The Hollywood Beat

Some b&w vignettes from one of the more surreal arrivals carpets of the year, at the Revolver...

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:55:43 -0400

Some b&w vignettes from one of the more surreal arrivals carpets of the year, at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards in LA…

Shooting the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, a raucous annual...

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:15:00 -0400

Shooting the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, a raucous annual celebration of all things heavy and hard rockin’, is always one of the longest and most brutal nights of the year. After two hours of arrivals — mostly bands I’ve never heard of — we are herded into Club Nokia in LA to shoot a three-hour awards show quite unlike any other. The awards and testimonials are mostly drowned out by deafening performances by bands who seem determined to outdo whoever just played before them. On paper this show is great for photographers, but somehow it’s always a very trying situation inside the venue. There never seems to be enough space carved out in there for us, and we’re usually just thrown into the crowd.

This year we were stuck in a corner of the club with barely any elevation over the standing audience. And anybody who’s been to a show in the past few years knows that virtually every idiot in the crowd seems compelled to hold his iPhone high over his head for nearly the entire duration. It makes getting clean concert photos tremendously challenging. Doesn’t anybody ever just want to live in the moment and just enjoy the show anymore? But that’s a topic for an entire separate blog entry in the future.

Knowing all of these factors in advance, though, I was prepared. I brought my trusty step-stool, and I’m already a rather tall fellow at 6’2”, so I knew the iPhone factor wouldn’t affect me as much as a few of my shorter colleagues. But during the first break in the show, something unexpected happened. I walked over a few feet to chat with a colleague and when I came back to my spot, the step-stool was gone. I couldn’t believe it! Now, I know I’m tall, and it has to be miserable for the poor folks stuck behind me, but come on now, stealing my ladder ? I looked around and asked a few of the metal fans behind me if they’d seen someone take it, but of course no one heard nothin’, no one saw nothin’, no one knew nothin’. And since some of these tatted and pierced metal fans are not exactly the tweedy collegiate types you run into at Coachella, I decided not to inquire too vehemently.

What to do then? Well, I made the best of it. Eventually the sea of hands will part for a few seconds during a performance, and you just keep shooting and hoping to get a good frame here and there. In the end, I had a pretty good night despite it all, and I may not have even seen this little silhouette if I had been suspended high over the crowd. When the show finally ended past midnight, another photographer spotted my step stool hidden in a corner of the venue and handed it back to me.

The Dillinger Escape Plan deliver a truly insane performance at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards....

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:13:00 -0400

The Dillinger Escape Plan deliver a truly insane performance at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards. First the blood, and yes, it’s real….

Then fire…

Then, of course, destruction…

There are two kinds of still photographers at movie premieres....

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 19:19:00 -0400

There are two kinds of still photographers at movie premieres. Those “behind the rope” or in the photo pen, as I was last night at the “Scary Movie V” premiere, and a few roaming photographers, usually shooting for the Hollywood trades (Variety and The Hollywood Reporter) or the studio in charge of the film. As you can imagine, the roaming photographers usually have to endure some truly ear-bleeding invective from those behind the line, as there is almost no feasible way not to block at least one photographer at these premieres, no matter where you stand on the carpet.

I’m sympathetic to both kinds of shooters, as I’ve been both a roamer and a behind-the-line guy throughout my career (often during the same week). If you’re on the carpet, your job is to get candid combinations of celebrities, or wide shots of the whole scene that capture the atmosphere of the premiere, i.e. shots that don’t look like they’re being shot from behind the rope, or else what’s the point? If you’re behind the rope, you are somewhat at the mercy of the roaming photographers, since you can’t move. Sometimes the roamers can park themselves right in front of you just as you’re about to nail a key photo you’re been waiting for all night. Thus the screaming insults, or at the very least, cries of persecution. When I’ve had to roam the carpet, I’ve been called names that shouldn’t be printed in any civilized forum by people who on any other day I would consider my friends. It’s just an integral part of this weird job.

When I heard about Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen showing up for the “Scary Movie V” premiere, I knew it would be a night of pure chaos. But my favorite photo of the night was this one with Mike Tyson pretending to bite off Charlie’s ear. As you can see, this happened far away from me at the opposite end of the carpet, and the roamers just swarmed in on the scene like bees. But they left just enough daylight for me to grab one good frame with my zoom lens. And I even kind of like how the foreground photographers (both good friends of mine, by the way) frame the shot and give it some context. But I know I’m in the minority here. If you’re on the carpet, you really ought to invest in a good pair of ear plugs, or else you’re going to walk around with some seriously hurt feelings. The sensitive need not apply!

I’d be the first to admit that this isn’t a great...

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 18:35:00 -0400

I’d be the first to admit that this isn’t a great portrait. It’s serviceable and professional, a decent day’s work. But sometimes that’s the best you can do. This was a portrait of “42” stars Harrison Ford and Chadwick Boseman for a story AP was doing on the movie, which chronicles baseball great Jackie Robinson. The press junket was at a location I’d never even heard of, called the Los Angeles Sports Museum. It’s a privately owned compendium of amazing Los Angeles sports memorabilia in a nondescript building in the industrial wasteland section of downtown LA.

When I walked in, my imagination caught fire. The place was amazing, just rife with ancient jerseys, baseball gloves and bats, team banners, old stadium turnstiles, even a whole room devoted to Jackie Robinson’s career. It was the rare situation where a junket was being held in a truly interesting place.

Then, of course, photographic reality set in. Virtually everything in the museum was behind thick glass, a photographer’s nightmare because of the certain, pain-in-the-ass reflections. And shooting without lights was out of the question, as the entire museum was bathed in green overhead fluorescent panels. Besides the fact that the publicist warned me not to use any Los Angeles Dodgers memorabilia, as Jackie Robinson played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, not LA.

The Jackie Robinson room? Completely taken over by TV stations doing on-camera interviews. So suddenly my options were seriously limited. I found one area with a minimum of behind-glass memorabilia that I thought might work if I angled the lights just so. But then I looked around and couldn’t find a power outlet for miles. I don’t have a portable battery to power my lights, something I’m going to have to take care of soon. My extension cords are long, but even they couldn’t cover this much ground.

After literally an hour of wracking my brains, I submitted to reality and realized I couldn’t really use this great location. Time was suddenly running short, with Ford and Boseman due to be in front of my camera in 45 minutes. And these portrait shoots, particularly with a legend like Ford, are never more than five minutes so you have got to be completely ready. I ran back to my car and snagged my portable black backdrop from the back seat. I set up a Softlighter II (kind of a half-softbox, half-umbrella concoction that is super-easy to set up) as my main light and an umbrella further behind me for fill. Then, since I was one light stand short, I asked the friendly New York Daily News photographer who had to shoot the fellas after me to hold a gridded light from behind them just to separate their heads and shoulders a little from the black background.

It is what it is, I guess. The session started off really stiff, so I was happy that I got a little reaction out of them (when I asked the curmudgeonly Ford for a smile, he joked, “surely you can’t be talking to me.”). Sometimes you have to be happy with mere competent handling of a tough situation.

In this line of work, photographers are confronted with a whole...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:11:00 -0400

In this line of work, photographers are confronted with a whole lot of awful backgrounds. In 20 years of covering Hollywood I don’t think I’ve ever had a plain, unadorned backdrop at an event. Usually the step-and-repeats are festooned with garish logos or even worse, the names of various sponsors, often placed against bright white so that they ruin the photos as much as possible. It’s one of those annoying things that entertainment photographers bitch and moan about day after day. I’ve literally fantasized about shooting celebrities against a simple red velvet curtain. Maybe it even happened in the good old days of shooting Hollywood. But now, of course, we’re in a branded universe.

The event above was the premiere of the new film “The Host,” and for once the backdrop wasn’t too offensive. It was pretty much just the title of the film repeated every few feet, and the black and blue color scheme was rather attractive, I thought. As cast member Diane Kruger made her way down the carpet, I noticed that she periodically blocked the “S” and made kind of an amusing visual pun in the process. I cropped down to get the “The” out of there and make it even more obvious. If you can’t clean up the cluttered backgrounds, at least you can occasionally have some fun with them.

Bella Thorne is a good sport. This photo was taken during the...

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:57:00 -0400

Bella Thorne is a good sport. This photo was taken during the 15-year-old “Shake It Up” actress’s visit to Mary McLeod Bethune Middle School in south central LA to celebrate the school’s rising attendance rate. After speaking to the kids, she judged a dance competition and then joined in herself.

I’ve been on many “teen celeb visits school” gigs over the years, and there’s nothing worse than a celebrity who just goes through the motions. Obviously young performers can get huge heads pretty early these days, and sometimes the overwhelming air of insincerity makes the whole event a farce and a drag. It’s particularly lousy when this happens at a school with a lot of poor kids.

Thorne was definitely not like that. She got right into it when the dance competition commenced, at one point busting some moves with a particularly awkward young male contestant. I really admired the girl’s rosy vibe and infectious enthusiasm, which I think this photo captures.

The Oscars show requires at least three cameras, as I think I...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:33:00 -0500

The Oscars show requires at least three cameras, as I think I used every lens in my arsenal up there, from gargantuan telephotos on tripods to the widest wide angle lenses. Every once in a while I’d grab my third body and poke my head through a tiny opening in my tripod rig to grab some overall shots of the stage. Some of the production numbers featured simply stunning production design, like this one for Barbara Streisand’s “In Memoriam” tribute to composer Marvin Hamlisch (pictured in the image above the stage). As this was Babs’ big return to the Oscars stage after 36 years, I shot this performance every way I knew how: horizontal, vertical, tight, medium-range. About halfway through the song I briefly took my head away from the telephoto lenses and saw the overall shot with my own two eyes. I then realized there was only one proper way to shoot this — as wide as possible.

Usually at least once per Oscars, something bizarre or...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 19:42:00 -0500

Usually at least once per Oscars, something bizarre or unexpected happens during the show, and everyone talks about it the next day. Not in the sense of a surprise winner of a category, but rather a crazy onstage moment like Michael Moore going off on a political tirade after winning Best Documentary, or Adrien Brody seizing the moment (and Halle Berry) after winning Best Actor.

This year, Jennifer Lawrence provided the water cooler moment by tripping over her dress as she made her way up the steps to the stage to accept Best Actress. I don’t really see this as embarrassing, as she referred to it during her acceptance speech. It’s more of a charming, awkward moment, and it makes Lawrence seem like even more of a regular, down-to-earth gal.

Lawrence had been winning everything during awards season, so I trained my lens on her in the audience before the announcement was made. The gamble paid off, and my lens was luckily pointed in the right place when this happened.

Another thing I tried to keep an eye on during the Oscars was...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 19:19:12 -0500

Another thing I tried to keep an eye on during the Oscars was the audience. It’s way dark down there, and you have to have a steady hand (even on a tripod) because you’re sometimes down to 1/30th of a second shutter speed on a 600mm lens. Even then the exposures could still be pretty dim. But you can get some pretty nice moments during the commercial breaks, so it’s worth a try.

Anne Hathaway had just come back into the theater after posing for backstage photos following her win for Best Supporting Actress. A bunch of her “Les Miserables” colleagues greeted her with hugs, including director Tom Hooper, shown here.

One of the great things about shooting the Oscars is that you...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 19:00:45 -0500

One of the great things about shooting the Oscars is that you see some real emotion. Even the most poised and experienced actors like Daniel Day-Lewis lose it a little when they get up onstage and Meryl Streep is handing them the biggest honor of their lives. One of the things I kept on thinking about during the show was how tight I wanted to go when the winner’s name was called off. As the show went on, I decided that going tight with the 600mm was better for males but that the 400mm was better for females because of the whole dress factor.

This was a photo I was really happy to get because it had the rare combination of huge names and great emotion. It’s one for posterity. Who would argue that these two are currently the greatest actors alive?

Shooting the Oscars show this year was a career highpoint for...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:42:00 -0500

Shooting the Oscars show this year was a career highpoint for me. I’m relieved to say it all went remarkably well, as I’ve rarely been more nervous before an assignment. Nervous in a good and justifiable way, as I think there would be something wrong with you if you walked into that day acting like this was just another gig. You’re one of only a handful of photographers who will ever get the opportunity to shoot something that big. It’s like the Super Bowl of entertainment, except it’s actually bigger because the Super Bowl is really only a huge deal in America. The Oscars is international. And if you’re shooting for a wire service, it feels like the entire world is waiting to see those photos minute to minute — your photos. See why I was a little nervous? I’ve shot hundreds of shows over the years, but this is the show of shows. You better not have a bad day.

Weeks of preparation went into the job. I had to arrange to rent Nikon D3S cameras, for one. I still love my Nikon D3 bodies but they are not really competitive with the latest models these days when it comes to high ISO performance (The Oscars stage light is not all that bright). A 600mm f4 was also necessary, as the Oscars show photographers are placed in a projection booth high up in the rear of the first mezzanine of the Dolby Theatre, a long distance away. But you also need a shorter 400mm lens for full-length dress shots and the occasional dance numbers like the one shown above with Channing Tatum and Charlize Theron. So if you need to be using two long lenses, now you’re talking about a rig on an extremely sturdy tripod. A special bar was screwed on top of the tripod, and two Induro gimbal heads were fastened on top of the bar to hold and rotate the massive lenses. Aggggh, I’m getting a headache remembering all of this. But it’s pretty gratifying when all the painstaking preparation and expense pay off.

With a show of this magnitude, the photographer is tethered to the editors via wireless modules that go into each camera. So in real time my editor could see what I was shooting on her computer screen, and we were talking constantly via headset. Now if the wireless modules had failed for any reason, it would have been pretty calamitous because our technical people could not get into the booth. And I could not leave, not even for a bathroom break. You’re basically locked inside that room until Seth MacFarlane tells his last off-color joke.

Once the show started, though, I was surprisingly calm. All of the testing and preparations had been done, and now it really was just about shooting the show. All of the equipment was working. And other than impromptu dance routines like the one featured above and the big production numbers for which the Oscars are famous, it is actually one of the easier shows to shoot. As one of the photographers next to me joked, you just point the camera at the people holding the Oscars!

No, I didn’t upload this photo wrong. This is Pink doing...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 15:47:00 -0500

No, I didn’t upload this photo wrong. This is Pink doing her best fruit bat imitation as backup dancers/acrobats support her in mid-air during a very Cirque du Soleil-inspired opening song on her “Truth About Love” tour stop at Staples Center. Come to think of it, this picture is actually just as interesting if you flip it upside-down.

For this concert, the other five photographers and I were put on a riser in the back corner of Staples Center, rather than in the usual position near the soundboard in the center of the audience. After shooting some extremely distant photos of opening band The Hives with my 400mm lens, I resolved to go back to my car before Pink’s set and get out the heavy artillery — a 600mm f4 that I happened to have just rented for Oscars week. But fortunately another photographer stopped me, telling me that the first song featured Pink hanging down from the rafters in all sorts of crazy circus maneuvers. The 600 would be way too tight.

Boy, was she right! I’ve never quite seen an opening song like this. Suspended on wires, Pink was repeatedly dropped down near the bottom of the stage and yanked back up like a human Yo-Yo. It was nearly impossible to follow her even with a 400mm, let alone the tighter 600, so I ended up zone-focusing on the dancers looming above (who were relatively stationary) and waiting for Pink to bounce back up near them. Then the dancers grabbed her and started twisting her up, down and around (all while she sang the song, mind you). That’s when I snapped this photo. I was really glad later on that I had the option of cropping the frame to give it a little more impact. The original frame is a vertical in which you can see the entire bodies of the backup dancers. It’s still a good picture loose, but it definitely jumps out at you more when the upside-down Pink is emphasized and you see just a hint of the guys holding her.

“Tight is right” is an old news photography maxim, and usually I agree. But sometimes it’s good to have options as well.

I’ve always liked detail shots. Back in my days as a...

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 14:40:00 -0500

I’ve always liked detail shots. Back in my days as a photojournalism student at Boston University, I was taught by one of my professors the proper three-pronged approach to every assignment: always get an overall shot showing the whole environment, a bread-and-butter picture and then a close-up shot of some detail of the event. This philosophy can be applied to entertainment assignments as well, although let’s face it: the only shots that will be published most of the time are sharp, lively, well-exposed pictures of celebrities in which you can see their faces. Still, every now and then, one of the online galleries will run something offbeat. And since when should you only shoot pictures that will get published? You give editors some variety, your boss might be impressed and you also stave off boredom!

Anyway, this was a fairly run-of-the-mill daily entertainment assignment — a Hollywood star ceremony for Australian actor Simon Baker. I’ve literally shots hundreds of these ceremonies over the years. What separated this one was that it was happening on Valentine’s Day, and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce (who run these events) decided to hand out flowers to the spectators. As far as star ceremonies go, this was a good one. Actress and Academy Award nominee Naomi Watts showed up to give a speech in honor of her longtime Australian buddy, and Baker was genuinely emotional about being immortalized on the cement on Hollywood Boulevard. He seemed like a great guy. But when it was over and I was waiting for Baker to sign some autographs (see the earlier entry on Helen Mirren’s star ceremony), I noticed the inscription on this female fan’s flower. It was actually a tricky thing to capture. She must have thought I was crazy, the way I kept moving around to get the perfect angle so that you could read what the inscription said. It ended up being my favorite photo of the day, since it combines all of the particular elements of this assignment: a fan, a Valentine’s Day detail and technically, Simon Baker as well.

The centerpiece premieres at the Sundance Film Festival all take...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 20:15:00 -0500

The centerpiece premieres at the Sundance Film Festival all take place at Eccles High School in Park City. They don’t happen in a tent like other Sundance premieres, but in some ways they’re worse because you can’t lean on tricks like back bounce (see one of my previous entries). Here, you have to deal with basic, atrocious high school gymnasium sort of lighting — in this case, overhead fluorescent panels that are somehow inexplicably tungsten-balanced in practice.

Some photographers at Sundance choose to overcome the bad existing light by rigging up multiple flashes and syncing them all together via Pocket Wizard radio transmitters. Or you can bounce your flash off the ceiling like me (I always prefer the simplest way out). Either way, it’s pretty challenging to get high quality arrivals shots at Eccles premieres.

So after the the actors finish their brief posing sessions for us, the only other shooting option is during the TV interviews down the line. Here, you can take advantage of the tiny little tungsten or daylight-balanced lights that the TV cameramen are using for their interviews. Often these are the only decent pictures you can get. But it’s hard! It gets crowded over there in the video section (at least six other still photographers have exactly the same idea as you) and there is nearly always someone or something in the way.

Above is one of my more successful interview shots from Sundance. Jessica Alba is reacting to some question tossed her way by crossing her fingers. I was being driven crazy seconds before this by a blonde TV reporter whose hair kept bobbing into my frame. It was a bright white splotch destroying every picture. But for a brief couple of seconds she retreated, and that’s when Alba made her little gesture. Luck.

Midnight screenings at Sundance can get a little goofy. I...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:45:36 -0500

Midnight screenings at Sundance can get a little goofy. I don’t think I’ve ever covered one that wasn’t a little…off. It’s either the late hour, or the likelihood that a movie chosen to be screened at midnight at Sundance involves actors on the free-spirited side of things.

The cast of “Magic Magic” showed up for their midnight premiere ready to party. Michael Cera was tossing his hat at fellow cast members as they posed. Then came his turn in front of the cameras, and he proceeded to spin fellow cast member Catalina Sandino around for some mock-extravagant ballroom dance poses. Someone lost their footing in the hijinks and the next thing you know, the two of them were sprawled on the floor, resulting in this fun frame. It’s pretty rare that spontaneous moments like this happen at premieres, especially right in front of your camera, so I took full advantage.

The Sundance Film Festival is hardly Cannes when it comes to the...

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:26:09 -0500

The Sundance Film Festival is hardly Cannes when it comes to the staging of premieres. Many of the events happen in tiny white tents with unbelievably ugly continuous lighting, the color balance of which is completely unfathomable. I’m a perfectionist when it comes to setting the proper white balance in my camera, but the lighting in these tents continues to completely flummox me. I’m still thankful because if it weren’t for the tents, the events would be outside in the cold. And Park City can be freezing, especially at night.

So shooting with available light, which I love to do at standard film premieres in LA, is completely out as an option. But in the last couple of years at Sundance, I’ve figured out an option that actually looks even better than available light: glorious back bounce! This method involves turning your flash’s swivel head backwards, so that the sensor on the front is still facing your subject, but the actual burst of light from the flash is hitting the slanted white tent material above and behind you (slanted tents are actually the perfect shape for back-bouncing). From there, the lights spreads out and falls softly and flatteringly on the premiere subjects.

Two notes: you have to set your flash manually, as I’ve found that TTL metering just isn’t accurate enough when you do this. What you want is consistency. And you should also raise your camera ISO to around 1000 to cut down on your flash recycle time, since that little flash beam is traveling a lot farther than normal.

Take away the step-and-repeat behind “The Spectacular Now” stars Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley in this picture and it could almost be a studio portrait. I cropped this frame a little tighter than normal to emphasize Woodley’s effervescent expression.

Right now I’m covering my fourth Sundance Film Festival in as...

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 22:54:00 -0500

Right now I’m covering my fourth Sundance Film Festival in as many years. It’s completely exhausting but a blast at the same time. My partner in crime Danny Moloshok and I are trying to cover as many of the premieres as possible, but there are only so many you can get to in a day. The films are shown in theaters that are strewn all around Park City, Utah, made accessible by a shuttle bus that I love and hate in equal measure. They’re always really crowded and it’s especially uncomfortable when you’re lugging around a ton of gear. But on the other hand, I’ve met a lot of really nice and interesting people on the shuttle — not only the independent film crowd but the painstakingly polite Utah natives. It makes for an interesting mix: Hollywood hipsters and salt-of-the-earth Park City locals.

That’s what this photo is about. I was schlepping my gear up Main Street after a premiere, out of breath as usual (the air is thin up here), when I spotted this lil’ Dylan performing. I stopped to take some photos, as daily features are an important thing to shoot at Sundance. Main Street in Park City has quite a festive vibe during the festival, and it can be a fun thing to capture.

I moved around and shot different angles of this kid, and the shots were fine. His dad was standing near him and told me that his son is eleven and has really taken to the guitar. I have to say I was damned impressed with the polish of the kid’s performance. But I wanted to get something more than just a shot of a street musician performing, so I crossed the street for a new angle. Right then these two L’Oreal street team reps in matching gold parkas moved into the frame and started watching him. There it is — the Sundance clash of cultures! I only got two good frames before passing cars started blocking my view. Then the girls moved and ruined the composition anyway. But with features, you only need one. Another thing I like about this picture is all the gold happening in the frame: the color of the girls’ parkas match the guitar and the window behind the young troubadour.

Stardom in a nutshell: a complete stranger referring to you with...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 16:47:19 -0500

Stardom in a nutshell: a complete stranger referring to you with a phrase usually reserved only for one’s nearest and dearest. The moment of this photo is interesting, as Helen Mirren seems temporarily taken aback. It even looks like she might drop the Sharpie in her hand. Mirren had just received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and as is the usual custom, approached fans along Hollywood Blvd. afterward to sign autographs and pose for photos. The intensity of this fan’s ardor seemed to catch her off-guard before she recovered her famous poise. I have to wonder if the utter strangeness of being a celebrity ever really wears off.

This portrait of Ke$ha reminds me of the old black-and-white...

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 19:29:00 -0500

This portrait of Ke$ha reminds me of the old black-and-white film days, when newspaper photographers would exploit the “Hand of God” printing technique in the darkroom: exposing, or “burning in” the corners of a picture to guide the viewer’s eye to the part of the picture you wanted to emphasize. Sometimes it could really get out of hand, with fake thunder clouds conjured out of white skies. But here, through a bit of a happy accident, the dark left side of the frame is just how the digital file looked.

To illuminate Ke$ha for this shot, I used a grid on a beauty dish, which focuses the light to a specific part of the image. I also had a light set up behind me, powered down and shot through an umbrella just to give the brick wall some general ambience. But for this frame, it appears that my second light didn’t go off. It’s basically a screw-up. Perhaps inevitably, when I got home to edit the shoot, this is the frame that leaped out from the computer screen.

Also, this shot makes me realize how easy we entertainment photographers have it sometimes. When your subject shows up for a shoot coiffed and dressed like Jerry Hall circa 1976 (and appears to love having her picture taken, I might add), how hard really is it to get a decent portrait? It definitely beats trying to get a CEO to loosen up his shoulders for a corporate head shot…