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Mix Magazine

Ah…its so nice to see your name in all caps when it has Photography By preceding it…I’m not being arrogant but I swell with pride after seeing my work published in a travel piece. Its not some of my better work but its work…made from nothing. Well, not exactly but it was made from experience and knowing how to push when nothing is easily seen.

I got commissioned a few months ago by the Oregonian’s Mix Magazine to shoot a travel piece on the best places to dine on Oahu. I shot (and ate) everything from locally made Ono Pops (Mexican style paletas) to fresh opelu (mackerel) at He’eia Kea Pier General Store & Deli. Its not all about eating mind you as I have to spend an inordinate amount of time setting up a plate (well…thats mostly the Chef’s call) but having to direct a chef to create a food masterpiece on the fly, sometimes surrounded by styrofoam, in bad lighting, and customers all around. Its can be pretty tough.

The food shots are very editorial as they are all natural light with fill bumped in from a white bounce or even white table cloths if a proper bounce isn’t around. But mostly the reason I can somewhat capture food well is from all the years of assisting NYC food photographers back in the day. Mostly the training was shooting in studios with top food stylists, fake ingredients, big lights, and sometimes big ovens. You know…the mash potato ice cream or the cooked-with-a-blowtorch-steak. I remember working on a Pizza Hut job where we shot dozens of pies pulled out of an industrial oven in the City’s West Side. Yong Yoo, the then photo assistant extroadinare, and I had screaming fight because the neurotic photographer made us load what seem to be his entire studio into a cube truck, unload on location, and reload the truck in the pouring rain. At the end of the day, we fought about how to roll some immensely large and heavy studio camera stand that was taller than the cube truck up a ramp as the rain poured all around. Ah how I miss those days yet would never go back.

There is something very important about being a padawan (apprentice) in the big cities. I never could have been successful here, especially here in Hawaii without some type of grueling informal training I had in those dreary New York years. Every conceivable subject that can be photographed I probably helped put a studio light on it, or at least rolled a studio stand close to it. Everything from Revlon lipstick, to beer bottles, to celebs and rock stars to rain sets, to shooting in the bloody rain.

(How on earth I go from chatting about Mix Mag to get on this subject…I will never know. Stream of … uhhh…what were we chatting about?)

So in the above picture, the author dances around a rigged rain set with a Fender Strat guitar. My memory dims on what job we were working on other than it had a Korean model in tight shiny pants that fit her very well. I remembered I had this piece of chrome somewhere and fumbled through a bunch of old film files finding it next to a bunch of negatives of Trisha, a model who’s sister I knew from Texas. Funny how I didn’t remember those pictures and funny how I forgot about this chrome. Not wanting to start up a proper film scanner, I masking taped the chrome to my Mac, opened up a white doc in photoshop and made a few exposure on a make shift light table. Not the sharpest but a good illustration, nonetheless. The chrome was lifted from the studio where we worked that week but I just couldn’t resist? The chrome came from the initial test rolls so no one would have missed it. Besides, its me dancing in the purple rain!

Back into the Mix. All those years of New York drudgery made me into the so called photographer I am. Its not the greatest career but its a great living here in Hawaii. I get a job like this Mix Mag job and use all my skills from my shooting years all the while reaching back to those “wet behind the ears” days when I held someones camera.

Literally, I was probably wet. It always seemed like I was…

UP! UP! AND AWAY!

Look! Up in the sky! Its a bird! Its a plane! Its…uh…wait a minute…its…its…its just a guy in a helicopter with a camera.

I wasn’t superman for the day but it sure felt like it! September proved to be pretty exciting as I was commissioned to shoot for Hemispheres Magazine, United Airlines In-flight magazine, and cover the Big Island for their Three Perfect Days section. In three days, I drove (and flew) across the Big Island shooting the lushness of Hilo, the cold stars of Mauna Kea, the blackness of Kilauea, and the resorts of the Kohala Coast…all the while fighting rain, clouds, chill, and vog. What a mess those three perfect days!

Perhaps the most exciting bit had me floating over lava and sea in a chartered helicopter. How exciting to ride up in a the sky with no doors and only a buckle and God to keep me from becoming part of the aina!

We took off from the Hilo airport with little introduction to what lay ahead. We walked straight out onto the runway, buckled in, and away we went. Jersey Rob of Paradise Helicopters said fuggitaboutit as it was routine and I had nuthin to worry about. I’ve flown several times in military Blackhawks for work here and there but this was one of those small four seaters that doesn’t offer any imagination to what lies just beyond the seatbelts. As we levitated off the ground and shot across the green lush areas around Hilo, you immediately sense the uniqueness of being in a small bubble, no bigger than a Hyndai’s car cabin, spinning through the cotton. Yet just outside that doorless portal gushed propeller wash and streaming jets of air. I stuck my head and arms out a bit too far and found the wind nearly tearing me and my cameras out into the abyss.

Our first hover was directly over Honolii surf spot just north of Hilo. A group of early morning surfers, who were not to keen to having a helicopter disturbing their morning sets, awaited their anticipated breaks and I perfectly captured the lone girl and the rocks below. If you look close enough, you can actually see tropical fish swimming around her. Unbelievable!

After a quick hover over the beach and surf spots, we zoomed back over Hilo and flew to the volcanic rift zone. Green gave away to the mesmerizing black volcanic landscape. Black lava rock. Endless. As if life first started. It all appears like death but its actually life giving as the eruptions create new land. Since 1983, the lava flows from Kilauea produced hundreds of acres of new land but has also destroyed entire communities and covered many once beautiful beaches and landscapes. My pictures and words can’t describe what is out in Volcano, HI. Every time I go out there, I stare and get lost in what once was…endless lava fields of blackness and life.

The pilot few us over Kilauea and directly over Pu’u Oo cone, where the lava is currently flowing. Now this is the exciting part. Magma…as Dr. Evil would say. Loads of magma flowing like a river. Lava poured and bubbled all over making for a SPECTACULAR show. National Geographic ain’t got nothing on what’s out there. A river of lava oozed down the ridge like glowing hot toothpaste gurgling from the depths. We probably hovered no more than 30 or more stories above the lava but it felt as if a portal to the underworld lay below.

Just mesmerizing! Lava. Magma. Darkness. Red. Black. A little grey. Amazing.

If you can’t fly the month of December on United, please download the spread from here. Its a small pdf file which should easily download.

A big thank you to the guys at Paradise Helicopter in Hawaii for helping me get the shot. Thanks Rob. Another big mahalo to the BIBV for providing so much to make this impossible trip happen. Thanks Jessica.

But no thanks to the crappy weather. No thanks to the grey clouds and the congestive vog. Couldn’t make perfect this time but you just wait.

Another Photo EtC

The APEC Summit has come and gone. To me, and to probably loads of other photographers, APEC was just Another Photo, EtC…

What a pain! 3AM call times so Secret Service could sweep you and your gear, the suspicious stares from foreign security guards, the endless traffic congestion due to heighten security and dignitaries’ motorcades, the endless waiting for someone to make an appearance. It just goes on and on.

Yet, I’ve gotten to photograph the three most powerful men in the world…Medvedev, Obama, and Hu Jintao. No to mention Hillary Clinton, just about every APEC nation’s leaders landing at the airport. I was no further than a very short stone’s throw from two of the most powerful men whose mere presence can shake the course of history. Do I exaggerate? Anyone who holds the US debt plus possibly the EU’s? No. I don’t exaggerate.

Yet, its all just Another Photo, EtC. Really. Images to catalog, to burn on a disc, and to file away. After its all over, all you have left is the lingering rush and adrenaline still pumping from the job.

The Associated Press was happy as I got a “Thanks for the good work” email from Tom Stathis…and that means a lot. I got to be a part of something important although I was just on the outside.

Here are a few of the selects from the APEC hell week.

Above you see Mr. Obama through the bullet proof glass of his pimped out Caddy. As he drove up to the tarmac and I spotted him in the rear seat, I couldn’t help to be struck by the fact that he’s the US President.

The toughest part of the week was being stuck on arrival duty and having to be cleared to enter Joint Base Pearl Harbor/Hickam at 4am on Friday and 3am on Saturday. Those days were tough yet I got to see the smiling Dimitry Medvedev exiting his crappy Russian state plane. The Sultan of Brunei had the BIG PIMPIN’ 747 ride that was just as big as Air Force One, or so it seems. Hu Jintao was rumored to hit Honolulu’s Chinatown but since I live a few blocks away, I would have probably been alerted to the super security that would have surrounded the Chinese presidents’ present, no? He, Medvedev and and Obama had full on security detail meaning they could shut down the city when they rolled. I saw no such action in Ctown the week they were here.

One rumor I read was the Russian delegation demanded the bars at the Modern Waikiki (hotel) remain open 24 hours a day. Stoli on the rocks at any time, no?

The Hu Jintao photo op was mired in constant “meiyou meiyou” and suspicious glares. The Chinese security forces around the President clearly were doing their job but seemed awfully unorganized and never believed anything the American handlers would tell them. Constant badgering, criticism, and attitude. Constant confrontation and getting into people’s faces. Not aggressive like Westerners but like Chinese…a mildly aggressive badgering. Bad haircuts and bad suits. At the end, we were hosed by the State Run media which got the better pictures and we got sidelined for cheaper and faster images. And when I say State Run, I refer to China, not our government media complex.

Speaking of bad suits, we had a run in with Russian security. As we were waiting in media line to enter Hickam for the arrivals on Friday, three guys in cheap suits got in line with us and tried to enter the base. They drove a black US sedan (which you knew stunk of Russian cigarettes and vodka and probably had a dissident tied and bloodied in the trunk) and got out of the car eyeing all of us suspiciously while sauntering over to the military police to get onto base. Medvedev was arriving and they had a job to do. They were young and didn’t look all the menacing but you knew if you screwed with them, you’d end up in the trunk with that dissident. I looked for bloody knuckles and blood smears on their jackets to no avail. The Cold War lives on.

Security was insane…but who can blame them. Imagine the fool who could get close enough to knock off a world leader. Their names would line the history books! I remember when I worked as an assistant and being left alone in a studio with Bill Gates for like 15 minutes. Boy did my mind drift to those c stands in the corner and how I could use it as a bat. We all know who assassinated Lincoln, Lennon, Kennedy, and Reagan, no?* Gates? Well, it didn’t happen. Your kid won’t learn about me in the history books and they’ll still have to deal with Windows crashing.

*Booth, Chapman, Oswald, Hinckley.

And for my last image, all I have to say is the 60’s live on. Most of those protesters, God bless ’em, who demonstrated in anti-APEC protests across town and in the country do have a point. Banks, politicians, media, etc…are in need for reform. I myself can’t help but to wonder how members of Congress are able to dance around insider trading laws, how millionaires like Michael Fat Boy Moore and P Diddy can hob nob with the protesters, and how the Democrats claim to support the peoples when they are the 1%. Obama didn’t fund raise at Disney’s Aluani with the homeless out living on the Waianae Coast. He charged $1000 per head and pix with the Commander in Chief were $5000. I wish AP paid me what those donors paid for a simple snap with Barack. I’d be big pimpin’ with da Sultan in no time.

Again, back to the pits…the harry hippies of yesteryear haven’t disappeared. Their indelible stain on society protrudes on our lovely siren holding a most important bed sheet while splashing around Waikiki’s warm waters. Yet might it be the marketing and the romance of the hippie culture which sells the image of revolution? No doubt the younger generations have copycatted the protest movements, clothing, music and chants of those stinking masses of yesteryear. The chants of “Hey Hey Ho Ho (add your chic cause here) has got to go!” are no different than those chanted by those who spit on my uniformed father when he returned from ‘Nam. The attraction of free love and free living along with being free of all society’s constraints is just too great. And to think those sandal wearing pot smokers went on to sell their wares in the capitalists markets. Now you can find hippie attire and culture all neatly packaged at Urban Outfitters or other such chain stores. And lets not skimp on the irony that its made by our comrades in China.

The scarfed, tent dwelling, cardboard waving sandalnista is no more than a carbon copy of old grainy film stock images of 60’s hippies. Except they use the the 1%ers Twitter, Facebook and web devices to carry on the message.

The message is correct to some degree but 1969 has come and gone. Vote them out I say. We elected the hope and change and got nothing. Vote them out. That vote weighs more than some scrawled message on an old cardboard box. But if we are not careful, we might not even have a vote. Then we’re gonna need to do something much more than occupying a city park and smoking dope.

I’m back on FIVE O!!!!

Yo! Danno! You looking at my photo?

So I’m Back. Well, I wasn’t exactly acting, but Hawaii Five O wanted me behind the camera this time. I guess my acting from before was so good, that no one could really replace the irreplaceable, no?

Me and “Jesse’s Girl!”

Production hired me to photograph the beautiful actress Tania Raymonde, who plays a suspect in a murder scene during HI Five O’s second season show, “Ma’ema’e.” Tania is famous for playing Alex Rousseau on ABC’s Lost. Since I never really watched Lost I can’t tell you more other than she was Benjamin Linus’s daughter.

My photographs of Tania would be used as EVIDENCE on the show.

Tania, who plays a college volleyball player, is suspected in the murder of her coach when racy photographs of her are found in her dead coach’s possessions. Melanie, as her character is named, takes erotic photos during an ad campaign and her coach is trying to sort out the problems. With a few twists and turns, Five O finds that Melanie wasn’t romantically involved with her coach; however, the coach was linked to…well…just watch the show.

My very difficult job was to photograph the very good looking Tania in a very unsubtle yet tactful (and tasteful) sexy way. As the photos would be on network television, the photos couldn’t be that provocative but the art directors needed to push the envelope until the photos bordered on the fetish. The art direction called for the actress to be in several different costumes including a skin tight volleyball uniform and a cut up halter top that would make any college boy sweat. The ripped, collegiate uniform, her sweaty body draped in a bath towel…bada bing!…all found as evidence. Talk about coaches behaving badly!

So as McGarrett and Danno case the casa where the coach lived, they find the racy photos and quickly point their suspicions towards Melanie. The photos are displayed all over the episode as the projected on their computer screens, snapped on their iPhones, etc. But as the episode pointed, out the coach wasn’t the photographer and the photos were a red herring.

Danno snapping pictures. I wonder if he saved them?

Daniel Dae Kim over looking all the evidence on the big screen.

As Tania walked onto the set (gray seamless, Elinchrom Octabank, Profoto 7a 2400ws pack) I had no doubt photographing her would be easy. It is never hard to photograph a good looking woman. Yet the actual posing and positioning proved to be fairly difficult. As I’ve said earlier, it became a struggle to find the right type of poses, lascivious enough to arouse the Five O viewers, yet tame enough for the network to give the green light. The art team, hair and make up, and the rest of the crew helped create the right balance and feeling. Tania looked more like a supermodel with her hair and makeup but she played well with the camera. We had a great rapport. During our lunch break, the crew and Tania all sat on the floor eating pasta and salad all the while talking about Hawaii and LA, acting and really nothing more.

I have to say I enjoyed seeing loads of my images being used all over network television Monday night. The images are not the proudest part of my career but whattya gonna do? Its a job but anytime I get a chance to practice my craft, its a great day. Especially when its all over the television, and when its a good looking girl.

The humble beginnings…

While editing and doing some archiving, I found a disc of old images from my time working for the community newspaper in San Antonio. How humbling to see how I started off and what images I shot as a student and budding photographer.

I shot the Mexican dancers at a community event on the West Side of town. I remember being in love with this shot because of her loving reaction to her partner. She’s so happy. I photographed this event for the San Antonio Express News community newspaper, The Sun. Each district of town had their own edition so there was always something different to shoot.

So many times, I’ve seen how digital has changed the field of photography. Even more importantly, how cheap credit has allowed many people to purchase pro equipment and how digital has allowed the average flickr type to create amazing bodies of work. Now students and prosumers can compete with full-time professionals. I know I’ve talked about the old Nikon gear and manual focus lenses but I can’t stress how it was such a different time. There was no Photoshop, no Lightroom, no computers! Darkroom, stop bath, fixer. A steel can and reels. A red light bulb. It was so long ago and technologically speaking, it was truly the dark ages of modern photography.

What may have taken several hours to create can now be produced in seconds. I remember shooting an event like football or a late night press conference. I’d have to leave half way through to get back to a darkroom, develop film, print from the negative and make a 10 pm deadline. Now I’m shooting boxing matches and transmitting images in between rounds. I’m talking seconds to get an image from a digital camera into a laptop, process the raw file, caption it, and ftp’ed to a client. Seconds! And technology will eventually allow streaming images to be sent directly to an editor thousands of miles away as the photos are being shot. I mean they do that now with TV live feed so surely they will find away to get images on line immediately.

A mime play shot for the San Antonio Express News community newspaper, The Sun. I was probably paid $25 per assignment back in 1997.

Whats more interesting is seeing how my professional career in Hawaii has evolved. How my views have changed…from portraits to street work. How I’ve visually grown. I constantly read art books. Study old paintings. Visually stimulate my senses so I can “see” when I put the camera to my eye. And its working. My timing is different, my angles are changing. My views are evolving. I try to look at images as paintings. I try to think of how a painter or sculptor would see a face or scene. My actions seems so far away from what I used to shoot.

The family above had parts of their home catch fire in San Antonio due to faulty wiring in a junction box. The family holds the box which caused the problem. (I think thats what happend!) The Sun Community Newspaper, 1997.

These images seem so long ago but when I view them, I can clearly see how I naturally had a vision but it wasn’t developed. It was raw, unexpected, and unreliable. I was just a kid with a few cameras and pocket full of film. Sure, I was in my 20s. I though I knew more than I did but couldn’t prove it. I knew I wasn’t good enough to get a staff job at the Dallas Morning News or the LA Times but I though if they gave me a chance, I could do it. The Express News gave me that chance but it was shooting for their community newspaper. It was really bad work on my end but in many ways, I think it was some of the best stuff around. I shot so many images of real life that it made me realize what life was about.

Lilly Tejeda is the mother of Frank Tejeda, a local politician who had high hopes but sadly died of cancer a some time after this picture was taken. His death was a loss to the Hispanic community as he might have gone to much higher positions. I remember going to her humble house on the South Side of San Antonio and asking her if we could take the photo of her and her son’s pictures. How much they looked like. Funny, this image still makes me sad. She held a brave face but she knew her loss.

How far I’ve come from the 90s to the 2010s. How arrogant I was to think I new so much but in reality I knew nothing. The base was there but the experience was not. So many kids and prosumers I’ve encountered over the years here in Hawaii and elsewhere seem to think because they have a digital camera, have a few images published here and there, they are equal or better than me or anyone who has shot for years. Maybe they are. If I had top digital cameras and technology back on my side in the 90’s, maybe I would have been just as good. But what they lack is experience. They don’t have any experience shooting high school plays, community dances, kid’s swim meets, or a local strawberry fair. I regularly would drive an hour or so out to the the middle of nowhere to shoot a portrait of man who raised a prized steer. All for about $25! There is lots to really say about starting from the bottom. It humbles you and makes you realize you don’t really know what the hell you are doing.

I shot an event for Reuters a few weeks ago and worked next to the Honolulu Star Advertiser’s senior photographer Craig Kojima. He’s in his 50’s or so but walks around like he’s a nobody. No attitude, no beef, no nothing. He wears those ridiculously stupid shoes that you can put your toes in…you know the ones! Ugh! He’s such a great guy and he knows how to shoot. After looking at his take the next day in the paper, I realized that experience trumped anything I did that day. He shot unbelievable images that I failed to see. And why was that? Experience. I called him a few days later and told him so. He laughed in that soft, fatherly way and denied he was any better. Yet he clearly has 20 plus years on me. Experience counts. Not workshops, or degrees, or attitude. Experience makes up for anything some stupid classroom can teach.

Would I go back and shoot the community newspapers again? As Sarah P would say, “you betcha!” In a Texas heart beat. Those were the best days of my learning photography years. From there, it just got more complicated, harder, and more depressing. Moving to New York essentially took all the romance out of what I though photography was. At the community newspaper, I was in a dream world. I thought this last Sun’s assignment would get me into the doors of National Geographic. I really did. And who’s to say it wasn’t going to happen? A youngster can dream, no?

So when George Lee comes knocking on your door to shoot a Pulse assignment, you might want to reconsider his offer. You just never know…