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When I met and photographed filmmaker Ken Burns


I photographed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns backstage on the San Jose State campus in the Silicon Valley. I was told by his PR person I had a time limit of minutes to meet Ken Burns and photograph him. I was pretty excited to meet him as we both focus on American sub cultures, blending the past with the present, and we both have books published on the subject of WWII. 
I have photographed a lot of celebrities for magazines in my career and in most cases the celebrities typically gives me a short window of time to photograph them as they are very busy. It is a challenge to create a photograph that evokes emotion to the viewer when time is limited.
I decided to photograph Ken Burns on a black backdrop and then add vintage photographs raining down all around him in post-production. The idea is that the films Ken Burns creates are filled with hundreds of old photographs to tell the greater story of the subject of his film. Ken Burns and his team sifts through thousands and thousands of photographs for his films. I wanted the photograph to look a little mysterious as history is a mystery and we have to put the pieces together to figure out the truth. I have a feeling Ken Burns and my path will cross again in the future and I look forward to chatting with him again. 

My film I created has over 20,000 views and counting: Curvy Girl Lingerie Fat Shaming Mean Tweets Survivors, here is a link to my film:


https://youtu.be/AGdjYb1G540





Look Book Photographer - San Francisco 


Shortly after I got my book deal it was important that I found more WWII veterans with varying backgrounds to represent each war experience as best I could. It was important I found a POW to photograph and interview.  I was introduced to Louie Zamperini and got to photograph him at his Hollywood Hills home. Walking into Louie Zamperini's home was like walking into a museum as there were five Olympic torches sitting on the mantle he had carried, in his closet were WWII relics such as the Nazi flag he is holding in the photo above he stole from the Reich Chancellery during the 1936 Olympics in which he competed, and many other artifacts. Zamperini was a walking war relic himself.
While Zamperini's photograph and shorter version of his story is in my book, I did not read Unbroken until a trip my wife and I took to Peru earlier this year as I thought I knew his story well. Louie Zameprini's plane crashed landed on the ocean and one was one of three survivors, was captured by the Japanese and became a POW, he survived the harsh conditions of the camps, and then overcame alcoholism after returning to the United States, and then became a positive community figure.  The struggles he overcame before, during, and almost more importantly after the war, helped put my life into even greater perspective. Not that my own struggles are not important, but it made me feel like I can overcome challenges and not have to be stressed.
Shortly after I finished Unbroken, I was surfing in Lima, Peru (and was rusty from not surfing in a long while) and I began to loose my balance and feared of falling into the rocky reef. But, then I thought of Zamperini and what he was able to accomplish. I maintained my balance and rode my wave into the shore. 
This recent summer amongst many other jobs, I have been photographing grape growers for Bedrock Wine Co. The series is called “Bedrock Wine Growers.” One of the things Morgan asked me to do was capture the growers holding dirt from their property as it is the soil that adds a lot of the characteristics to the wine. As you can see their is a wide variety of soil in regions very close to each other in proximity and these are only 9 of the 20 growers!