Everything must go.

I have to come clean. For those of you who don’t follow my twitter feed, I amscrayed out of the office yesterday before the day really got going. I felt like crap so I went home and did the logical thing. I opened my laptop on my bed to get some work done from the horizontal. I promptly fell asleep to the gentle whirring of the hard drive. By the way, if your from National Geographic, and you’re reading this, now you know what was said in the voicemail message that I left you that got garbled because of poor cell reception.

What I can’t get my head around was the reason for my lack of energy. The week before I was on a houseboat with good friends in the middle of nowhere, Lake Shasta without cell reception or any responsibilities. The big decision of the day was what kind of cocktail should I start my evening with.

Then it hit me. That was my first vacation in over three years and it wasn’t long enough. In spite of the fact that I tell myself that all my overseas travel assignments are a vacation of sorts. They really aren’t. A brief discussion with my father (the doctor) this morning revealed a true definition of vacation; a complete abandoning of all work for a long enough time that you forget about it. Unfortunately, contemporary technology allows us to easily maintain contact with our work at all times. As freelancers we assume that this virtue is all important. We never really let go of work when we are on vacation for fear of missing something. But that’s the point. You are supposed to miss everything.

The hard part is giving up the addictive attributes of the internet. There are million excuses to be online and almost none to abandon it all together. That is until you do, and then you realize everything you’re missing in the natural world around you. Which is, and I guarantee this, far more interesting and inspiring.

Shooting book covers and why I start small fires at book stores.

There’s nothing more ego shattering than interviewing a photographer who is as old as my career is long and finding out that she has kicked my ass in a market place that I coveted for years. Shooting book covers for literary works is downright respectable in a bizarre, pseudo-erudite sort of way.

The rest of this article is available here at the Resolve Blog.

Fabulous movie from Phillips to launch their new cinema TV.

First watch the movie here. Then watch the making of below. It will make your day.

Michael Jackson

About twenty-two years ago I took a flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles to start my college career at USC. There was hardly anyone on the plane. Then suddenly, just before take off, the curtain to the empty first class cabin was drawn shut and bunch of people boarded. The flight attendant told me it was Michael Jackson and entourage. When we landed at LAX I quickstepped it after the entourage and caught up with them outside getting into a limousine.

“Do you think he would mind?” I handed a copy of my GQ magazine and a pen to one of Michael’s people. He smiled and presented it to Michael who was sitting in the car. I got wave and signature.

If I brought up that signed magazine two weeks ago at a party I would spawn a mixed bag of jeers and freak jokes. The spectacle of Michael Jackson’s life over the last fifteen years had totally overshadowed his talent. Unlike the spectacle of Lindsay Lohan’s life which overshadows nothing except a string of bad diets and bad acting, the Michael spectacle was something that we all wanted to believe was a phase that would go away. Before the surgeries and alleged crimes, Michael Jackson had given the world great, unique music. Fan or not, in the eighties and early nineties there was something about Michael for everyone to like.

This week I listened to a bizarre conversation between a business manager who had worked for Michael Jackson and a reporter for the BBC. The business manager recounted Jackson’s extraordinary business prowess. His most high profile investment being the purchase of part of The Beetles music catalog. I have a close friend who was in the room when Paul McCartney called Michael Jackson upset that Jackson had out bid him for his own songs. Jackson’s response was chilly, it was just business.

The other side of the BBC piece was on Jackson’s dichotomous spending habits that yielded half a billion dollars of debt. He managed to spend something like 30 million dollars more a year than he made in spite of the fact he had a huge money making empire.

Then the uncomfortable topic of Jackson’s posthumous market value was raised. Jackson’s death is going to be a financial boon. I never bought any of Michael Jackson’s music in the eighties, but I will today. His songs remind me of my first girlfriend Wendy. Spending $9.99 on iTunes to trigger a vivid flashback of my first boob grab is a hell of a lot cheaper than employing drugs or alcohol for the same effect. There are millions more people just like me, and millions more than that who are going to discover Jackson for the first time because of all the media coverage that seems to be respectfully only talking of the Michael Jackson of the eighties and early nineties.

After an awkward few minutes the BBC interviewer finally grew the stones to ask the inevitable question; was Michael Jackson worth more dead than alive. After a wonderfully timed, American style dramatic pause, the answer was yes. He is a superstar again.

I keep hearing over and over from my friends, “That signed GQ magazine of yours is worth bucks now that Michael is dead. You should auction it.” They are probably right. But the intrinsic value is greater to me in my possession. It is a wonderful memory of the first and only autograph I ever wanted, from a time when Michael Jackson was worth more alive than dead. His original run as a superstar.

Photo industry doomsday prophesiers, please shut up.

All graduating photography students are required to do an act of reach-out-to-a-professional-photographer. In years past I’ve received about a dozen of these calls. My response is always one of minor shock. I never went school for photography, and therefore have zero alumni status at any of the art schools that the callers are attending. But, never one to pass up an opportunity to talk about myself, I typically impart my experiences of circumventing established systems. In other words I tell the students how to navigate around various rules that their school invariably told them they should follow, and how to get a table at trendy restaurant without a reservation. It is street smarts for those leaping from the ivory tower into the sewer of reality. As soon as I hear the words “no shit” spoken with enthusiasm on the other end of the phone, I know my work is done.

Secretly, I always feel incredibly honored to get the calls. It means a lot to me that someone looks at my work and thinks a conversation with me will be helpful to their nascent career. Many of my photography confederates have the same closeted reverence for the calls they receive and also try to impart some sort of insider information not to be found within the hallowed halls of higher learning.

Lately however there has been a bizarre shift. Students have been approaching me at my guest speaking gigs and saying that some of the shooters that they are getting in touch with are expounding, ad nauseum, about the doom of the industry. This is pathetic. The industry isn’t doomed, it’s changing. While I agree this isn’t the most magical time to be a freelance anything, those of us that have been around long enough to be considered a phone call candidate know that these rough periods move down the river and that overall this is a brilliant profession.

If you are scaring students with apocalyptic tales and advising alternate careers, please shut your hole. Stop and think how it would have affected you if you heard doomsday drivel when you were just days from graduating and about to assume the responsibility of your student loan.

Being a veteran photographer is a stewardship. It caries a responsibility to pass the torch of your experiences to those junior to you in the same spirit that a veteran passed their advice to you when you were busting your chops. If you don’t have anything positive to say to those at the starting line of they’re career, then stick your head in the toilette and the let phone ring through to voicemail.

Image and depicted art © Nick Rodrigues.

Extraordinary writing by Roger Cohen in Iran.

Nothing can ever take the place of being there. Mr. Roger Cohen writes from Tehran about the Iranian people’s reaction to the allegedly fixed election. The piece is incredibly compelling.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had used his Friday sermon to declare high noon in Tehran, warning of “bloodshed and chaos” if protests over a disputed election persisted.

He got both on Saturday — and saw the hitherto sacrosanct authority of his office challenged as never before since the 1979 revolution birthed the Islamic Republic and conceived for it a leadership post standing at the very flank of the Prophet. A multitude of Iranians took their fight through a holy breach on Saturday from which there appears to be scant turning back.

The full article can be found here.