Michael Cartellone

My friend Michael is a painter and a good one. When we met a couple of years ago we immediately bonded over art and our native Ohio. I always thought of Him as my painter friend who grew up back home. As a testament to his passion for painting, I often forgot about his day job and then one night I visited him at work; Michael is the drummer for the legendary Lynyrd Skynyrd! Being an extraordinary drummer is where the rock star stereotypes end. A few years ago to fend off the rigors of the road he started taking a small canvas and paint on the road and has settled into a wonderful routine of rocking hard, traveling through the night, painting all day in his hotel room du jour and then starting all over again.

www.michaelcartellone.com

Ted Turner

The plan was to do two shots, one in a booth at his flagship Ted’s Montana Grill in Atlanta and then a second upstairs in a conference room, which is what became the cover. The idea for the restaurant shot was to photograph him having lunch, with his business partner in the restaurant chain, so I did not need to interact much. Back in the conference room I tried to engage him while I was shooting and got a blank stare. I could not figure out what went wrong, did I say something I should not have, is he just not that nice, do I have spinach in my teeth? The next thing I knew his publicist leaned over and whispered in my ear, “ I forgot to tell you, Ted is a little hard of hearing in one ear!” I immediately started yelling at him and he became one of the most engaging, interesting and nicest people I have photographed.

Maxwell House

This photograph was taken while I was location scouting, the first of four shots for a Maxwell House coffee campaign. The images have not run yet so I can’t post them. It was a fun job with great people, but at the same time a logistical challenge. Each shot had a minimum of 12 people and they were all characters. I used my special powers and learned everybody’s name, setting the right tone and then everything went extremely well.

Purely from a tourist standpoint, I was in awe of the arch. Photographs cannot convey the size and beauty of it. It is America's Eiffel Tower.

Anderson Cooper

The Anderson animation is the latest installment of one of my favorite ongoing projects entitled; “I wish I could say that I pre-visualized it in that way.” The images that make up the animation are taken from the last set up of three that I did as part of a cover shoot for USA Weekend. Anderson was very gracious with his time, but we needed to wrap things up and I was trying to shoot fast so we would not draw too much attention on the mean streets of midtown. When I clicked through the images to show Anderson, I realized how they appeared to be animated. Voila!

P.S. If you would like to see some behind the scenes photos from the shoot click here!

Working Longer

I sat down to write something about this video and then I realized that my friend and client, Michael Wichita, summed it up the best.

“I love it. Its like looking at your images, but they talk back to me. Before I was just talking to them, but now they're sassy and give me lip! I love it. I love it.”

Modern Communications

Racing out of the city on a Friday morning to attend my cousins wedding, I got this assignment to shoot on the set of the Today show early Monday morning. The wedding was being held in a part of northwestern Connecticut, which may be the last place on the east coast with out cell phone service. Before I got the job, I was looking forward to being off the information grid, but now I found myself in a 21st century anxiety attack. Is it impossible to plan a last minute shoot from the road with out a cell phone, email or text messages? No! The only option was to frantically run around making arrangements before leaving, then hope for the best and drive a little faster than normal. Unfortunately, just as I was on my way, I received the news that Tim Russert had passed away. The whole shoot was potentially going to be cancelled, but just in case I was asked, “would it be possible to get a few props for the job?” Rapidly approaching the no call zone, I mustered a burst of precision dialing and was able to get a hold of my assistant and had him acquire the newly needed props. Convinced that the shoot would be cancelled, I had a great technology free weekend. Upon entering the modern world late Sunday, my phone was awakened with a soundtrack of ring tones signaling that the shoot was on. At first it was worrisome to have a shoot pending and be cut off from the modern world, but it turned out to be a blessing. All of the arrangements were made and all I could do was just relax; Ignorance is bliss.

AARP

Once again, The AARP Bulletin sent me on an epic four cities in six days cross-country journey. I left New York and flew to Tampa, my third visit for AARP, then on to Wichita, connecting in Dallas, which is ironic because the photo editor who assigned me the job is none other than Michael Wichita, then eastbound to Birmingham, connecting through Dallas, turning westbound again to San Francisco, connecting though Dallas where I got an airport haircut, S.F. was the launching pad for our attack on the last subject in Sacramento, the travel was run on and so is this sentence. The difference with this journey was that I also shot video. When the final edits have been made I will upload the “directors” cut. Watch out Spielberg!

Spike Lee

The times they are a changing. More and more my role as a photographer is transforming and this assignment is proof. I was originally hired to photograph Spike Lee, for Nokia’s new website www.nokiaproductions.com, but from the initial conversations the job grew to include a video portion and a collateral ad campaign. In the morning we did a traditional still shoot and in the afternoon we shot the accompanying video. Being involved on different levels really adds a nice synergy to the whole project. I must say it was daunting to direct a director, but Spike made it easy.

The impetus of the above clip was brunch. My good friend, editor and visual renaissance man Brendan Colthurst, of Disposable Television, and I were discussing the editing and matting of the shoot when we decided to do a sample for the client, DDB Tribal, and we got carried away in a wonderful manner. The above clip started off just being a test to get the levels and the green screen matting right, but then we just kept going. This is truly the essence of Spike.

General Odierno

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of good stories that have come out of the war in Iraq, but this is one of them. I was sent to High Point Regional High School, in Sussex New Jersey, to Photograph Lt. General Ray Odierno with a class of special education students. As their annual philanthropy project, the class had chosen to raise money to buy and send phone cards to soldiers in Iraq. The class’s teacher, Joan Smith, could not find an Army contact to send the cards to and then she remembered that the General’s niece was a teacher at the school. She decided to go straight to the top. In addition to all of his other duties, General Odierno became the point person for the cards to be sent to and made sure that they were distributed. This was the first of many things that impressed me about General Odierno; after thirty months in Iraq he took time away from his leave to attend the shoot, signed every autograph, answered every question, spoke one on one with a student considering a career in the military, posed for every picture and seemed to be ready for the job from hard learned experience and not the view from a desk.

Until recently General Odierno was the commanding general in Iraq under General Petraeus and was awaiting senate confirmation hearings for his next post as Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army. In an about face, It was announced today, that General Odierno will now be heading back to Iraq to take over command from General Patraeus. Regardless of how you feel about the war, I am happy to report that from my brief experience with General Odierno, we are sending our best officer for the job.

Matt Lauer

Going in there were a few obstacles to a successful shoot. We were scheduled to photograph on the set of the Today Show immediately following a taping, the shoot was Matt’s last obligation before leaving for a much deserved vacation and because we were shooting on the set of the Today Show we were at the mercy of the stage hand’s union. None of this mattered because Matt is an alumni Ohio University and I had the honor of starting my higher education there also. If you have ever spent any time at O.U. you will understand that there was much fodder for conversation and we hit it off. This is the classic example of just setting the right mood and the pictures will follow.