Author: Marco Garcia

Friday Night Lights, no wait…Birds? Ho, brah…

Friday Night Lights, no wait...Birds? Ho, brah...

Audrey and I went to Kauai a few weeks to work on a story about Friday night football games and how an endangered species of birds has threatened a traditional and community way of life.

The story appeared all over the country and you can read it here or from here.  The New York Times ran it on their web page but you have to sign up to see the story.

I won’t repeat what Audrey wrote about but I will mention something she did not.  In my opinion, much of the community in Kauai seems split on how outsiders, namely mainlanders and haoles, have come to the Islands pushing their (righteous) ideas of what is good for the state with little regard to what the citizens of the state want.  Yet, we surely can’t allow the peoples to just get whatever the majority wants.  The birds are endangered and do need some protection from us; however, how far will environmentalist go to ensure we protect the earth from ourselves?  Many would advocate such radical policies that we’d go back to the stone age so there has to be a balance.  All in all, the County dropped the ball on not placing proper lighting into the existing stadium (the County can’t get a guarantee that the lights will be a solid solution so why spend the money on what might not work–and still be responsible for dead birds) but the county disregarded the feelings of the community.

You sometimes have to wonder who has the smaller brains, us or the birds…

VOTE.

Twins

Twins

This is a small post on twins…no nothing about real twins (but on my photo, I can’t be too sure but nevertheless…) its about two girls I found in Shinjuku.  Two girls with equally obnoxious bows in their hair.  I mean obnoxious…Incarnate Word HS obnoxious.  Yet it was fashion…Doublemint Gum fashion yet they are probably not.

What do I know?  It was hot.  It was a busy day around Shinjuku.  Its a moment.

Senator Inouye

Senator Inouye

A few weeks ago, the Washington Post commissioned me last month to spend the day with US Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii.

My memories of the Senator stretch back to eight grade when I first saw this one armed man on TV during the Iran-Contra hearing where he chaired a special committee investigating Reagan’s alleged affair in selling weapons to Iran via Israel to help fund the Contras in Nicaragua.   From Wikipedia…Inouye stated the following:

“There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.

How true his statement…

The Post was writing a profile piece on the aging Senator and writer Jason Horowitz and I followed Inouye for day in September. Much of the work was fairly generic…the Senator at a military ceremony, at a ground breaking…etc…nothing earth shattering.  But most intriguing was a moment granted to us with the Senator and his wife at their condo in Waikiki.

The immaculately clean (and sterile) condo faced Waikiki with Diamond head towering in the background.  I had humped along a sent of lights in the event I were to do a formal portrait but time dictated I needed to snap something very quick and catch a moment instead of formality.  In most these cases, writers, especially staff writers, are prone to long interviews giving photographers very little time to take pictures.  We only had an hour before the Senator was scheduled to attend a ground breaking ceremony for a project he helped fund federally.

I kept my cool with time as Jason engaged the Senator and got an earful of political history as Inouye “talked story” with us.  Being the master politician he is, the Senator side-stepped, hopped, dodged, ignored…whatever you want to call it…any hard questions Jason threw at him.  It was a graduate level course in politicking!

When I finally got a chance to capture the Senator’s likenesss, we walked out onto his balcony and I shot him overlooking his kingdom and the blue ocean beyond.   Many of my shots I found to canned, rather, just to typical of what the Senator wanted me to see.  Forced yet genuine smiles, an innocent man who accidentally had things go his way.  I wasn’t too happy but I knew I got what he was going to give me.  He knew how to interview and he knew how to control his image.  His press aide was pushing us to wrap up and get out of the house.  Oddly enough, the Senator, feeling good about the great banter between us and him, decided he wanted to show us around the condo.   As the Senator’s wife showed Jason the bedroom, the Senator walked over the piano which sat as an art piece in the corner of his white carpeted condo.

He then sat down and was joking and laughing with us about only having one arm and owing a piano.  He tragically lost his arm while fighting the Germans in WWII.  He was telling us how back in rehab, the hospital would not let him out until he had mastered the use of his left arm.  One of the drills was playing the piano.  He masterfully plunked down on the ivory keys to play several songs including the melancholy Danny Boy.  He laughed and giggled as a kid as he played tunes from his youth all the while his wife, Irene Hirano, glowed besides him.  The eastern facing windows gently filled the room giving me the perfect setting.

Moments like this don’t happen often and I had fired off probably 80 to 100 shots before time was up.  As I look back at the shots, I realize how no matter what I had planned with lighting, etc… for my portrait, the best images are never planned.  Decisively, as Cartier Bresson might say, I captured a brief moment of a long life.

You can read the article here.

Ryori no Tetsujin!!!!

Ryori no Tetsujin!!!!

Yes…THE IRON CHEF…Chef Masaharu Morimoto, the legendary Japanese chef.
Hi Luxury Magazine commissioned me to shoot their August/September cover of Chef Morimoto.  Morimoto recently opened up his signature restaurant here in Honolulu and Chef has been here for the last few weeks putting the final touches on his place.

We actually ate there the other night for the opening and the food was pretty fantastic.  Their lobster was spiced by Morimoto’s secret blend but we figured it was a blend of garam marsala, paprika, cayenne pepper and a few other spices.  The taste was a mix of Cajun and Indian.  Very neat; however, the restaurant’s piece de resistance was their foie gras chawamushi.  Chawamushi is a Japanese steamed egg custard dish, usually with a shrimp or other little goodie inside.  Morimoto’s was topped off with a delicate piece of duck.  Damn that was good.

OK enough on the food and back to the picture.

After a scout we picked a spot called China Walls, a scenic spot in Portlock on the east side of Oahu.  The TV show Lost filmed there and many surfers and young types hang out at the picturesque spot.

Morimoto proved to be a handful as he knew exactly how to pose and give the camera what it wanted.  He posed, primed, danced, sang, and laughed.  And after our production assistant Cody went out for beer, Morimoto was even in better form as Cody brought back one of his signature beers.

Tammy, my assistant for the job even had her own moment with Morimoto and he surely wasn’t shy…for that matter, neither was she.

One of the better shots of the year and the cover was fantastic.  The sun set just at the right time giving us a perfect warm glow for the sky.  Sometime you just can’t ask for more.