Song of the Day

APEX MANOR
Under the Gun

DOWNLOAD: Under the Gun

It has been pointed out to me that recently there has been a lot less testosterone on The List than in the past. That’s probably due to the fact that in my real life off The List I’ve been hanging out with a lotta female singer/songwriters like Nadia Ackerman and Kate Tucker and Johanna Cranitch and Chiara Angelicola and Dani Elliott and Anthea White….it’s a Hell of a problem to have, but I’m trying to make the best of it. So to keep you guys happy, I’m gonna make a concerted effort to push out a few more guy-driven tunes over the next few weeks. And just like that, a new leak from Ross Flournoy’s new band Apex Manor fell outta the sky! Ross was the driving force behind The Broken West, the L.A.-based power pop outfit that broke up late last year. Joining him are former Broken West bass player Brian Whelan along with Adam Vine and Andy Creighton. “Under the Gun” is one of the more than 25 songs Flournoy cranked out after getting over a bad a case of writer’s block and will be on their debut album, The Year of Magical Drinking, due out in January, and if the rest of the songs have such great lines as “…I apologize, my life’s become an island, and now I’m feeling under the gun…” I predict this one will be on my must-buy list next year! You can check out more of Apex Manor on their brand new MySpace page or over on their website.

Mola Likes Damn Ugly Photography

The guys over at Mola were paying attention a few months ago when I was interviewed by The Strobist and I mentioned that very often my light modifier of choice is one of their reflectors. They were so impressed, they featured me on their blog along with a few of the many shots I’ve done using the various Mola dish reflectors…

Click on any image for Full-Size

Steven Spielberg with the BIG (43.5″) Mola Mantti

Edie Falco using the 28″ Mola Setti

Follow the link to the rest of the story on the Mola Softlights Blog HERE

I Drive A Minivan…

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I’ve always been a gearhead…I just love cool cars…I’m glued every week to Top Gear wishing it was me powering along those windy roads behind the wheel of the Supercar of the Week, so it’s just bloody sad that my main method of conveyance is a 2003 Dodge Caravan! Of course, I’ve got nobody to blame but myself…and I suppose it does make much more sense to load my 600 pounds of lighting gear into that functional but ugly-ass Mom-mobile than it would trying to cram it into the backseat of a ’69 Camaro, but it’s still a drag. So when I got to hang out for a day with gazzilionaire investor Jim Glickenhaus in the Top-Secret warehouse that houses part of his World-renowned car collection, I was over the Moon!

Jim’s day job as head of the investment firm Glickenhaus & Co. allows him to pursue a hobby that unless you are the head of such a company, you couldn’t afford the entry fees! Jim collects exotic cars. The BEST exotic cars! He is particularly well-known as a Ferrari aficionado, with a stable that includes a 1947 Ferrari 166 Spyder Corsa, a trio of ’67s…the Dino Competizione, a P3/4 and a 412 P…and then there is the Ferrari he is most famous for…the 2006 Ferrari P4/5 by Pininfarina.

The P4/5 is a one-off that Glickenhaus envisioned as a modern version of the Ferrari P-series. But how do you redesign what many consider to be the finest sports car of all time? Glickenhaus went to Pininfarina, the car designers & coachbuilders long associated with Ferrari, and laid out his design concept…he purchased the last Ferrari ‘Enzo’ in existence and told them to redesign the Enzo in a style similar to his 1967 Ferrari 330 P 3/4. Now the Enzo cost him close to $2 million dollars…but the final project…with more than 200 components designed especially for the P4/5…would add an additional $4 million, not that Glickenhaus thinks it’s a bad investment, as he said, “…it would not amaze me if, in 50 years, the P4/5 goes for $100 million…”

Some of the other cars in Jim’s collection include a Duesenberg J446, a Stutz DV-32, the Ford GT40 Mark IV J6, a Lola T70 Sl 71-32 and the 2009 Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione, but ohhhh those Ferrari’s…..

Song of the Day

NADIA ACKERMAN
I Love You More

DOWNLOAD: I Love You More

Here’s a last-minute, what-am-I-gonna-do-tonight suggestion for all you NYC folks who are just sitting around looking for an excuse to get off the couch…Nadia Ackerman has an EP release show tonight at the Rose Music Hall in Williamsburg. I’m gonna be there…wanna join me?!! And as further enticement to get you interested, as today’s Song of the Day I’m offering up ‘I Love You More’, one of the six little love letters she wrote in a week, recorded at the piano in her apartment and is releasing as ‘A Little Moment, Vol. 1’. Check out Nadia on her facebook page

Song of the Day

LOVEDRUG
Pink Champagne

DOWNLOAD:Pink Champagne

I gotta thank Kate for todays song…Kate’s a BIG fan (!) of Lovedrug, a little outfit from her Canton, Ohio roots. She wanted to make sure I was paying attention, ‘cuz they’re in Nashville right now working out songs for an upcoming album and would just be tickled if y’all would give ‘Pink Champagne’ a listen. Then you can head over to either their website or MySpace page and make friends. And as a bonus, here’s an acoustic version of the song…

Why Would David Dorn Wanna Look Like Me?!!

I’ve known David Dorn, the SVP for Digital Strategy at Rhino Entertainment for a lotta years, but aside a few snapshots I did at his wedding, I’ve never shot him before…until this week. He had a last-minute trip to New York and an odd request…he saw the recent rather moody portrait of me and wondered if I could do the same for him! So I fired up the studio and the above portrait was the result…but the question now is, who looks creepier…Me or Dave?!!

Getting In Close With Marty Whitman

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I’ve photographed Marty Whitman…the Founder, Co-Chief Investment Officer, and Portfolio Manager of the Third Avenue Value Fund…twice before, so when Adrian called me a couple of weeks ago to go back to the well for the third time I knew I wanted to do something completely different from what I had already done. Marty is a very cool guy…he always did whatever I came up with, whether it was to play tennis in the halls of his office, or pose under a fish that he caught on a company retreat…but this time I really just wanted to focus on Marty and do a study of just him without all the props and surroundings…..

While I was looking around the office for a place to shoot, I noticed kind of a quirky scene where they had pushed a bunch of chairs in front of some file cabinets so they could install a ping pong table in their cafeteria…

It made for another cool shot that bears a striking resemblance to a photo I did a few months ago of Neil Barofsky, the head of the TARP Fund. Maybe my next long-term photo project should be file cabinets across America……?!!

What Your Choice of Camera Says About You…

I very rarely simply re-post stuff I find on other blogs, but there’s no way around this one. The Shutterfinger blog has the most astute…and accurately funny…dissection of the kind of person who buys a particular brand of camera. For those of you more affected by Attention Defisit Disorder, the Cliff’s Notes version has Canon owners switching to Nikon, Nikon owners switching to Canon, Sony owners believe in the Easter Bunny, Pentax owners are cheap, Olympus owners have no friends and Leica owners are, of course, poseurs with Hasselblad envy! But those are just the broad strokes and I implore you all to head over to Shutterfinger for the complete read!

Have A Ghouly Halloween !!!

Just in time for Halloween, my friend Laura Breen has finished a wonderful series of illustrations of a murderous little Ghoul-Girl. Probably not well-suited for a 5 year-old, but so much fun for us big kids! Here is Laura’s description of the series…

This series was born out of my love for horror films. The idea first started out as Red Riding Hood…after visiting grandma…suffers a bite from the wolf which then turns her into this feral child. Originally it consisted of only four images until a friend of mine asked me to re-visit the series for a project he was curating on fear. So it grew to the magical number of thirteen.

I call the series “Kindertrauma”.

Ahhh, childhood.
Sweet children
sweeter memories.

Happy Halloween Y’all….

Click on any image for Full-Size!

Song of the Day

REMY ZERO
‘Til The End

DOWNLOAD: ‘Til The End

I’ve been stuck in the Google Hole I fell into the other day when I was researching Remy Zero…Jeffrey Cain’s previous band…but it paid off, ‘cuz I not only fell across a new Remy Zero single (and probably the last one ever since the band disbanded back in 2003), but I also I discovered that one of his bandmates has actually already been on the Song of the Day! Cedric LeMoyne (AKA: Scalpelist) is one half of O+S, whose song Permanent Scar was on The List way back in March of 2009. Hey…back in the day, you played in a band and maybe you did a solo album, but these days you need a super-computing GPS to keep track of how many different bands, side projects and underground recording projects these guys are playing with! For the past couple of weeks, Remy Zero have gotten back together to play a few live shows and record ”Til The End’ to honor the memory of their drummer, Gregory Slay, who died earlier this year. True to form, the four surviving members…Cain, LeMoyne and brothers Cinjun and Shelby Tate…all have multiple recording projects going, but you can still follow Remy Zero on their MySpace page

Song of the Day

DEAD SNARES
City Sparks

DOWNLOAD: City Sparks

So this morning I check my inbox and see that Erin Maher from the indie label popantipop (The Morlocks, The Hundred Days, Spleen United) has sent me a cut from the just-released Dead Snares debut album Speak The Language. Knowing nothing of Dead Snares, I fell into a Google Hole and this is what I’ve found….

• Dead Snares is the alter ego of Jeffrey Cain, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama and was a member of Remy Zero, and some of you might remember that Remy Zero got a taste of the Big Time when they opened for Radiohead a while back and their song “Save Me” is the theme song for WB TV show Smallville.

• Speak The Language was produced by Darrell Thorpe, who also twiddles the knobs for Radiohead, Beck and OutKast.

• Cain has recently collaborated with a few top-shelf names…notably Tricky, Afrobots, O+S and the Engine Room. He’s also recording as Isadore with a big favorite of mine, Steve Kilbey from The Church.

I’ve spent the morning listening to the entire album which is streaming on the popantipop website…you gotta check it out! Then head on over to Jeff’s MySpace page and make friends.

Mocean Worker Remixes The Rent’s Too Damn High Guy!!!

Adam Dorn, AKA Mocean Worker, wasted no time pumpin’ this one out…Enjoy!!!

Andrea Jung in the London Sunday Times

Last weekend I had a nice spread published in the London Sunday Times…Andrea Jung, the CEO of Avon…

Song of the Day


ANDREW BELLE (featuring KATIE HERZIG)
Static Waves

DOWNLOAD: Static Waves

As is the new trend in indie music these days, Andrew Belle got a lotta notice a few months back when his song, ‘In My Veins’, was featured in the gore-fest that was the Season 6 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, but I never really got around to checking him out until last week when I discovered that he has done this duet with Katie Herzig, who I just saw in concert and I just featured on these very pages! To say Belle has a voice that brings Coldplay’s Chris Martin to mind is easy…but it’s his phrasing and intonation that really stands out for me…and the sweet, rhythmic back and forth between the two makes this a lovely little aural interlude to end the day with…

You can check out more of Mr. Belle on his MySpace Page or over on his website

Palm Beach + July = Very, Very Hot !!!

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Back in July, Eric Godwin, the Photo Director at Bloomberg Markets magazine, asked me to head down to Palm Beach to photograph Chris Cline, a billionaire Coal Baron and head of Foresight Energy, one of the country’s largest producers of coal. As you can imagine, Palm Beach in July is just about as hot as a coal furnace, but with added humidity! Add to that our location…Cline’s 164-foot yacht, ‘Mine Games’…and we were in for a hot time in Florida!

Kaz and I got in a day early and on our scout we immediately were made aware of the quirks of trying to photograph a portrait using a prop as big as a yacht…the boat was in a rather tight slip with very little room to maneuver for good angle and the boat itself…while certainly large and luxurious…offered few spots to do the kind of shots I had in mind. But a couple of locations did jump out…


…this spot…shot from inside a hedge and through a bunch of tall grass…would let me stack up the boat behind him.

…and I thought it could be almost regal having him descending this staircase…

And I guess the Art Director was thinking the same thing when he named the story, “New King Coal”…..

One thing became very apparent as soon as the sun rose in the sky…since the entire deck was gleaming, shiny white…even slathered up with an SPF-50 sunscreen, my white ass was gonna fry like a lizard on a rock in the desert! I spent a lotta time re-greasing myself during the day and did a good job of not turning into a human lobster, but there was one place I neglected to coat…the inside of my nostrils! All that sun bouncing up and into my nose gave me the most excruciating sunburn I can remember, so for any of you who may have seen me after I got back from that trip with a finger up my nose…furiously scratching away…now you know why!

Bear Concerns…..

My mom worries about the fact that I have a lotta bears running around in my front yard, so she sent me this little reminder that it’s not really my yard…it’s theirs and I’m just using it…..

(If your eyes are as bad as mine, you’ll need to click on the above image to make it Full-Size!)

Song of the Day (Two Times)

KATIE HERZIG
Wish You Well

DOWNLOAD: Wish You Well

Wish You Well (Acoustic Live In-Studio)

DOWNLOAD: Wish You Well (Acoustic Live In-Studio)

So last week I drove 135 miles to see Brandi Carlile play at Infinity Hall up in Norfolk CT, and as good as Brandi was (and she was very good!) I left the concert with a handful of CD’s from the opening act…Katie Herzig. How this singer and (Grammy nominated) songwriter has stayed off my radar is a mystery, but now that I own the entire Katie Herzig songbook, that is no longer an issue! Each song I listen to reveals some new emotion…heartache, angst, lust and joyful happiness…it all flows from her in a euphoric wave that’s giving me goosebumps. In a soft, but strong, soprano, she delivers her smart, poetic lyrics without becoming overwrought or sappy…this is lyrical storytelling done well.

The two songs today are from different albums; the first is off of her last release of new material, ‘Apple Tree’, and the second is a reimagined acoustic version from ‘Live In Studio: Acoustic Trio’, a collection of her earlier songs recorded entirely unplugged. Check out more of Katie on her website or over on MySpace and for yet one more version of ‘Wish You Well’, check out this video of her singing it with Brandi…..

Big Jet Engines

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A couple of weeks ago, Adrian DeLucca at Barron’s asked if I wanted to shoot a cover story featuring Louis Chenevert, the CEO of United Technologies…the only problem was, United Technologies didn’t want to let Louis leave the office and go play with any of the cool toys UTC makes…like the really Big Jet Engines that I knew they had sitting at the Pratt & Whitney plant right across the river from their corporate headquarters in Hartford! But after a little back-n-forth with the folks in corporate communications at the company, I convinced them that since I had shot at UTC many times in the past and I knew the offices were Death on Toast…very functional, but not exciting in the least…a location scout was in order! And after only five minutes of poking around the Testing Facility Hanger, this was what I found…..

Now all three locations would be perfect for both my cover and the opener for the story, but the problem was, we were only going to get Louis for ten minutes…tops…..and he was showing up at 8:00AM, surrounded by assistants and P/R guys whose main mission in life was to make sure I didn’t get a second longer than what was promised! That meant Kaz and I would have to set up everything the night before and for the shoot, move our subject from shot to shot quicker than we have had to do in a long time. Here’s how things looked…..

Fun At The Fair!

Yesterday I channeled my inner farmer and hit the Harwinton County Fair, complete with ox-pulls, carnival rides, corn dogs and a whole mess of chickens and horses and cows and bunnies! My iPhone (set to ‘Hipstamatic’, of course!) has recorded some choice bits for you to enjoy…

Killer Attack Rooster…

Very Friendly Horse…

Sleepy Bunny…

Tiny Donkey…

Girls Sitting With Cows…

Terrifying Rides…

Whac-A-Mole…

Dead Guys…

…And The Best Damned Potatoes You’ve Ever Seen!!!

Now I know that still pictures hardly do justice to a good carnival ride, but if you watch this video long enough, it might generate enough vertigo to make you sick….

Do you feel like judging a few chickens?!!

Not a fan of chickens? Then how about braving the crowds to look at the prize-winning bunnies?!!

And if all that wasn’t enough fun for ya, The Flying Wallendas were even on hand cheating death for the 7,496th time!!!

Song of the Day

NADIA ACKERMAN
When

DOWNLOAD: When

Johanna Cranitch has been whispering in my ear for a while now about fellow Aussie songbird Nadia Ackerman, and today I have something to share off of The Circus Is Back In Town, her latest album. Now chances are even if you’re unfamiliar with her music, you might know more about Nadia than you think…she’s been getting a lotta notices recently for her vocals on the new UPS ‘Logistics’ campaign…even syndicated radio talk show host Neal Boortz has been Tweeting about it…I actually think he’s got a thing for her, cuz he’s mentioned her more than once…! I suppose it’s understandable that Neil might have fallen for the girl with her breathy, beautiful voice calling out to him from the TV, but still…a teeny bit creepy.

Anyway…I love the song. The relaxed, languid way she shuffles through the verse has an almost narcotic feel to it, and the simple piano and electronic backing loop that accompanies her is both classic and psychedelic at the same time.

To find out more about Nadia Ackerman, check her out on her facebook page. You can also keep your eyes on The List…I have a feeling we will be hearing…and seeing…more of Nadia in the near future. And if you haven’t seen it already, here’s that UPS commercial I was telling you about…