Robbie: Cold

I was looking forward to my shoot with Robbie, and I was supposed to shoot him on the day that I ended up shooting Joe for the second time during my San Francisco trip, but he needed to postpone a few days.

Unfortunately, while that initial date would have been perfect, by the time we did shoot, the weather in SF had gotten a bit more typical for February. The morning of our shoot it was pouring rain and I thought we'd end up having to do the whole thing indoors. Well, the rain stopped and the sun came out but... it stayed cold. I rushed to get as many outdoor shots as I could before Robbie started visibily shivering.

Then we moved indoors, and I scrambled a bit to be creative in my friend Kurt's apartment, a space not really set up for this sort of shooting. The same space appears in Joe's photos, as well as a shoot I had a few days later, and some of my self portraits. I did what I could.

These photos were taken on Feb 16th, 2011.

Joe: Symbolic

I've already talked about the special place Joe holds for me, in respect to my photography, but I'll say it again in case you missed it last time. For years I only shot inanimate objects and self-portraits, and I'd convinced myself that shooting live people would be too difficult. Along the way I did shoot some people, but I never treated it very seriously. A few years ago I decided it was time to start trying to shoot people, to see if I could, and I emailed Joe -- who I barely knew at the time -- to see if he'd be interested. I thought it was a longshot, seeing as I had no portfolio to speak of, but he said yes, and after I shot him a word-of-mouth momentum immediately began building. So I feel a certain debt to Joe, and I was excited at the prospect of revisiting him as a model a few years later. It symbolized something to me: my progression as an artist and as a person. We shot together twice in February, revisiting some of the original locations and throwing in some new ones. Joe is a sweetheart and a friend and terribly photogenic.

These photos were taken on February 10th and 12th, 2010.

Gregg: Years Later

I first encountered Gregg at a street fair six years ago. I thought he was hot, and so I took a few candid pictures, and then a few months later, he turned up online. I emailed him to tell him I'd taken his picture, and we became friends.

We ran into each other a few times over the next few years, but the friendship never really took on the "in person" weight that we thought it would, and eventually, we drifted a bit. Then in February of this year, he emailed me out of the blue to say he'd be in NYC and I suggested a photo shoot.

I was a little nervous because I was not feeling well when the day started. It was the day after my "off" shoot with Andrew, and I had slept for fourteen hours and was still not myself. It was upsetting because aside from the photoshoot, I was looking forward to seeing Gregg after all those years, and I almost had to cancel, but then miraculously, my illness passed before he arrived.

For the record, Gregg is one of the sweetest men I've ever met.

These photos were taken Feb. 4, 2011.

Xavier: Revisit

I shot Xavier in June, but it was for someone else, on someone else's dime and someone else's watch. While the results from that shoot were fine, I felt a lot of pressure and didn't believe I'd gotten what I wanted.

So I had a second chance in December, sort of like a Christmas present.

These images are much darker than the ones I did originally, and I almost want to get Xavier a third time to find a happy medium between the brightness of the first shoot and the shadows of the second.

These photos were shot on Dec 19, 2010.

Andrew: Off

I was excited to shoot Andrew in the studio again, but by the time the day arrived, I wasn't feeling right. After the shoot was over, I ended up getting to bed and sleeping, on and off, for about sixteen hours, my head in a haze, but my last moments of lucidity before that happened were spent creating these images.

I was feeling so off that I really didn't think any of it would end up working, but... when I finally processed the photos almost a month later I was very pleasantly surprised. But I still need to schedule something else with Andrew for when I am, hopefully, not sick!

These photos were taken February 4, 2011.

Alan: Variety

Alan also showed up with a bag of tricks, more props and costumes than I could possibly have time to shoot. It was fun. We started out with the boxer.

Then some of my more standard, slightly abstract portraiture and hand studies.

Then these cool African masks that he brought came in handy.

And then we started to just play with various items of clothing, not necessarily speaking to any one theme.

Alan brings a creativeness to the shoot that is particularly inspiring for me. I had a sense, the first time we spoke on the phone, that we'd work very well together, and my sense was correct.

These photos were taken Feb 3, 2011.