Moving Day

A lot of changes here ...

This will be my last blog post to this blogger account, as I'm now hosting my own wordpress blog. But more than that, I've changed my last name. Legally. Really, it was the only way to get my green card, avoid debt, and run from the mafia all in one fell swoop. Okay no - I've simply changed it to my grandmother's maiden name. Legally - it's legit, permanent, forever and ever.

So, please saunter over to my new blog address:

Here's to new beginnings. See you there.

Time wastes too fast

As she lay dying at 34, Martha and Thomas Jefferson wrote a passage from their favorite novel: Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

[by Martha] Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity life follows my pen. The days and hours of it are flying over our heads like clouds of a windy day never to return...

[by Thomas] and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, every absence which follows it, are preludes to the eternal separation which we are shortly to make!

Alessandra Ferri

I only wish I'd discovered ballet earlier so I could see Alessandra Ferri perform before retirement.

My new biggest wish is to photograph her at some point ...

Nylon magazine

My portrait of Leanne Marshall heads Nylon's fashion page today.
article's here

Baltimore Messenger article on Serena Lambert

(click on photo to read article)

Cruel World

(click for youtube site)
Cruel World pas de deux: Julie Kent and Robert Hill
a beautiful piece that was written for them specifically

The Leaves are Fading

Antony Tudor - "The Leaves are Fading" pas de deux
Music: Dvorak
Click the image for youtube video.

Serena

Yesterday I went to Johns Hopkins to meet four-year-old Serena Lambert (with her mother Becky above), who is fighting Stage 4, high-risk neuroblastoma (a cancer that spread from her adrenals throughout her body). During the past year since her diagnosis, she's had seven high-dose chemotherapy treatments, a bone marrow transplant from her own body, and 12 rounds of radiation. And despite it all, she's the brightest little thing I've ever seen. She is bravery personified, going through a day-to-day barrage of procedures without complaint. And perhaps because of it all, there's a wisdom in her beautiful eyes.

I only had a little time with her, as her body had a bad reaction to the transfusion, which manifested itself in some scary symptoms like trouble breathing. During, Becky seemed so calm, as if it was another day at the office. Only after reading her blog did I learn that she was as scared as the rest of us.

I photographed Serena for her family, and also for an upcoming article in a local Baltimore paper to raise awareness for a fundraiser for Serena on July 25th. Anyone who is in the area, please try to make it out to spread some positive energy or give a donation - anything you can, the family can use both. I'm told the entire treatment costs around $1.5m, and though they have amazing health care, it only covers - at best - 90%.

For more information, download the fund raising event flyer or take a look at Serena's family's blog.

It's impossible to take life for granted after seeing such courage, acceptance, and understanding in a girl who's barely known anything else ...

Last weekend, I had a conversation with a homeless man in downtown Manhattan. It seems unrelated, but now I can't help but think of it juxtaposed with Serena. I just listened, and couldn't even get the chance to ask his name as he recounted his life story. He was in his mid forties with light crystal blue eyes and wore an old hospital bracelet. His father dealt drugs and his mother was an addict, so he and his brother would steal his dad's stash to sell at school and take all his mother's methadone when - later - she tried to get clean. He was an alcoholic and had tears running down his face when telling me about his brother's death. This man lives wherever he can live, sleeps wherever he can sleep, and beats himself down relentlessly. Beating his body down is his full-time job, and yet he's still going, heart beating strong, stumbling around the city and spending his time on earth aimless because he's broken - because nobody ever gave a shit about him. Ever.

And then there's Serena, with the world to live for, an unbelievable family around her and whole galaxy of friends or even near strangers who happen to have fallen in love with her spirit. And all of us in her world (though far removed, I'd like to consider myself its newest member) are about the task of willing her body to make good on its end of the bargain. But hope and willpower are a damn good medicine, and the Lamberts have more of it than I've ever seen, and for good reason. After meeting her, you can't help but think that full remission is not a possibility, but just a matter of time.

(click for larger photos)

is it wrong to love editing?

putting together Kristin Diable's music video.
(click to make bigg[er])

"The cure for anything is saltwater — sweat, tears, or the sea."

- Karen Blixen

the way to live

A few weeks back an amazing human being, Justin Hilbun, passed away. He was Kristin Diable's bassist, the artist for whom we shot a music video back in April. He was also her best friend and roommate.

I only met Justin once during one of their Brooklyn shows - had a beer with him, and thumped away on his upright bass for a few minutes reminding me how much I missed my own. But even in that brief encounter, I could sense what an amazing, generous and good person he was. Full of a lightness.

Last weekend he had a true New Orleans jazz funeral. My heart's still with Kristin and everyone who knew him, but he is only missed so dearly because he lived so well, and for the sake of so many others. The procession, sadness and merriment that day all illustrate what he meant to the world.

Bank accounts and lawn care seem so irrelevant; only people count.


photo credit: Sandra Dixon (lightly borrowed from Sandra's Facebook page)

so empty ... so estranged ...

First, Listen to Ray LaMontagne's "Empty".



This song moves me, and his story is fascinating. Ray was working at a shoe factory in Maine when one morning at 4 am his alarm clock played Stephen Stills' "Treetop Flyer". Something in him woke, and he decided to become a musician.

It's in every one of us, and reminds me of a Henry Miller quote (also written in an old blog post of mine): "Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of the creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there."

Ray discovered it suddenly in his late twenties, one day before getting out of bed.

It also reminds me of countless too-early mornings working jobs that are an even trade of weeks and months for rent and food. When work is Work, days are long-distance races; noon is a checkpoint, afternoons are willpower, and evenings are for hanging on. But mornings .... mornings are clear and quiet. Those, I remember.

The memories are tactile - of coffee in styrofoam with powdered creamer on a workbench while dawn is still sorting itself out. They're the first hard start of the diesel, or wiping chips off an oiled lathe and fastening the first tool while the subtle scent of mineral spirits flavors the still air and your head hangs meditative in a distant relative of sleep before the rest of the world catches up and spins with you.

It's no wonder that, in these moments, people like Ray find themselves.

something looks familiar

I ran in to a Starbucks this morning way too early for caffeine with a quickness, when I saw something familiar out of the corner of my eye. Half-awake and blurry, it was surreal to see one of my promo photos from our Paris shoot last fall ...

Helluva start to the day.

much love from the online photographer

I owe a big thanks to Mike and everyone who commented on The Online Photographer Blog. After referring Melody Gardot's album, nobody could seem to find the photographer of the album cover since my name is misspelled in the credits. I sent a note along proudly claiming responsiblity for the work, and Mike wrote up this post:



And since Mike's evidently the man, my site and blog have blown up with hits today from around the world. Just settling in after a shoot day, I wanted to take a minute to thank Mike, and say hi to everyone out there.

HENRY: It's to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It's what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Evey other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy ... we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What's left? What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared - she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it's gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain."
DEBBIE: Has Annie got someone else then?
HENRY: Not as far as I know, thank you for asking
DEBBIE: Apologies.
HENRY: Don't worry.
DEBBIE: Don't you. Exclusive rights isn't love, it's colonization.
HENRY: Christ almighty. Another ersate masterpiece. Like Michelangelo working in polystyrene.
DEBBIE: Do you know what your problem is, Henry?
HENRY: What?
DEBBIE: Your Latin mistress never took you into the boiler room.
HENRY: Well, at least I passed.
DEBBIE: Only in Latin.

....


HENRY: What was that? (Pause) Oh ... yes. No commitments. Only Bargains. The trouble is I don't really believe it. I'd rather be an idiot. It's a kind of idiocy i like. 'I use you because you love me. I love you so use me. Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual ... your credit is infinite, I'm yours,I'm comitted ... It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst. Is that romantic? Well, good. Everything should be romantic. Love, work, music, literature, virginity, loss of virginity ...

-Tom Stoppard."The Real Thing"

just a few odds and ends

click for site. little cardboard robots, dumb as dirt, let loose in NYC with instructions on their flag to point them in the right direction. every time, they reached their goal without being stolen, pissed on, kicked, or just generally sabotaged.
The website says they're "driven primarily by human empathy for an anthropomorphized object" and that their story is one "of people's willingness to engage with a creature that mirrors human characteristics of vulnerability, of being lost, and of having intention without the means of achieving its goal alone."
Coincidentally, it sounds like how I got around while living in Brooklyn. Intention, without a means of achieving anything alone.

more "Gypsy Queen" video production shots

Well, it's been a few months and our baby - the music video Elizabeth Orne and I made for Kristin Diable - is still in the editing process. The editor is working hard on getting it done as soon as possible and we're all in the great dance of back-and-forth between technical details and edit notes. At the moment, "Gypsy Queen" video is in London being worked on by a fine surgeon of an editor who's relaxing from his more-than-full-time job of editing Apple commercials (among other things) to ... edit more projects.

In the meantime, I have a link to more behind-the-scenes shots from a great photographer and really nice guy named Eric M. Townsend.


(click on image for web gallery).


aaaaand that's me - the shadowey lurker to the left.

I have to admit it's pretty amazing to head to Eric's site and (at least for the moment )see our shoot front and center above some other small acts like Bruce Springstein, The Flaming Lips, and REM.

Eric came by set to shoot the process and even the cover of Kristin's new EP "Extended Play". I have to give it to both of them .. after a 16-hour day shooting, they were able to bang out a cover shot in five minutes in front of the abandoned theater that was our location while the rest of us were loading the vans and looking around the lawn for our sanity.

more new work

experimenting with the modern ...
with makeup artist Victoria Stiles and Leslie @ Basic Models NYC






(click images to view larger)

One in 8 Million

This is what it's about: documenting those who wander the world alongside us. Vignettes of humanity.

NYTimes photo essay series "One in 8 Million".

This series is really amazing - each slideshow highlights one person's story, set to the audio of their interview.



I have a slew of projects lined up for the summer, and this series is such an inspiration to me to see them through.

The end of this month, John and his family open their roadside stand selling produce north of Leesburg. Four generations of the family work the farm and the stand. I met them through his grandfather - an amazing man named Bob who has great stories of Kerouac-style NYC cafeterias in the 40's and 50's where you could eat for pocket change. I'm set to get to know the family and hopefully, faithfully tell their story.

There are other, similar projects lining up - and they remind me of why I got into this field in the first place. Spence Poore is in his 80's fixes antique tractors and has a collection of them in his shed. Then there is a personal project shooting tall ship sailors both underway and in classical 4x5 portraits a la Avedon's "American West". I narrowly missed sailing down to Jacksonville with them on "Pride of Baltimore II" a few weeks back, but I'll hitch a ride a bit later in the season.

Everyone has a story.

This should be a good summer.

photographers are the toughest subjects

self portrait on a day like any other

I've been in search of a new portrait of myself for the bio section of my new site (once it's up). I've gone a few routes, including sitting for my friend Abby Greenawalt, who did an amazing job. But even though she's very talented and the shots are really amazing, there's something about me being overly critical of myself. Any other subject, and I'd have no problem. Maybe photographers should never be allowed to have anything to do with their own portrait ...

And so I come a little closer to using a stick figure drawing on the new bio page - the emaciated version of me.

oh Polaroid ... don't leave me ...

How do I turn back the clock 20 years so I can spend a good long career as a photographer shooting film and - more specifically - Polaroid?


(click to make 'uge)
Model: Leslie Wilcox w/ Basic NYC
Camera nerd info: Speed Graphic 4x5 w/ Kodak Aero Ektar 7" 2.5 @ f/5.6, ~1/2s shutter

I made the photo above last week, exhausting the last of my Polacolor Tungston. And as stocks of polaroid in the world - all expired - slowly wilt and go the way of the polar bear, I come to realize just how invaluable they really are.

The combination of the tones and texture of the grain and the paper are so unique, with a subtle linearity the grain takes as it follows the fiber of the print.

Even this little one from the back of the hassy captures my heart:



So I've found my aesthetic just in time to let it go. In some ways, shooting polaroids like this amounts to good training for post processing. Digital has become the modus operandi of convenience even for the biggest studios. Alex - the assistant I hired in Paris - had a great anecdote about Demarchelier. They were on location entrenched in mountain snow with light so good, Alex said you could literally taste its tartness and smell its crispness. "And here's this guy," he said, "shooting fucking digital".

Though the old techniques are coming back using new technology, replacing high-gloss images that are so crisp it's deafening (every pore snaps to the beat of "when you're a jet ..") and you can't hear yourself think.

But it's changing.
The thrill is gone.
Tones are more important than edges.

As a sign of this, the other day my site had a hit from Steven Meisel's studio. Someone had searched "Lilian Bassman Darkroom" and found my post on some of her work. Maybe we'll see a bit of the Bassman aesthetic crop up in a future Meisel shoot. I'm interested to see that, as I love the bleaching techniques she uses - and the way brush strokes (or cottonball strokes) come out of the shadows. Knowing Meisel's team is amazing, I want to see what they're capable of.

Even now as I look through Bassman's work, I see it informing the image above - little subtleties that caught my eye - the nape of a neck, or how the hands become so gentle, or the lines of a nose ...



Oh yeah - one important thing about that polaroid above... the best shot of the day: when I pulled the 'roid, this is how it came out:



The film is 4 years out of date and doesn't work as it's supposed to sometimes. But it was such an amazing half an image, that I went back the the digital files, pulled one, shopped it and shopped it and shopped it some more - and completed the file.

So it's not an either/or - it's always a dance between the newest technology and the timeless techniques that inform the final aesthetic.

no shame

(click to view large)
It's tough times all around these days.

A little while ago I was driving up Rt. 4 in rural Maryland when I passed three little girls sitting on the side of the road in front of a pickup and utility trailer. Just shy of 8am, they were helping their mom sell odds and ends - and the image was so striking, I stopped and talked with them for a little while. Times are tough, and they're out most weekends to make a little extra. Their mother was so embarrassed to admit this - and when I asked if I could take a photo of the girls, at first she didn't want the little one to hold her can of generic cola even though I liked it, and thought she should keep it with her. She said it was "poverty cola". I insisted it was called having three kids. Just people doing what people do: survive.

Then today while working a job at a surgeon's office up in a really really nice part of northern DC/MD, I walked a few blocks for coffee in the full crowd of noontime lunch, passing at least twenty or thirty people. They were a mix of professionals and of well quaffed shoppers heading to Saks, Tiffanys, etc., and all had one thing in common: they looked absolutely miserable. Along with their Yves st Laurent, they wore a mix of worry and severe distaste either for their own lives or for ours ... or both. No eye contact - no acknowledgement. No life.

Leaning is a healing form of contact. If you can afford to be an island, the world is a lonely place.

It reminded me of the humanity laid bare in Steinbeck, and more recently of the audio interviews Studs Terkel did of people who lived through the great depression. Please take a moment and listen to some of them here as Act 1 of NPR's "This American Life" episode 368. They start around 6 minutes into the hour-long broadcast.

I'm floored by the wisdom of these voices.

More from the pocket camera

I've been on a kick lately of getting things done - with a vengeance. Up early, doing yoga again after a longish stint of not being so good to my poor corpse. And part of that regimen has been finally running the backlog of film from the little russian rangefinder I've taken to keeping in my pocket this past winter.

Here's the latest batch of the Brooklyn roommates and other things I stumbled across.
(click on images to enlarge)

history

I was going through some archives last night when I found this shot, taken during a break on a day Melody was mixing "My One and Only Thrill" downstairs at Capital Records while I was upstairs working on our design of the album cover. She's stretching due to a bad back, one of the complications of the accident that inevitably led to her career as a musician.

The room is studio A, where Sinatra recorded some of his biggest hits, and the Steinway was Cole Porter's.

This image made me think of David Burnett, a friend of Robb Scharetg who I've had the pleasure of meeting over beers one night at a local hang. He has over forty years of covering ... everything. Take a minute and click on the link to his site; it's inspirational, and reminds me that following your camera long enough will let you in on some amazing moments in the history of things.

If I disassociate myself from this photo and what it may mean to me personally, it's a moment in history when a beautiful girl with an amazing talent takes her place in the history of jazz greats.

more lost and found

I took this last October as an agency test with a new up-and-coming model named Clara with Ford NYC. She's rapidly going from the woods of West Virginia to some really big fashion spreads in New York and Europe - all before she's graduated high school. It's interesting what this industry sees in girls like her and can pull from them. By that I suppose I mean me, though I don't feel as if I did any engineering - just captured a moment.

For engineered, see her latest work:


For the sake of juxtaposition, this is Clara in the wild:


I had some digital files, but also shot some film with a Hasselblad. For me, it also highlights just how much I like shooting to film when it's warranted. There's a tool for every job - sometimes it's digital, and other times it's film. For portraits such as these, I'm simply addicted to the quality and feel of a piece of 6cm celluloid. It's amazing how many times people - even somewhat experienced models - say they've never been photographed with film before. A really good mentor named Robb taught me what I know of film. He shoots medium and large format and has cases of filters that he uses expertly to give his work the most unique look.

Though I used to have my own darkroom I abandoned it for digital until I started working with him a few years ago (has it been that long?)... Though digital was really good for me - allowing me to shoot my face off for a few years and expedite the process of going from mostly crap images, to honing my eye enough to need fewer frames to get the shot.

I can only imagine how few frames Irving Penn needs - or Avedon needed. I've worked on my own shoots, and assisted others for some big magazines, and seen the moment of chaos when you have fifteen minutes to get it right. I've worked with Jeff Reidel on 4x5 film for GQ and Robyn Twomey on leaf digital for Time, and realize there's a definite place for each depending on your shooting style. Mine - like so many other photographers these days - is somewhere in between. But photos like the one above remind me not to rely too much on the easier of the two.

shh. listen

I heard some of Bebo while listening to Astor Piazzolla radio on Pandora today.

Editorial with Leanne Marshall

I love working with artists of all kinds - musicians, actors, performers; it's a focus I want to work toward more with my personal work. To that end, last week I shot with Leanne Marshall, the winner of last season's "Project Runway". It really was fantastic meeting her in her new Brooklyn space, and we had a really fun couple hours shooting.

She's a beautiful, charming girl with an amazing talent and a disarming smile who likes to work on the floor rather than at a table. I'm glad to have made a new friend and look forward to when our paths cross again.





Here is the best image of the day:


And a two alternates:

Leanne's model Karalyn from the show was nice enough to come around for these shots, and to thank her, I've cropped her head off. Sorry Karalyn - I have a few with your head that (of course) look great, but this crop was just too appealing not to leave.

Top of the itunes charts

Melody wrote the the other day with this fantastic news - No. 1 in seven countries! I have to say I'm proud of having even a small part to play in the contribution to such a beautiful album by shooting the cover image. I'm also so extremely happy for her success; she deserves all of it and more. If you haven't heard her music you need to check it out on itunes because these tracks will be classics.

On a separate note, I just realized I'm credited as "Nicholas Jhara". You know, the "h" key is just so close to the "b" ... 3 centimeters of oops, and now Barnes and Noble, Allmusic, FYE ... all list this Jhara joker rather than me ...

c'est la vie ...

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

-ee cummings

shooting up houses ...

I photographed an interior for Whitney Stewart, and I'm proud to announce the project won the Washington Spaces 2009 Design Competition. Whitney is a fantastic designer and she and her associate Jennifer were so much fun to work with. I have to also thank Tricia Joyce for allowing us access to her home and being such a beautiful host.


Competiton Website