Party Time With Marcus Samuelsson

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Marcus Samuelsson…Aquavit…Red Rooster…Street Bird…The Food Network…No Passport Required…..that guy! I just love that guy!!! I had photographed him once before…years ago…where I set up a little food fight between him and chefs Tyler Florence and Melissa Kelly…

…so when Laura Baer asked me to shoot him at Marcus B&P…his new restaurant in Newark…for the New Jersey Monthly ‘Where To Eat Now’ cover, I was happy to hang with the Chef for some more fun times. Art Director Andy Ogilvie and I headed down to Newark to check out Marcus B&P…

The first thing that struck us was the bar that filled the entire front of the restaurant…

Yeah…that’ll work. And right next to the bar were these cover-ready booths…

So a few days later, Kaz and I loaded up the van, crossed the Hudson to do what we do…

But it is a restaurant…so let’s see some food…

OK…let’s move on to our cover shot…

Marcus had no reservations about dancing on a rather precarious tabletop…

And it looked good, but I still had to fire up Photoshop and to clean up the wall and get rid of that green stuff on the right side of the shot to make it truly cover-ready…

Now it was ready!

With two shots in the bag, we had just a little bit of time left before the place opened for dinner service and I spotted one more shot I wanted to do…at the Pass looking into the kitchen area…

It was a great place for a portrait of Marcus with chef James Bowen…

Everything is out right now in the August issue of New Jersey Monthly…

Huge thanks to Marcus and James…we had a blast!

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I Got To Wear Gay Talese’s Hat…

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Gay Talese. In the Hall of Fame of Great American writers, few are more iconic or more respected than Gay Talese. From his early work as a newspaper reporter to his time during the hey day of Esquire magazine and his long career writing some of the best nonfiction you’ll ever read, this man has seen and done it all…and with more style than you’ll ever have! Laura Baer recently had me shoot him for a feature in New Jersey Monthly…a shoot that ended with me wearing the great man’s hat!

Upon arriving at his townhouse, we immediately noticed the silk-covered settee framed by silk curtains in the front window…

It didn’t really require much lighting…but I added a 6′ Chimera for an overall soft fill behind the camera, and positioned a gridded 3′ ProFoto RFI directly above the seat for our main light…

We waited out the harsh sunlight coming through the windows, and when the outside light was just soft enough, things really got interesting…

The color shift from direct sunlight to open shade…and the blue cast it caused on the drapes…gave us a wonderful, cool mood that played off the warm tones of the settee, curtains and his suit.

Next, we set up a little studio in his back yard for some tighter portraits…

…which gave us this…

Here’s how it looked in print…