is when fishing offshore there, the oil rigs were always the fishing destination and that’s where we would setup. The fish all congregate underneath and around the rigs, as the small bait fish use it for protection. I had fished on several rigs in the gulf, and today wonder if one of them had been the Deepwater Horizon…

RIP Arnold Jackson...

2010-05-29T10:52:00.004-04:00

As a photographer (and a human), It's always a bit of a shock and reality check when someone you've shot has died. I've been taking pictures for so long that this has happened a bunch of times. It always seems a bit surreal to think that they are gone, and that I was part of the record of who they are/were. Today, I read that gary coleman had died after falling and hitting his head, at the age of 42. It got me to thinking about him and reflecting on my shoot with him... My experience shooting gary was about 5 years ago when he was running for governor of california, and his candidacy was the big exclamation point at the end of the joke that was the california gubenatorial race that year (the other arnold, terminator guy, eventually won)..... i met gary for the shoot at a model train and hobby store over on the west side of LA, his choice, as he was a regular and felt safe there. He was a huge model train guy, it was a serious hobby and he even had a conductors outfit that he would wear when he was "driving" his trains. I think the reason he wanted to meet at the train shop is because it was the one place he could be himself and all the workers and regulars called him gary and only wanted to talk trains, not his acting career. I felt his sadness and bitterness the whole time is was with him. He says he hated being famous and recognized in public, but what i think he really hated was the way hollywood treated him as a child star, tossing him aside when he got older and not cute, and he wasnt ready to let go and move on. He tried to keep acting, but it just wasnt happening. And to top it all off his money was mismanaged and taken by his parents (whom he successfully sued but the damage was done), so he was basically broke. This shot that I've attached is my favorite of him that i took that day. It's just raw and honest, he's not the cute little boy from tv, but a man trying to find his way....i went back and looked at some youtube compilations of him on different strokes...it brought me back to 1980 and i felt a little bit nostalgic for the simpler times...as i watched i realized he really was a comedic genius and full of life and energy. So bright and charismatic and totally the star of the show......the person that i photographed that day seemed a shell of the little boy that he was. somewhere along the way fame and life had seemed to get the better of him. Definitely a cautionary tale..

Long time no blog...

2010-05-19T20:42:00.003-04:00

Its been awhile since I last posted, being the father to a 2 1/2 year old will do that....just got this in the mail (email) today from amy b over at field and stream, the new june cover, which I shot back in the late fall on a gorgeous stream somewhere in NJ. The story was about a trend of fishing at night for big trout, as trout are pretty nocturnal and are pretty aggressive feeders at night. You can't really shoot at night though if you want to see any detail in the background, so we shot around dusk. Its an old hollywood trick to make it look like night. You shoot in the late day, and underexpose to make it dark and look like night. Next time you see a night shot in an old hollywood western from the 50's or 60's, you'll notice a perfect shadow under the horse or cowboy. This is because they shot in the daytime, but underexposed the film to make it dark. We kinda did the same thing for this cover, shot when there was still plenty of light, but I lit the fisherman, and let the background go dark as it was underexposed. And for all of you super technical photo nerds out there, to make the background so blue (to mimic moonlight), i set the camera white balance to tungsten, which adds alot of blue, and put an amber filter on the profoto lights that were lighting the fisherman so he would look "normal" and not blue. It turned out great, the fish was the star (as always), and she was rewarded with freedom when we were done playing paparazzi with her......I've been fly fishing for a long time now, and just now I decided to look on my hard drive for any snapshots I might have of personal trout fishing trips. I had a few, and I put them here also. They were taken a couple of years ago, on the tongue river in wyoming in the bighorn mountains. My parents have a summer place there, and I try to get there whenever I can in the late summer when the fish are really feeding for the coming winter. It's about the best place I've ever been, no crowds, no cell service, one shared phone line for everyone, one bad restaurant, one good bar, and good fishing. The bighorns get passed up by 95% of people that are heading to jackson hole and the tetons. Just fly right by it, and that suits us fine. You can have the tetons and all the fancy-ness that they bring. The bighorns are still how the west was 50 years ago... On this particular trip that these snaps were taken, it was early september, and being the mountains, the weather is always a coin toss. The earliest blizzard ever just happened to roar through the mountains the day after we got there, but i was not deterred. I've had plenty of amazing fishing trips here, caught lots of fish, more than i deserve really. But this trip was different. I was itching so bad to get out and fish, in the middle of the 2 day blizzard, i said "dad, take me down to the tongue, i'm going to fish". He thought i was nuts, but we loaded up and he drove me down to an easy access point. He sat there laughing as i put my waders on in the storm and tied on a fly. I knew it was pretty futile to be sure, but when you fish, catching a fish is only part of it, i just wanted to get back on the tongue and listen to the water, it had been a long time. It felt good walking away from dads truck, knowing there was no chance i would see another fisherman, or even a moose as even they had better sense. I fished for about an hour, hands frozen by the time I got back, ice forming on the guides of the rod, and even the fish had better sense as the bite had died. I fished after the storm a day later too under blue skies, but 3 feet of snow to deal with, and the fish still hadnt turned back on yet, didnt catch one all day on a stretch I would usually catch 10 fish in an afternoon. We had one more day, and i was hurting bad because of the bad luck with this storm. Not so much not catching fish, but just dealing with all the snow, hard to hike and walk in and see holes along the bank. Tough 2 days of fishing. On the last day, mom and dad said "lets go lower down the mountain where there wont be any snow and take one of our favorite hikes." So we did that, i brought a 4 weight pack rod just in case but didnt think i would use it. At the very end of the day on our way out of the woods, i decided just for fun to walk down to the stream that I heard along the hike and give it a try, as I hadnt caught a fish yet and was a bit depressed about my luck on this trip, I just really needed to feel the rod tip bend..... I caught a fish on almost every cast, though they were all very small brookies, it really didnt matter, I had finally felt the tug. It felt so good to catch those fish, one of the best fishing experiences I had ever had. I've caught 300 pound marlin, big stripers, mahi, wahoo, bass, redfish, snook, roosterfish, yellowfin tuna, the list goes on and on. But I realized more on that trip than ever, it really isnt the size of the fish that matters or even catching fish, it's the persistence in the pursuit, it's being ok with the outcome, no matter if you catch fish or not, and appreciating it when you do. Remember that next time youre having a bad day, it may feel like it will never get better, but it will if you just let it.

The Iceman

2010-03-22T09:53:00.004-04:00

A new cover I shot came out this weekend, Chuck "iceman" Liddell for UFC magazine. I'm not a huge UFC fan, because whenever I have tried to watch it I always wince and turn away from the tv because the stuff they do looks SO painful. I end up looking at the wall more than the tele, so I just cant do it anymore. Those arm bends and stuff they do just freak me out....But, I guess alot of people can watch without wincing, because this sport is huge and getting bigger. Anyway, of course I had heard of Chuck when I got the call from Lisa, as he is one of the few huge marquee names in the sport. And the best part is the shoot was at Chucks house in San Luis Obispo, a town on the central cali coast that I love. The concept of the shoot was to have Chuck in a t shirt that the art director, Brant Louck, had made with a "rude boy" graphic of a little boy Chuck peeing on the name "ortiz" which is for Tito Ortiz, Chucks main career long nemesis and soon to be combatant once again. Shoots like this are always stressful for a few reasons. One, dealing with a mega star like Chuck is always a little tough as they have been around and done this kinda stuff a million times, which makes them bored easily and skeptical of your ideas. Two, I had to "build" a portable studio somewhere in his house, and I need a good bit of room to do it and you never know what you're walking into. And three, with a concept like this, which Chuck HADN'T been told about, you worry he will take one look at the shirt, tell you to f-off, kick you out of his house straight away, or throw you against the wall. But, like alot of things in life, you just go for it, use your perception and southern charm (mine) to feel it out, and cross your fingers. He loved the idea and had a good time with it, as he really does hate Tito Ortiz in a big way. And we moved furniture around to make room for the studio in his living room, but it was tight... The dog was his, and his name was "bean". And for the record, bean was a little punk ass, whenever i would pet him, he would snarl and growl but he's one of those little dogs thats just always fronting and irascible but never bites.

SPD props...

2010-03-01T17:06:00.002-05:00

Heard some good news yesterday from Andrea Verdone over at Womens Health....A story we shot in the fall called "Is the Alpha Male in danger of extinction" won a merit award from this years SPD (the society of publication designers) awards.....I'd like to thank my manager, the fantastic cast and crew, allah, jesus, buddha, my masseuse pablo, my accountant, bill murray, and of course my lovely wife and child....

who'd you rather....

2010-02-10T10:27:00.008-05:00

I've been working on a new portfolio recently as I haven't had one if 5 years, and the agents have been bugging! Spending the time and money to do it right while it's winter....anyway, working with my retoucher Bianca on a lot of images, and we had a fun little back and forth conversation about retouching, womens self image, the good, the bad, and the ugly of it all. I've posted these before and after images of a model I shot a couple of years ago for Mens Fitness for a story about sex. This image is the one that got us to talking. We had a good laugh about the fashion mag business and the mens mag business and how they want different things from the same image. The fashion books (think vogue and glamour) really want the skin to look flawless and the women look skinny. While the lad mags like mens fitness and maxim just want bigger boobs and ass! I'm not a big retoucher as I think the picture really starts to lose its soul if you do too much, but at the same time if done right it makes the soul of the picture alot better. I asked Bianca to do my normal "clean up" on the image while leaving it raw enough to keep its soul. This is alot of retouching for me, but hardly any for a fashion mag. If you look closely at the 2 images, you can see the skin gets a better glow and less ruddyness and generally a crisper feel. But Bianca also evened the boobs out. If you look at the boob on the right (and i'm sure you will, both men and women cause lets be honest, women are harsher and more judgmental on other women than men are. Men are pretty simple: "big boobs. good." women are more like "her boobs are ok but look like they're starting to sag. I'm glad i dont have boobs like that." am i right or am i right? you let me know. I personally think my boobs are perfect), you can see the unevenness of the cleavage, so she built cleavage on the right to match the boob on the left. You can also see around her arm pits that Bianca sculpted a bit to remove the little bulge and make it a sleeker image overall. The genie really is out of the bottle when it comes to retouching. Its amazing and scary what can be done to an image these days. It's pretty much impossible to have a good self image if you're a 16 year old girl trying to grow up. Conversely, it's pretty hard for a 16 year old boy to find a girl who's as perfect as the girls he sees in magazines. Anyway, thought you might find this interesting, I think I will do it more often with other images as well as it's pretty interesting. Click the images and they will open bigger in a new window so you can really see the difference. So, if you had the chance to blow bubbles with one of these girls, who'd you rather...

Photography by Yoda "do or do not, there is no try"

2010-02-03T16:04:00.004-05:00

It's always a good week when I have a magazine cover on the newstands. But It's a great week when it's ESPN magazine. Every Year ESPN does their fan issue, which is about fans, for fans, athletes as fans, etc.. This year I got to photograph Minnesota twin Joe Mauer, the hottest bat in the american league. He was voted American league MVP last year for his hitting and all around baseball skills. He wasnt chosen for the cover because of that though, he was chosen for the cover because the writers and editors at ESPN decided he was the most fan friendly player in baseball. He's the kind of player that sticks around until the last person has their autograph, and amazingly he reads and answers fan mail himself. Usually magazines have a concept for a cover, and when Catriona called, she told me they had a few. One was a boy holding a dog, and joe about to sign the dog. That one was to convey that Joe is so fan friendly, he'll sign just about anything. The other one was joe signing his name in the air, and we would add his signature (which we photographed separately on a big piece of poster board) in post. The last one was a line of fans waiting for a signature. Catriona wanted me to think about it for the night and call her back next day to discuss, and add any of my ideas into the mix as well. I really loved the dog idea, but deep down I was thinking that that picture was breaking the 2 biggest rules of phototgraphy: dont work with children or animals because you can't control either!! And this was BOTH! But, I love a challenge so said let's go for it, and I have pretty good kid-and-animal-on-a-shoot karma so i wasnt worried. The signing in the air idea was pretty straight forward so I knew we could get that one pretty easy. And the real wildcard to me was the fans in line shot. I was thinking about it that night and I really had this vision of a Norman Rockwell-esque scene, a bit over the top, classic americana, with a bit of humor but not ironic. I thought let's put a fireman in line, and an old lady, and a little kid, and a construction worker, and a fisherman, and they can all be holding something big to have signed. Catriona loved it, but the hard part was now casting and producing it and of course we only had a day and a half. But we got to work, I got on a plane, Catriona and St. Patricia got on the phone to get it rolling. I read the tattoo on my wrist and new everything would be allright. Had a great time on this one, there were lots of pieces and stuff to worry about, but I learned a long time ago that it always gets done, just sometimes you gotta will it and push pull drag coax beg plead borrow steal plead to get it done and looking great. And if it still is being stubborn, I just channel my inner Yoda and use the force......"Do or do not, there is no try."

Dell buys Magnum...

2010-02-02T08:25:00.005-05:00

Computer builder and photography collector Michael Dell bought the press print archive of Magnum photos. At first, I thought that he had bought the agency, lock, stock, and barrel. But after reading this story in the NYT, I realized that what he had bought, was the press prints archive of images that Magnum photogs had made over the years, all 180,000 of them. Essentially, the press prints are vintage prints that the agency would send out to magazines back in the day when a magazine was doing a story on particular subject. Lets say Time is doing a story on WWII, they would call photo agencies and have the agencies send over a box of prints of WWII images. Then, if Time were to use any of the images in the magazine, they would pay the agency a usage fee, and the photographer would get half of that. In the past, these press prints weren't really looked at as collectible the way an editioned print of the same image was from a gallery. But recently, there has been a trend of buying vintage prints with historical value, and frankly the art photography world has become so diluted and questionable with these images that collectors dont see them as having much value anymore. There's always a "new" edition, or a little different size, and now prints are essentially ink jet, not traditional darkroom prints like these. All of these prints in the magnum collection have notes and a rich history written on the backs of them and really are one of a kind, and alot of the times printed by the photographer himself. At first I thought "100,000,000 is way too much for a bunch of press prints". But after pulling out my calculator, it came to 555 per print, not a bad deal at all as magnum really owned photojournalism and had the best photographers last century..... Hopefully this money will help Magnum reinvent itself and recapture it's previous glory....

WTA Behind the scenes vids!!

2010-02-01T14:06:00.005-05:00

Finally figured out how to post vids on blogger!! In pre-production this week for a shoot coming up with the lovely and talented women tennis stars of the Womens Tennis Association....williams, sharapova, etc....I've been shooting the international "looking for a hero" campaign the past 2 years for them, and it has been a blast. Shot in location in Rome, NYC, and Palm Springs, during tournament week, we go where the girls are! Here's a couple of vids the WTA produced for their website, and were kind enough to pass along to me....enjoy, and notice how I got the phrase "charlies angels metaphor" in both vids, even though shot 1 year apart in Rome and Palm Springs. It's all about the catch phrase...

2010-02-01T13:58:00.003-05:00

feathers

2010-01-25T21:16:00.004-05:00

In keeping with the outdoorsman theme of the last post, i thought i would post this shot of me and a goose i shot this weekend.....theres a big wetland behind my house on the bay, and lots of waterfowl activity. This is the first year that I've really hunted it, and this is the first goose I've killed there. It was a bit sad as you can imagine, but i forgot all of that once i tasted him. I seems alot of people (especially in nyc) think it's barbaric to hunt and kill animals for food, but I say isnt it much more barbaric to buy a dead animal wrapped in plastic that never lived one day of freedom? Simply born, bred, and slaughtered so you can eat it?? All you city slickers remember that next time you bite into a hamburger or chicken club sandwich. This goose had a great life. No antibiotics, no hormones, and freedom. Then I shot him. And now he is in my belly.....This guy was breasted, put in the crock pot, and left to simmer for 6 hours in a nice red wine, carrots and apples recipe. Very tasty. Now go make a ham sandwich!

mountain men, volcanos, guns, palins..

2010-01-25T14:56:00.005-05:00

Here's a job that i did last winter, but just hit the newstands this week. It was a cover for Field and Stream, pretty much my favorite magazine to shoot for. Not only are they incredibly respected in the magazine/photography world, but I get to do some of the coolest stories that I've ever done for them. They really put alot of effort into the magazine photography, and it shows. Amy Berkley is one of the best, and the magazine looks as good as it does because of her. Ok, enough A** kissing (but i meant it amy and anthony!). This job was shot last february outside of fairbanks alaska for their SURVIVAL issue. Strangely, i had been to alaska 3 weeks earlier to shoot todd palin for esquire, so I knew the cold i was about to get into again. For the cover, they wanted to put a guy on it that pretty much epitomizes being able to survive anything, anywhere, anyhow. Well, they picked the perfect guy, Marty Meriotto. He lives outside of Fairbanks Alaska with his wife and baby in a log cabin he built. But that’s not whats amazing about his survival skills. He’s part of a dying breed, a fur trapper. He goes out into the wilderness, in winter, in Alaska, for a month or more at a time trapping. Just him, 200 miles from the nearest anything. When I was with the Palins in Anchorage, it was about 10 and I thought that was cold. Marty is up around Fairbanks and they pretty much laugh at the weather “down south in anchorage” where I was before. Needless to say, I hired a local assistant, Alex, and he met me at the hotel, as did Marty even though I told him to just give me directions to his house, but Alaskans are just that way, nice. Alaskans always seem to look at us lower 48’ers as outsiders, but in a polite way, not rude. Anyway, we show up to Marty's cabin, and its -10, but thats not the problem, it’s the 20 mph wind. Even marty and alex were kinda like “its real cold out there with the wind” so I knew I was in trouble. But again, Alaskans being Alaskans, both Marty and Alex had brought extra clothes for me, knowing that I probably wouldn’t have enough. They were king. They were right. We scouted on snowmobiles around Martys house and found a nice open field with lots of blue sky and white ground that would make the perfect, clean, cover. We hauled all the gear out on a sled behind the snowmobile and got to work. Alex and I were pretty worried about the gear, he gave me some tips about not letting condensation freeze the camera up and it worked. The batteries on the profotos once again amazed me and lasted for a good 50 pops before dying, we all thought they would die almost immediately. We ended up doing 2 sessions out on the ice for the cover..... Ok, finished up the shoot, scheduled to fly out the next day, no big whup. Had a big post shoot dinner with Alex. Had my first taste of black bear, in the form of sausage that Alex's friend had brought from a bear that he had shot. Good times. Here's where it gets interesting; That pesky little volcano in alaska, mount redoubt, had been threatening to blow when i was there 3 weeks earlier with the Palins but it didnt blow then. Guess what. yep, I get up at 5am for my 8am flight the next morning, and the counter person at the hotel said "didnt you hear? The volcano blew late last night, all flights cancelled." And fyi planes dont fly when theres ash in the air. Called the airport, no flights coming or going out of fairbanks. No flights coming or going out of anchorage either, although the wind direction was blowing the ash away from anchorage so it might open the following day or two. Pulled up google maps and realized I was really stuck as you cant just drive 5 hours to another state or big city, there are none. So, i tried to make the best of it. I called Alex, and he played tour guide and took me to the shooting range and we blew off some steam with his .44 and other various weapons of minor destruction. Went to the alaska pipeline and took a snapshot (very cool to see it), and went to the big ice sculpture festival and looked at ice (too cold to enjoy). Finally, after 2 days of sightseeing and nail biting, alaska airlines said that there was a window of good conditions in anchorage and the airport should be open for a day or 2. Problem was anchorage was about 6 hours away from where i was in fairbanks, and the only way down there was by car. So, i made an executive decision, went to avis rental car, and rented a one way car from fairbanks to anchorage (it was $500 for the day, you think they gouged?). I left about 2pm from fairbanks, and the drive went right through denali national park, which i've always wanted to see, hopefully i will see in the summer some time. It was a gorgeous drive, i remember the tom petty song "learning to fly", which stuck in my head the whole trip and will always remind me of denali now. I've attached a picture I shot through my windshield on iphone of the mountains in denali so you can see the beauty, although it doesnt do it justice. Strangely, to get to anchorage from fairbanks, you gotta go right through wasilla. It was the absolute strangest feeling driving through wasilla again, three weeks later after hanging with the palins for a week. I drove right by todd and sarahs house in the early evening, and i was thinking to myself, "i sure am tired, i wonder if todd and sarah would mind if i crashed at their house for the night?".....

visions of the decade...

2010-01-13T16:27:00.003-05:00

A very cool thing happened to me this month. The new PDN (photo district news) has an article titled "visions of the decade", and they have included myself and "spring broke" as a vision of the decade. The article talked about visual trends in photography last decade and said of moi "vivid lighting and brash colors helped nathaniel welch capture the strange awfulness of college age debauchery." Huge honor to be in this article. Very stoked indeed.

great holiday....

2010-01-13T14:02:00.002-05:00

Just for bragging rights i wanted to post some pics from our mexican vacation over christmas....Jess, Henry, and i went to cabo san lucas, one of my favorite places in the world, for 2 weeks of good times. I had been to cabo a few other times before this one, but i surfed on those trips and didnt fish. This trip i put my energy toward fishing and had the best fishing experience i've ever had (and i've had plenty). Over 4 trips I caught 6 striped marlin, a bunch of mahi, and 3 roosterfish, and believe it or not, the highlight was catching the roosterfish even though they were by far the smallest fish i caught there at only 5-10 pounds. The reason is i hadnt ever caught one and really wanted to. I've caught marlin and mahi before, but the rooster has eluded me and they are on the list of great fish to catch for all fishermen. They get upwards of 75 pounds, but this time of year the bigger fish are all out in deeper water. It was a real thrill to catch that first one and see his dorsal fin up and slicing through the water as i reeled him in....the other amazing thing to me down there was the quality of the mexican fishing boat captains. The boats were very small, the tackle was old, but the captains i fished with were some of the best i've ever fished with. They take fishing very seriously. In alot of tourist destinations the captains are so so, but in cabo that wasnt the case. I've already started scheming to get back down there and photograph the mexican fisherman, I think it would make an excellent book. Think old man and the sea meets my jesse james book....

2010-01-13T11:44:00.003-05:00

Since i don't have any shoots this week and am laid up at home with the flu, it's "clear out the recent work folder and put on the blog week". Here's a few recent jobs that i liked...one was for espn magazine, the shot of the little boy tearing the page out of the book. One was for fortune magazine, the shot of the family in their living room, and one was for shape magazine, the shot of the lady in the hazmat suit in times square......had the flu the last couple of days so been lying pretty low watching the tele. the earthquake happened yesterday in haiti so i've been watching that. very sad stuff.... I did a shoot in haiti about 10 years ago, so alot of the images coming out are vaguely familiar. Especially the presidential palace, striking images of its collapse, hard to believe. I stayed at a little hotel called hotel ollofson, in port au prince, i wonder how it did in the quake? It's actually a big big house that was very old so i think it may have done ok. mostly wood, not much concrete. The writer Graham Greene lived and worked there in the 60's, and his book "the comedians" was written there. My most vivd memory of being in haiti was sitting at the bar at night, have rum punch after rum punch, watching the world series (i was there in november 97). The tv was behind the bar, and also there was a big mirror hanging on the wall behind the bar. The hotel was basically empty as haiti was having trouble then, and i was the only one at the bar. I would watch the game on the tv, but also every now and then i would catch out of the corner of my eye a rat scurrying across the floor behind me.....good memories indeed..

Happy New Year

2010-01-11T15:43:00.003-05:00

It's been awhile since i last blogged and i'm gonna tell you why. In this photography biz, you gotta keep quiet about what projects your working on until they come out. Every time I do a cool shoot, I want to run to my computer, download the cards, and blog blog blog until my fingers bleed. But this being a paranoid secretive biz (magazines and advertising), everyone is always trying to trump everyone else, and the internet has made it worse. basically, you can't talk or blog about a job until it comes out in print, and then you are free to scream as loud as you want about how great and cool a photographer you are. But by the time a story comes out, i've done so many other stories and am SO over it. Ok, cut to today, I'm trying in earnest to force my lazy ADD ass to blog a little more regularly (thanks jay d), so check back here more often. I've even threatened to blog about stuff not photo related! how about that! Ok maybe thats pushing it a bit, i will stick to photo related stuff. So here's the first post of the year. This story just came out in Mens Health magazine, its an olympic preview showcasing three winter olympians and how they work out. I shot snowboarder Chris Klug out in Breckenridge in november. Chris believe it or not had a liver transplant some years ago, and he's still a world class snowboarder. I love the picture that the mag chose. This to me is the quintessential Nathaniel Welch photo. It's a portrait, but not static, A+ for me. The other shot is a tight closeup of bobsledder Justin Olsen. When i met Justin at the olympic training complex in Lake Placid, I left the meeting thinking "gee, he doesnt seem like a winter olympian. Texas accent, big dude, he seemed like a football player." Turns out I was right, he is a football player. He was recruited to as a pusher, as the bobsled event is all about shaving hundreths of seconds off the time, and the best way to do that is with an insane push. this guy had legs like tree trunks. I've attached a picture I took of his legs so you can see what I mean. Like every job i've ever had, theres always a nugget of memory that will always remind me of the job. Sometimes its part of the shoot, sometimes it's not part of the shoot, some random or not random thing that happened during it. For this one, I had a rain day in Lake Placid, and had been hanging with olympic biathalete Lowell Bailey for what seemed like days but was really only a day and a half. We had breakfast, we had lunch, and finally we srcubbed the shoot until the next day. Lowell grew up in Lake Placid, so he knows the place intimately, and he's a fly fisherman, as am I. He mentioned going fishing in the afternoon, and of course I ingratiated myself and forced a invite.... That is what this job really is about for me (not forcing invites). Meeting people, finding that connection or common ground, and enjoying the experience. Regular life never would have put me on a stream outside of Lake Placid in November fishing with an Olympic athlete. But this job did. All of of sudden we weren't magazine photographer and athlete/subject, just two dudes making the most of a great but wet afternoon at the end of fishing season. Fishing a stream with a friend is great, you arent really fishing side by side, but within a 100 yards or so usually. Just company enough to know your not alone and someone else is experiencing this moment. I would look over at him occasionally and see him fighting a fish, and he'd glance over at me and see the same thing. We both ended up catching a bunch of fish, mostly brook trout, and that night we went to a local restaurant, had a great burger and filled our bellies with a local beer. work.

I am not dead

2009-09-29T22:57:00.002-04:00

The death of the alpha male, a feature i shot for womens health magazine this summer. The story was about how the alpha male is dead, no more hard charging hard drinking hard womanizing men out there anymore, just slacker emo types looking good, dating around, but never really doing much of anything. sounds about right actually. seems women are having a hard time finding mister right. you know, the guy that makes a ton of $$$, looks good in a three piece, and opens car doors. wait! hold on a minute! isnt this exactly what women have been fighting for for the past 40 years?? didnt you guys want to make your own money? open your own car doors? like my dad used to say, watch out what you wish for, because you may just get it.......heres the tears from the mag, and check out the type treatment, beautiful stuff Dunham...

spring broke love

2009-09-29T22:46:00.002-04:00

Les Inrockuptibles, a french magazine, is showing the love for Spring Broke in their new issue...I got a call from the editor last month, and while I didn't understand most of what she said, I did understand enough to know that they loved it and wanted to publish a portfolio from it. I got the check (in euros) and an issue in the mail today so i thought i would post it for all you kids that didn't see it when the book was published in 2004 (really i just like how big they made my name). If you like this little taste, the book is still available at amazon.........enjoy.

death and motorcycles

2009-09-23T13:35:00.005-04:00

Did a fun but grueling job in Death Valley for Popular Mechanics recently. Allyson Torrisi from PM called and said 4 words: “you, motorcycles, death valley.” I said two: “hell yea.” The assignment was a feature on riding dual sport bikes in death valley. A duel sport is a bike that is an off road moto bike but is still street legal so you can ride it on road. There were going to be 5 riders on this 3 day trip. There were 3 popular mechanics editors, one death valley expert riding guide, and Jaime from Mythbusters, the one with the walrus mustache. Cool guy btw, and always a willing subject for my camera. My assistant Raul and I would be following them in an off road 4x4 and documenting the ride and making it look as cool as it was. These kinds of assignments are always tricky. Theres no real shot list, you’re shooting people on a fun trip so they don’t really want to be bugged with a camera that much, and in this case it was all going to be done in an extremely harsh environment. It was spring, so not 130 but still damn warm, highs in the upper 90’s, and chilly at night. I had a great time as usual but was completely worn out from the long days and the sun and wind. Did lots of climbing up cliffs ahead of them to get them from that angle where they’re small and just overpowered by the massiveness of the terrain. And to think only 5 days earlier I was in Alaska shooting a Field and Stream cover. Crazy cool things this job has taken me to. Tired but couldn’t say no. A huge highlight for me was on the first night, we were walking back to our rooms after dinner, and my assistant looked up and saw the stars like he never has as he hasn’t traveled to a place as remote as DV. The lack of “light pollution” in remote places makes the stars so amazing. It blew him away. I’ve been all over in the middle of nowhere from Alaska to Afghanistan and have seen some pretty amazing stars at night. But I always take it for granted now until I’m brought back down by a reaction like his. All in all the shoot went great, everyone was super nice and helpful, and the pictures looked great because of it. Got Henry a scorpion frozen forever in a block of resin in the gift shop……. On the way out of town on Monday afternoon raul and I encountered a dust storm in the middle of nowhere. The dust diffuses the light, it’s the kind of light photographers and cinematographers spend their whole lives trying to find or recreate. Shadows not too harsh, highlights not blown out. And a warmth from the dust that was luminous. It hit us just as we drove by a cemetery literally in the middle of nowhere with a chain link fence around it. We passed it, didn’t stop as I was downloading cards form the morotrcyle shoot, but it was gnawing at me as I knew it was too perfect and my love of this photography stuff always gets the better of me. After about 5 minutes the guilt and my obsession won out inspite of my exhaustion. “turn around raul”. He didn’t say a word. He knew. We turned around, drove to the cemetery, pulled over and made some pictures for nobody but ourselves, which are always the purest ones you make. Nobody to please, no hurry, no worry. I put the computer away after that and just watched the desert light change and fade away as we drove out. it was truly a great ending to this trip: kinda weird and noire-ish like a david lynch film, and achingly beautiful and lonely, like the California desert.

2009-08-24T11:19:00.005-04:00

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ESPN magazine is without a doubt one of my favorite mags to shoot for. In this biz, when you get a call for an assignment from a magazine, you usually want to hear about it before saying yes, so you don’t get roped into something you don’t really want to do. Not the case when I get a call from ESPN. Whenever I get a call from them for a shoot, the answer is always yes. Doesn’t matter what it is, I always know I want to do it. I’ve Never said no to anything that they have offered up. Not only are athletes one of my favorite subjects to shoot, but the magazine itself: the photography editing, the design and photography treatment, and the reporting, are the best in the magazine business. I don’t think anyone in the mag biz would argue otherwise. When I think back to all of the shoots for all the different magazines I’ve done over the years, a lot of my personal favs were for ESPN……... So, my cell phone rings a few weeks ago, and you know, you look at the number. When it starts with 522, you know its coming from time inc.. if it’s 286, it’s conde nast. If its 573, its one of the rodale mags. And if its 515, its ESPN. Now, I love seeing any of those numbers on my phone, that’s the truth. But I get just a little bit giddy when I see 515, cause I know there’s a great assignment photographing an athlete on the other end of the call. I pick up, its Jim Surber, “hey you wanna go down to texas and shoot the Texas Longhorns QB for the cover of the college football preview? His name is Colt McCoy”. I’ve hadn’t heard of Colt McCoy,(although that is a great pornstar name if I ever did hear one), but one search on google tells me he almost won the heisman last year and will probably win it this year. I love shooting athletes because they are that rare photographic subject. They aren’t what we call “real people” because they transcend that genre as they have this super physical talent that you and I don’t have. And they aren’t what we call “celebrity”, because they aren’t actors or in the performing arts. What they are, is an amalgamation of the 2 really. A “real person” with an amazing physical talent and the skill to make it look great on camera. And also the need to “perform” like an actor. And a great body to boot. In short, a photographic goldmine……….Headed down to Austin TX with Jim during the hottest time of year, late july. The shoot took place in the middle of the stadium where they play their home games, and it was hot. 120 degrees according to the groundskeeper with the thermometer. We just wanted to catch Colt like he just got done training in the Texas heat while he flashed that infectious smile. I also put up a huge white backdrop for a more stylized option for the inside image. The shoot went great, Colt was a great subject. Professional athletes (or in this case a college athlete good enough to be on the cover of ESPN) are such a pleasure to photograph. When you catch them as a normal person they are just like you and I and all of the other “real people” out there. Uncomfortable, awkward, and self conscious. But when you put them in their comfort zone, which is as an athlete, they really do come alive and make my job such a pleasure to do. Here’s the cover image and the inside image, as well as some behind the scenes and outtakes. Enjoy.

This little piggy went to market....

2009-06-16T16:47:00.002-04:00

Did a cool story for mens health magazine about the other white meat, pork. When I got the call from Lila, it was basically, “some of the best chefs in the city have a whole pig (dead), and a master butcher that is going to cut him up as only a master butcher can. We want you to document the butchering process. Then a couple of days later they’re all gonna get together and cook their favorite dish and sit down family style for a pork feast. We want you there for that too.” Cool. The task was going to go down in the kitchen of one of the best digs in the city, The Gramercy Tavern. This was one of those stories I was so excited to do because I wanted to hear all about the best parts of the pig from the butcher and the chefs who were all there as well. Not so much morbid curiosity but culinary quizitiveness. One of those stories where I learn a ton and am asking questions as I’m shooting. The thing about meat, whether it be fish or mammal, is it’s an animal. SO many people in the world, and especially the USA, and especially especially NYC, have a total disconnect with the bacon they had for breakfast or the steak or chicken for dinner. They think meat comes from plastic packs. Guess what. It don’t. I hunt and fish so I know it doesn’t come from plastic packs. I get the death part of eating meat and wish everyone got it as well. Its basic responsibility, knowledge and decision making. Your actions have consequences. Eat a steak, kill an animal. Very simple equation really and rock solid. Whenever I’m out and someone starts badmouthing hunting as killing innocent animals I ask them what they had for dinner that week. Guess what they usually say. You got it, chicken, steak, fish. Its then that I inform them that they too kill animals, they just pay some guy 7 bucks an hour at a farm somewhere to do it for them so they don’t have to see it or deal with it. When you hunt and fish, its hard to explain, but you feel connected to the whole life cycle, especially your own, and understand the universe and your place in it just a little bit better. The people that answer my question that they are vegetarian are actually the ones I truly respect. They have an argument. They made a decision not to eat meat because they don’t agree with the idea of killing animals for food. I get that. Don’t agree but do get. Ok enough of that. So we get to the gramercy tavern (beautiful place) and go down to the basement where the big walk in cooler is, and there she is, a 200lb pig hanging by her hooves. When everyone gets there, we pull her out and put her on the butcher block. I’m thinking a great opener would be 2 chefs and the butcher holding her horizontally, a portrait really of three guys holding a dead pig. Shes heavy and hard to hold, but we get it, great shot. Then back on the butcher block she goes and the butcher gets to work. He grabs a saw, and cuts her head off. Yikes. Then starts hacking away at her with various knives and cleavers to quarter her up. Meanwhile I’m thinking “does mens health have any idea how visceral a butchering is? Theres no way in hell they’re going to run any of this.” But Matt (writer) assures me they will run the story, maybe just not the most graphic images. The butchering goes off with out a hitch, got great pics, and hoping the magazine would run them. Truly an amazing educational experience. The story was being written by Matt Goulding, food editor over there at MH, and he was writing it from a first person perspective, where he delivers parts of the pig to all the chefs all over town so they can concoct their mastery with the meat. So to illustrate that point, we went out on the street with the pigs head to get a cab and photograph matt getting in like hes delivering it to a chef. The great thing about ny cabbies is first of all most of them are from the middle east, east Africa, or Haiti, and have slaughtered a goat or two in their day and secondly, nothing, and I mean nothing can upset a nyc cabbie (except another cabbie, or even worse a livery cab, driving like shit and cutting him off, then watch out, as all bets are off. But all cabbies drive like this In nyc so I’m always amazed when they start screaming at the car that just cut them off because he did the same thing to another guy 5 blocks back). So me flagging down a cabbie and asking him to just stay there for 10 minutes for $20 while my friend got in and out of the back with a pig head while I took pictures didn’t faze him. In fact, I remember him eating a sandwich and reading the paper while we worked. I don’t think he looked back more than once and I doubt he even mentioned it to anyone, just another day in nyc as a hack. A few people on the street walking by, however, had a totally different take. I remember some people saying stuff like “is that head real” and some drunk kids walking by laughing. And a couple of grosses as well. Matt was a good sport as it was freezing and this was a spring issue so while the rest of us had parkas on he had a lightweight on. Great fun and shots looked great. Done for the night. Fast forward a week later, we’re all set to meet at super chic it spot restaurant Eletaria at 11pm after the restaurant closes for all the chefs to finish preparing their dishes and having a feast. Matt got the night off to a good start by showing up with a bottle of really good bourbon that he “infused”” with bacon. I asked him how he did it, he tried to tell me, but either I got bored or he got long winded and I never really figured that one out. Sounds funky and weird at best and gross at worst but tasted damn good, especially on top of the oxycontin I took for the bruised ribs I sustained in my soccer game two days earlier. Chefs are a great fraternity. I’ve shot a lot of them, wolf puck, bobby flay, Mario batali, alain ducase, Anthony bourdain, and tons more. They all have a love for food and taste, and the best love to share it. They also are all obviously in competition with eachother, especially a place like nyc where food is king, but they love talking with eachother and sharing with eachother. I’ve seen it time and time again, chefs seem to have no secretes when it comes to their craft around their peers, or maybe the just like to brag. I pre lit the whole kitchen well before everyone arrived as I knew it was going to be a bit of frenetic dance with 6 great chefs moving around each other doing their thang, and I would be moving seamlessly in and out of them too, so the lighting had to be done before hand. It was like a ballet. But no primas here, just scruffy dudes in whites. When the shit is going down in the kitchen, the only voice a chef hears is his/her own. Its beautiful to watch them in their zone. I get there, too, when I’m shooting. I only hear the left side of my brain talking to my right side. Had fun dancing around this picture for about 30 minutes telling the story with my camera, and trying to get all the chefs in one shot. Then all the final dishes were plated, brought out to the table, the wine was opened, the glasses clinked, and the eating was on. It was kinda like that movie “Big Night”. If you’ve seen it you know what I mean, if not, rent it, its on the short list. It was joyous, uplifting, just good living and good company. The chefs all sampling each others fare, and sharing techniques and ideas. I could see them all scratching their heads when they tasted something they really liked trying to savor and figure it out. I only shot the meal for about 4 or 5 minutes, just 20 frames (I knew I had the shot!). Then I put down my camera and joined them. I felt I owed it to them. for putting up with me and my strobes for so long in the kitchen, and to enjoy this meal with new friends and old without a camera and flashes in their face. I also felt I owed it to the pig. She was the reason we were all there, and if theres one thing that I was sure of that night, its that everyone in the room knew exactly where the meal came from and were as thankful as I was.

New Jesse James poster

2009-05-05T13:35:00.002-04:00

part of my 15 minutes...

2009-04-29T12:25:00.003-04:00

Todd Palin. Alaska. Esquire.

2009-04-21T21:43:00.007-04:00

Todd Palin. Alaska. Esquire. Words I heard through the phone from Michael Norseng over at Esquire. He wanted to know if I wanted to go to Alaska to hang out with Todd Palin for a feature for Esquire’s “American male “ issue (out now). Ridiculous. Like I or anyone else could possibly say no to an assignment like that. He laid it out like this: you and your assistant will fly to Alaska and hang out with Todd for a few days and show the world what it’s like to be him. This kind of assignment is why I take pictures for a living, hanging out with Todd Palin in Alaska. If there is one name that was as dividing as it was uniting last year, it was Palin. Michael wanted a slice of life look at Todd. Get intimate. The story was this; here’s this guy, a mans man, hunter, fisher, snowmobile racer, oil field worker. But also a father and a stay at home dad. Truly a renaissance man for the 21st century. Oh yea, his wife is pretty interesting too. This is the new American male. I really wanted to look at not so much what it’s like to be him, but look at what it means to be him. We spent a few days there in Wasilla, just checking into his world every day and seeing what its like. Snowmobile stuff, hanging out at home with the kids (Sarah was off in Juneau for the week), doing some snowmobiling. Just cool stuff. One connection I did have with him was fishing. We both are pretty serious fisherman and our families have both relied on commercial fishing for a living. My brother is a commercial fisherman in Florida and I fished with him commercially way back when and still do on occasion now when I’m home in Florida and time permits. Todd and I are pretty passionate about our finned friends. He showed me pics of his fishing exploits and we talked about the common bond all fisherman have. I showed him a few pics I keep on my iphone of big fish I’ve caught, he dug it. I never get bored talking fish. We talked fish conservation. We both really want our kids to be able to go out and catch and eat wild caught fish. (sidebar: don’t eat farmed fish. very bad for the environment, you, and most importantly wild fish. go here: http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/salfarprob.html) It was a really cool week hanging with and getting to know him. After a few days of taking pictures I talked to Michael and basically told him “getting great stuff, lots of cool pictures, but he looks like a single dad as Sarah hasn’t been home all week.” She was getting home Sunday, but I was supposed to leave Sunday morning, so we scheduled one more day so we could get a shot of the fam at home. Unfortunately she’s has been lying kinda low after the whole VP thing, and it was touchy getting that scheduled and shot. She did it grudgingly but we got a shot, kinda. They thought the story was going to be focused on her, they even hinted at that. Todd even said to me “the only reason you guys are doing this on me is because of her.” Yea, that true, I agreed with him. She is the draw initially, but the story really was about him. It’s funny because all my friends want to know about her. My liberal and conservative friends all want to know what she’s like. It’s a strange phenom, she’s really a polarizing figure. From the most die-hard conservative to my totally left liberal friends, they all want to know about her. Is she nice? Is she dumb? Did you like her? Is she pretty? Yes, no, yes, yes. I did like them. I like all Alaskans though. Something about that place. I get it. Been there several times and I understand why they try and keep it a secret. Flew home on Monday morning and had a nice look at the cold white snowscape while listening to mick and the boys on exile on main street…tumbling dice will always remind me of this gig now… My favorite picture by far is the last one in this post, the shot of "i love you daddy" on the toolbox. Todd told me Piper wrote that one day. Just hanging in the garage one day with him, saw it and new it was a great shot, summed up the whole story. The one thing I will never forget is watching Todd and Trigg. Besides fishing, the thing we talked about a lot was our babies. My little Henry and his Trigg. Our universes are parallel on those two things, fishing and our babies. He adored that baby so much, and Trigg really lit up for him. It was the only time Todd was totally calm and not uncomfortable or antsy, when he was holding Trigg.

Mens Health bad food...

2009-04-21T16:18:00.005-04:00

I finally got a copy of this story I did for Mens Health last fall. Always hard it seems to get copies of stories I've shot. Mostly I just forget about it as too busy to remember. The story was called "the worst food for kids", and it was about all the crap that people feed their kids. We decided to take it a little over the top and do photo illustrations really, with the kids interacting with the food to make the point. Shot in the studio, good times, good kids, and I must admit, I did eat some of the food that we were shooting and it was tasty. Besides, I'm not a kid, so it's not as bad for me. Here's the tear sheets from the story, and a couple of my favorite out takes that didnt get used....

Where your car goes to die...

2009-04-16T17:01:00.009-04:00

I actually shot this 2 years ago, but came across the tear sheets last week and wanted to post them. It's kinda the perfect metaphor for the US auto industry....dead....I shot it for Allyson Torrisi at Popular Mechanics, I think she knew I would get it and bring home the bacon. The story was a story about what happens to all the cars when they die, as all cars do die eventually. The short answer is they get recycled. Very cool too the way its done. The cars are first crushed flat like a pancake in a big press, then they are picked up by a crane, dropped onto a conveyer belt. The belt slowly brings them up and into the shredder. This machine literally takes a whole car, and rips it into quarter sized pieces. No shit, so cool. When the machine was off, they let me look inside its guts, but i couldn't photograph it because it's proprietary. Basically its a bunch of huge hammers that tear the car apart. Very loud and Edward Scissorhands-ish. They also have some pretty ingenious ways to separate all the different materials that make up a car. Think about it, rubber, plastic, glass, steel, aluminum, copper. Pretty much every kind of material you can think of, a real pain to separate for recycling. They do it pretty well though. It goes through a magnet which picks up magnetic metals, then through water where all the rubber and plastic that floats gets pulled off, until everything is sorted and sent to the recycle place. It's actually pretty big biz. I went to an alimunum smelter and got to hang with the guys there making aluminum ingots out of old cars, that was pretty cool too. Have a look. When i saw these I wanted to post them because of the dying car biz, and also because I was a bit nostalgic, as I shot 4x5 film for this one and havent shot film in over a year now. I miss it, but when i really thought about it, it wasnt really the film shooting that i missed, but just the time and the story that I missed. Whenever I look at a picture I've taken, whether it was Dustin Hoffman in LA in 1999, or this car crushing story 1n 2007, I remember the time perfectly and I just miss the time. I still get to do great stories, do cool things, and take great pictures though, it's just done without film now.....

Western Star Tucks

2009-04-16T07:45:00.006-04:00

Just got some new layouts of the Western Star campaign I’ve been working on this past year. Shot in Maine last fall in a logging camp and then we shot in Little Rock this winter some over the road truckin’. For those of you that don’t know, Western Star is the Mercedes of trucks. They’re owned by Freightliner, the biggest semi truck manufacturer, but it’s their flagship brand, Western Star, that they’re most proud of. More expensive, better built. Ask any trucker and he will tell you about them. Because they have such a stellar reputation as the best built and toughest trucks, the logging industry uses them because logging trucks are beat to hell pulling 100,000 pounds of logs out of the woods over dirt, mud, and gravel roads. Over the road truckers use them too, but it’s in the woods that these trucks really excel and stand out. When I talked to the creative director, Jeff Nichols, he was very passionate about how these trucks should be portrayed. Emotional. Rugged. Not scared of anything. We wanted to show them in a non-traditional way for the trucking industry. Not the standard 3/4 beautiful sunset shots of the trucks, but down and dirty and ready to do anything. No washing or detailing them, just honest. He sold the concept to the client by showing them my hummer stuff from Alaska, my monster truck and NASCAR work, and the Jesse James book. They loved it and loved the concept. We decided to head to the northwest woods of Maine where lots of logging takes place. Beautiful country indeed. Usually there’s some sort of shot list on a job like this, but we didn’t have one. Just ideas of how the shots should look. Dirty. Rugged. The hero of the woods. Its great to work like this, but very hard too. It takes a lot of trust from the client and creative director to just turn you loose as they cross their fingers and hope you produce and all the stars align without a clear shot list….our base camp in Maine was Pelletier brothers logging company in a little town called Herman. The Pelletier brothers own about 15 Western Stars, so our idea was to hang around the lumber yard as guys came in to offload, meet them, shoot them and the truck as they worked, and hop into the cab with them as they drove back out into the woods so we could shoot out there too. Sounds like a pretty sketchy plan, but it worked out believe it or not. Truckers are a pretty crusty bunch, but so are photographers, so we all got along pretty well as my jeans are just as dirty as theirs. Saw a moose calf one day as we were cruising along through the woods, I think we scared the hell out of him. The logging road is gravel and goes about 70 miles through the woods. We went about 40 miles in to various logging camps where we would just kind of watch as trees were cut down, hauled out of the woods, and loaded onto the trucks. Take pictures of the trucks in action. Pretty cool stuff. A forestry officer is there and goes through ahead of the loggers and marks trees to cut. That way there’s no clear cutting and he knows which trees to take for the lowest impact on the forest and the critters that live there, as we all love critters and want to take care of their home. I know I keep saying it over and over, but the best part of this job is the education I get about the world. I get these intense little vignettes about a part of the world and a way of life that I would never get as just a casual traveler. Taking pictures on a job like this is really just exploring my curiosity. The camera is just the vehicle to satisfy my hunger for knowledge, and hungry I am..…. here’s a few of the layouts he finally sent me last week, and a few of my favorite images as well. Enjoy

WWE Backstage!

2009-03-25T12:43:00.010-04:00

I shot a WHOLE ISSUE of WWE Magazine, a special Backstage Issue. Of course, growing up in florida in the 70's and 80's Dusty Rhodes and Hacksaw Jim Duggan were idols of mine. I wasn't much of a Hulkamaniac though....anyway, i thought it would be cool to do this job. The assignment was a backstage special issue, all the WWE superstars backstage hanging out, getting taped up, working out, etc.. I ended up going to 13 different shows all over the country over the course of a couple of months, lots of traveling. At first, I got the stink eye alot from the wrestlers as I was new and they didnt know who this guy was sticking a camera in their faces. These guys are all pretty intense inspite of the shows being basically entertainment. But by about half way through I was just part of the crew and had a good time. Got a couple of stare downs from Vince Mcmahon a couple of times though, the "get that F-ing camera away from me" look, so I gave him lots of space. The highlight of the whole job for me was getting to see Dusty Rhodes a few times. He doesnt wrestle anymore, but his sons do, and he's there backstage alot as a manager in the WWE family. I was too much of a wimp to ask him to do his signature move on me, the "bionic elbow"......Thanks to Christine Reilly for a superb edit and Brant Louck for treating the pics so beautifully, we did good guys...

SKI magazine story in Steamboat

2009-03-18T14:09:00.004-04:00

This is out now in the March/April SKI Magazine. I got a call from Sarah Lavigne over at SKI Magazine asking if i would be interested in going to Steamboat in Colorado to do a story about the NASTAR ski championship being held there. Of course I had never heard of NASTAR as I'm not super duper skier dude, but I do ski so it piqued my interest. She told me NASTAR racing is a program where recreational skiers of all abilities can test their skills on a course with gates just like the pros and "we want that Nathaniel Welch take on a slightly kooky event without being ironic or mean". Sounded like my perfect assignment. The key words are "skiers of all levels" and "kooky" because thats who shows up, skiers of all levels, shapes, ages, sizes and abilities there to test their abilities, meet new peeps, maybe win a medal, and drink lots and lots at the parties at night. Sounded like a fun story as it was about the people and the overall atmosphere of the event, not the actual skiing. I really had a blast on this one, as once again I got to meet so many interesting characters and hang out on a mountain for a few days (and drink lots and lots at night). It was challenging for my assistant and I as we had to shoot pretty much all over the mountain at the different courses and had to lug around the cameras and a profoto 7b (those of who know about the profoto 7b know its a 40 pound beast) all on skis just the 2 of us. There were definatley times when we looked at eachother and thought "do we really need to go to that course on the other side of the mountain"? But of course I had to be the general and rally the troops (promises of a great dinner and whiskey). It was great though as the weather was perfect, the people were great, and we stayed an extra 2 days just to ski and enjoy the mountain without the gear. Although, the best part of the whole deal for me was my contributor picture, as Henry made his print debut to the world. In that snapshot we were on our cruise this xmas and we were playing Lawrence of Arabia.........

more WTA Super Heros Campaign

2009-03-12T00:20:00.000-04:00

Been in Palm Springs this week working on the Womens Tennis Association SUPER HEROS campaign again. I started shooting this campaign back in the spring of last year in Rome, and then again in NYC during the US open. Now we're shooting more of the girls here at the Indian Wells tournament in California. I really love working on this campaign, as I get to shoot some really beautiful women and some really world class athletes all at the same time. So far I've shot most of the best, including Serena and Venus, Sharapova, and Ivanovic, and most of the up and comers and almost retired. I love coming to Palm Springs, I've worked here a couple of times before and fell in love with it here (but only in the winter). One of my fondest memories is of a day I spent with Tammy Faye Baker here back in 1999. It was a surreal experience for sure hanging out with her here. A kitshy, surreal place and a kitshy, surreal subject; they really were made for each other and it made perfect sense once I met her. Spent all day with her in her condo on the golf course. I ended up shooting her in her bathtub, although it was a tight portrait of her face, I used the bathtub because the bathtub walls truly were the only surface in the house that was clean, all the walls in the house were full of pictures and bad paintings. Another reason I love Palm Springs is the thrift stores. Some of the best I've been to, lots of stylish old men leaving their white loafers and brass button coats in the areas thrift stores. I've got a leather shirt I bought here way back when that I still adore and wear from time to time. I need to dig up that old photo of tammy faye and put it up here... heres a few behind the scene snaps my assistant took, an image of Ivanovic and one of Lisicki, and a layout from the campaign being used now. There's a Times Square billboard up now too, I need to get a shot of it!

GLAMOUR magazine 2...

2009-03-04T16:50:00.000-05:00

Here's the opening spread to the GLAMOUR magazine piece on abortion, as well as a related story I shot last year for MORE magazine. The MORE shoot was about abortion also, but was a feature on Leslee Unruh, the ultra right wing abortion foe. She has been trying to outlaw abortion in her state, South Dakota. Go HERE to read a full bio of her. I think the press hammers her pretty hard, as this story did, but she seems to not mind as long as she can be heard. I actually liked her and enjoyed our shoot and time together. I love the midwest too, and Sodak is a pretty cool place. The best part of my job is scouting. I scouted for this location the day before, it was in a city park on the edge of town. I get so see alot of cool places that i normally wouldnt get to see when i scout. Didnt have time to get a permit so just winged it, which is risky but in editorial photography sometimes its better to ask forgiveness than permission. Anyway, found a great location, god gave me the perfect sky for the story, and the stars all aligned to make a great picture. hope you like it....nw

Jesse James shoot

2009-03-04T12:24:00.000-05:00

Shot Jesse James again last week in LA. He's got a new tv show coming out on SPIKE tv soon. It's called JESSE JAMES IS A DEAD MAN. Not sure what its about except Jesse doing some crazy shit. I've been shooting Jesse for a long time now. The first time was for GQ back in 2000 when he was inventing the whole motorcycle/gear head TV show genre. He was the first, now there's dozens of others. Of course my best work with him was the book, JESSE JAMES AND HIS BEAUTIFUL MACHINES. Truly one of my proudest pieces of work. Anyway, it's nice shooting him these days because he trusts me, and that is the hardest thing to get from a subject. He's also a pretty good photographer himself. He's got a mark 3 1ds and a Hasselblad H1 with a leaf back. Serious cameras. He shoots alot of the stuff for the WCC website and catalogues. The picture I posted here is one of my fav's, but the finished product will have a background dropped in by SPIKE of fire and wrecked cars and stuff, I'll put that up when i get it. The other pics are behind the scene stuff that one of my assistants shot....

GLAMOUR magazine this month...

2009-02-17T12:25:00.000-05:00

Got a big feature in Glamour magazine this month. I spent some time on a really great story, but a really hard, delicate one too. The story was about abortion, and the assignment was to photograph women that have had them for a first person, testimonial sort of piece for the magazine. Really tell the story of having an abortion, what it's like, what regrets they may or may not have had, etc.. I liked the piece because it was fair to both sides of the issue in that it didnt treat having an abortion as something you do without alot of thought and introspection. Conversely it didnt treat having an abortion as some sort of whimsy, where you flip a coin to decide what to do. These were real stories from real women that have had them. honest. poignant. emotional. I also went to an abortion clinic in seattle to photograph the clinic, and also women coming in to have one, but without showing their faces. tough. "hello, I'm a photographer for Glamour magazine. Do you mind if I stick my camera in your face while you're in the waiting room waiting to go in and have an abortion?" It was definatley grad school for being sensitive and able to read a situation on a shoot. Of course i had the clinic backing me up and letting them know I was legit, but still hard as hell. Here's a link to the story on Glamour.com. They only used 1 pic online, but it's a good read so have a look. erLike most good stories I shoot, I learned so much more about an issue from being in the thick of it than i could ever learn from school or reading the paper. This job is great. Here's some of my favorite pictures from the various shoots, i hope you enjoy them...

Womens Tennis Campaign...

2008-06-26T16:33:00.000-04:00

Italy-May 2008
I went to rome in the middle of may to shoot the new “superheros” ad campaign for the Womens Tennis Association. I got a call from the creative director, Tina Lauffer, asking if I would be interested in going to rome to photograph 20 of the top womens tennis stars today. Rome? Spring? Tennis? Yes! It made perfect sense to phototgraph the best tennis players in the world in the birthplace of competitive sport, rome. The campaign is built around the idea that the ladies are normal people living everyday glamorous lives, and every now and then they transform into the super athletes that we know them as. Think charlies angels meets wonder woman. I was to photograph them in their tennis gear in 2 scenarios. One was a strong, cocky, heroic portrait, and the other was an action shot. The portrait was fairly straightforward and easy to get. We had great hair and makeup, a fan, and a stage so I could shoot from a really low angle. The action shot was a bit more difficult to get, as we were in the studio and space was limited. The big surprise to me though was how great the girls were at nailing the action shot. They were very comfortable making these short, intense moves up on my stage. Here’s a couple of early layouts for ads, and of course yours truly couldn’t resist getting in front of the camera for a couple of snaps!

Shoot for Porfolio magazine

2008-04-21T09:03:00.000-04:00

I got a call last Monday from portfolio magazine, asking if i could do a shoot for them on Thursday for a new section in the back of the book. The section is called "transitions" or "moving on" or something like that. It's a profile/q and a/photo of a business person that is moving on to another job. This assignment was to shoot David Neeleman, the CEO of Jet Blue airlines. David is leaving Jet Blue next month to start a new low cost airline in Brazil, much in the same model as Jet Blue. Last winter during a blizzard, Jet Blue left some planes on the tarmac at JFK for 9 hours! It was and is a huge story and led directly to some passengers rights laws being written. Jet Blue really took it hard, and David was the the management that was hung out to dry. The real irony is that Jet Blue is truly the only airline that I'm at all loyal to, and the only airline i will remotely stick up for. In fact, I'm flying them again this Wednesday. I have hated all of the airlines for as long as i can remember. When Jet Blue came along it was a breath of fresh air. I even have pet names for all of the airlines, northworst, us scareways, etc.. I decided to do it because I didn't have to travel, and I had shot David 3 times in the past for other magazines and had a relationship with him. I shot him for Fortune Small Business magazine over the years, and David and I always got along and the pictures always looks good. I even had given him a print from one of the shoots as a gift. Anyway, i went out to JFK on Tuesday to scout the location, which was the jet Blue corporate office out by JFK. Of course there weren't many options to take the picture, but as always, I had to find something to make it work. I looked at his office (he had the 11x14 print i had given him framed on the wall) and I also looked outside on the plaza on the side of the building. The photo editor, Louisa Anderson, mentioned that they would love a picture with a blue sky background, as the picture needed to run full page with text on it. After scouting, we decided to shoot on the plaza first and then try another shot in his office. We also hired a prop stylist to get some vintage suitcases, (get it, moving on) and make it look a little more stylized. I was told I would have 45 minutes with David, but knowing David, he would lose focus after about 20 minutes. He has (admittedly) ADD and he has talked about it a lot in interviews and how how won't medicate himself to help with it because he doesn't want to lose his edge, and it really does define who he is as a CEO in a lot of ways. The shoot went off pretty smoothly, David was in good spirits and had fun with it, here's a couple from the shoot. Here's a couple of my favorites....

my baby boy

2008-04-14T08:09:00.000-04:00

here's a picture me and my little boy, Henry Nathaniel Welch. He was born august 19th, 2007, and it was the light bulb moment that you hear about. I finally "get it" now. Why we're here, what our path should be. I love watching him learn about the world, because the irony truly is that i learn so much more from him than he could ever learn from me....

finally a blog head!

2008-04-10T18:00:00.000-04:00

finally decided to join the blog world. now i share everything i do with all of my fans!