Here are a few more portraits of my wife Brook taken during the end of her pregnancy.
22
Nov 11
Jenny Masche for People Magazine
I have a photo in this week’s issue of People magazine. It’s a portrait of Jenny Masche. Jenny is the mother to sextuplets and her family had a reality show called “Raising Sextuplets.” Last year Jenny’s marriage ended and so did the reality show. The People article is about how she is rebuilding her life and being a single mom with six toddlers. My editor at People didn’t know it when she assigned the job but I have photographed Jenny and her family multiple times over the past 3 years. I shot all of the publicity photos for “Raising Sextuplets” You can see some of the photos in these posts:
The pitter patter of insanity.
The first time I met Jenny she was juggling six kids who were in the middle of their “terrible twos.” She was constantly changing diapers, stopping fights, wiping noses, and at the same time offering the camera crew drinks and getting ready to go to work. In all of the time I have spent with her I have never seen her lose her temper or even raise her voice towards the kids. The woman exudes calm and patience. I think she is quite possibly a saint. It was nice to able to spend some time alone with her (the kids can’t be photographed right now because of litigation) and take some portraits of this amazing mom.
Here’s to you Jenny!
31
Oct 11
Baby on board
My wife Brook and I are about to have our first baby. Lately I’ve been obsessed with shooting photos of her. Here is one of my favorites.
07
Jul 11
In utero
My friends Amber and Alan asked me to shoot some photos of them before Amber popped. This is my favorite from the session. I’m so hyped that Alan actually had the pitchfork.
Not long after this was taken Amber gave birth to their son River. Congrats guys!
21
Jun 11
Plastic chicks.
Fortune magazine sent me over to Mattel to photograph the making of a Barbie doll.
Barbie had a tough publicist. I really wanted to shoot these bins that were filled with naked Barbie body parts but the Mattel people thought that it would be weird and inappropriate. So I was shut down.
Nevertheless It was still great shoot. I had been hoping for a chance to shoot some still lifes for a magazine I finally got a chance. Big thanks to Amy Wolff over at Fortune for the gig.
09
Jun 11
My new prized possession.
People magazine recently asked me to shoot some portraits of 90′s comedian Sinbad.
I spent the afternoon with him and his family at their home. It was a great day and a fun shoot. Well, it was great up until we were shooting in the backyard. That was where I stepped into a 2 foot hole filed with mud. When I pulled my foot out it looked like it was dipped in fudge. My sneakers were ruined. And they were my favorite Nike’s too.
I have to give credit to Sinbad for not laughing. He actually felt quite bad about my shoe. So he offered to lend me a pair of his flip flops to finish the shoot. I graciously accepted. They were a little big but quite comfy. I rocked them for the rest of the day. When we were done I went to give them back but he told me to keep them.
So I am now the proud owner of Sinbad’s size 14 Nike flip flops.
I like to wear them around the house (much to my wife’s dismay.)
16
May 11
This made me feel good.
Now I know I’m not saving the world by making portraits of people for magazines but it is nice to know that someone, somewhere appreciates what I do. I recently found this tumblr post by Annie Wilkins about my photo of David Cross.
“So this “Fuck All Y’all” cap-wearing image of David Cross pops up in my head every so often. Mainly because it’s an awesome portrait, a hilarious phrase, a perfect hat. It sticks with you.
I found it one summer, in a water-stained magazine I found in the guard room at Star City Shores. Flipping through, I momentarily freed myself from having to awkwardly engage with my public-school popular, alcohol-consuming, sexually active and therefore somewhat intimidating coworkers during our cherished safety checks.
I was 18-ish, so super into Mod Podging shit constantly (essentially the more tactile, non-digital, pre-social media version of keeping a tumblr) and made a little photo-collaged box for my brother with this image inside. I hadn’t seen it since, even through painstaking image searches at random intervals, until today.
Today I took a guess at the year, clicked the most familiar-looking Spin cover from the summer of 2001, and Google Books directed me to Vol. 17, No. 6, page 116. And there you have it. DC in all his dark, goofy, new-millennial glory.
I don’t know why exactly, but that little sun-soaked moment provided me with a much needed nugget of self-discovery and self-satisfaction back then. The sense that I understood and appreciated something good and real and funny that maybe those other 18-year-old lifeguards didn’t. And that, maybe, this mattered somehow.
Whatever it was made me say “Fuck all y’all” to everyone and everything that made me sweaty or self-conscious that hot, awkward, Midwestern afternoon, and for a moment at least, I could spin my whistle around my fingers, watch the sun go down, and smile to myself until the next whistle blew. And I love(d) it for that.
Special thanks to Joe Toreno and the magic of the Internet, for providing a visual aid for my most obscure adolescent memories.”
Glad I could help Annie.