Category Archives: Portraits in places

The most moving assignment I’ve ever had

I don’t think he could stop, even if he wanted to.  Mark Meyers is a wicked fast marathoner  I shot for Runner’s World on a cold December day in Wisconsin.  My spectacular assistant David Ettinger served as placeholder as Meyers booked around the track:

Still, keeping him in the frame proved challenging.

Tenacity yielded results, but didn’t slow Meyers.  He kept running.

I am grateful that he paused here to correct the Earth’s rotation:

Meyers’ recent marathon times are in the 2:40′s.  As a fellow runner I’m in awe at this level of ability:  by the time I’m finishing  up he’s already home and half-way through Chariots of Fire.

Tray Sheikh: Grant Achatz at Next

I spent a day at the restaurant Next photographing food, Michelin three-star chef Grant Achatz (pronounced ACKets) and the general kitchen commotion for Cooking Light’s 2011 Chef Awards issue.  Above is a placeholder, my loupe standing in for a truffled egg custard with salted cod roe.  We swapped plates to present a serving for one:

The menu that opened the restaurant was titled Paris, 1906 – Escoffier at the Ritz, and drew from Auguste Escoffier’s recipes.

Supremes de Poussin and poached cucumbers, filled with chicken mousse, wrapped in salt pork.  Beautiful, delicate.  Love the plates.  Yum, probably.   I regret the food wasn’t cooked to eat, but rather to be seen, so not entirely edible. Rotated 90 degrees clockwise they’d resemble a famous Japanese cartoon character, I think.

Chef Achatz in the kitchen and front-of-house -

I’d watched him eviscerate sea urchins in the kitchen at Trio in Evanston, Illinois some nine years earlier – taking a portrait then for Elle magazine.  One dish I’d shot then included a heated rock, topped by a dry oak leaf, then covered by a glass.  Accompanying a perfectly prepared red meat – I can’t remember which – to the table,  the glass was lifted and the smoke from the oak leaf wafted.  Cool.  Scans from film:

Work in Next the kitchen was performed with relaxed precision and extraordinary focus.  It was a real treat to watch.

Chicago in the Beer and Now

Is there a draft in here?

I spent some time photographing beer and its Chicago co-conspirators for Imbibe magazine, working at four notable spots: Revolution Brewing (the cover), Hopleaf, The Map Room and Owen and Engine.

Drywall stilts come in handy -

Revolution Brewing is located about eight doors south of my studio.  How convenient.

Josh Deth, proprietor

Cask conditioning in the basement. And Little 500 bike parking.

in case you want to show loyalty to the Revolution -

The Hopleaf is an institution in the Andersonville neighborhood of Chicago. Owner Michael Roper is remarkably passionate and knowledgable about All Things Beer and Chicago politics.  I’m just guessing here, but I imagine the two go hand in hand.

Michael Roper, owner, Michael & Louise's Hopleaf Bar

 

The poured beer in each picture is Allagash, from Maine's Allagash Brewing Company, Portland. Roper's choice.We eventually found the Map Room in Bucktown. Check out the taps that run along the driver's side of the bar: none of them have the big ad levers. This way they can gang up more taps than usual and the bartender can work across the bar without getting lost in a forest of levers. Cool, eh?She too is drinking an Allagash.

A Reissdorf Kolsch, somewhere in the South Pacific.

Owen & Engine is more a restaurant than bar or pub, although it specializes in beers, and the pairing of those beers with their menu.  They have a certified cicerone on staff to hep you with that.

Cicerone Elliott Beier with his Two Brothers Hop Juice double IPA

Yes, Beier.

 

 

 

 

"Hoss" Rye Marzen, Great Divide Brewing Company

Thanks to Elliott I am a reformed hop-head.  I now favor bitter.  Good stuff, that.

 

Sister Sarah goes Rollerblading

In full habit, 80-something degrees in Central Illinois. Why not? A bundle of positive energy, Sister Sarah Roy rolled around the academic quad at the University of Illinois smiling and engaging practically everyone in conversation. The assignment was for Ladies’ Home Journal – a story about women who wore clothing that indicated their religious affiliation.  A favorite few:


Little Egypt, Deep Water

Located at the very southern tip of Illinois, Cairo (they pronounce it CAY-roh here) is at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers in an area we call Little Egypt. Though the place is no stranger to flooding, it’s been an epic year. A dismal, worst-in-recorded-history kind of year. Right now the rivers are up at about 60.75 feet, and though there are walls built to hold it back, it’s clear that creative solutions might be necessary to keep the water out. This week, the Army Corps of Engineers decided, in an effort to keep Cairo above water, to blow holes in some of the nearby levees in order to redirect flood water to farmland. Understandably, farmers are not happy with this.

I’ve been to Cairo. Sadly, it’s been downhill ride there ever since shipping by river lost out to rail a long, long time ago. The streets were practically vacant when I arrived to complete a Chicago magazine assignment to photograph the Illinois stretch of the Mississippi river. I suppose it didn’t help much that it was raining, but I guess I did get a chance to photograph Cairo in its natural habitat.

When threatened by flood they fit this and other openings with gates.

Fort Defiance park is the southernmost point in Illinois -

Daryl Shemwell still runs a Barbeque place there, but I believe all the residents have been evacuated and his street’s been closed. Sinkholes.

Two Senks, Two Markells

from the Philadelphia and Delaware shoots, respectively.

against concrete with floral wallpaper impressions

in one of their many design spaces

at Legislative Hall, Dover

one more from Legislative Hall

Bronze statue one

Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) statue, Minneapolis, MN

an iphone picture – I had 30 minutes with Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel for BusinessWeek at their Minneapolis headquarters (outtake below).  Nearby, Mary Tyler Moore menaced tourists with a metal hat -

Gregg Steinhafel, CEO Target Corporation

Display’s The Thing

Light-slaved, hard-wired.  Note tennis ball.  Very important to have at least two on every job.

Dennis May, CEO hGregg

No bugs were harmed in the making of this photograph

I’m told the tiny red spots infesting this Forbes picture are ladybug pretenders – Japanese Biting Lady Beetles.  I’m grateful these brave humans weren’t meant to be grinning.

Rubber stamp tool rubber stamp tool rubber stamp tool rubber stamp tool…..


I think the retouch took about 30 minutes to find and vanquish all of ‘em -

the easy one

not so much

Three weeks before the NBA Draft

I worked with Jonny Flynn on his first photo shoot, this for Dime Magazine.  Smiling, amiable, and entirely without entourage, he connected easily.  Selected 6th in the draft, he went to the Minnesota Timberwolves.  I wish him well.  The magazine sent a video crew to cover the first of Flynn’s ‘Draft Diaries’ – (they’ve disabled embedded video so you need to click through to YouTube)

The shoot footage starts at around 2:07 -

The studio that day:Attack Athletics pro training center, Chicago

A few from the shoot:

Timberwolves Point Guard Johnny Flynn

Timberwolves Point Guard Johnny Flyn

Timberwolves Point Guard Johnny Flynn