Last week I was speaking with a friend, another photographer, and he asked me, “What’s your plan” ”Plan?” I replied. “Yeah, plan,” he said. “You know, what about when you’re sixty-five? These cameras are heavy, clients want long days. You always carry two, right?” That is right, I always have two – a combination of always having a backup with me and often shooting with two at a time. It’s a model I follow whether I am with assistants or on my own. Two pro bodies, three to five lenses. The last time I weighed my basic camera bag I think it was at least thirty-five pounds.

Well, I’ve got twenty years yet to figure out what I’ll do at sixty-five but lest I jump to conclusions in comes the story of Julius Shulman, architectural photographer. Julius is ninety-eight and even if you have never heard of him you know his work. It’s embedded in the culture and it still exerts a strong influence in the collective vision of Los Angeles and in fictional worlds such as Tony Stark’s house in the movie, Iron Man.

Susan Stamberg of National Public Radio has a great story on Julius which ran this morning and NPR also has a gallery of Julius’ work. Be sure to expand the gallery to full-screen.

In case you are wondering what to do at ninety-eight, you can photograph houses at $6k a pop.

Images created this past winter for the NJ Shares annual report.

We drove down to the soccer game, arriving a half-hour early for the pre-game warmup. I had forgotten about the auction field. I had noticed it last fall when another game was played here. Now it was a pleasant surprise and this time I had my camera with me. The idea was to give the camera a second round of testing for focus issues during the game (long story) but I also had the 45mm tilt/shift lens with me… I dropped Leah off, headed directly back to the auction site a mile down the road, knowing I needed to get lunch, too, and be back for the game start at 2:00pm.

As I shot, quickly and a bit too sloppily, I thought of Tony Soprano. There’s an episode where he takes Meadow to look at colleges, recognizes a former associate now under witness protection, and indulges himself in a little business on the side. I indulged myself. The light was right.

Back in November I wrote about Photo District News’ brazen cover ad. Today, in the New York Times, Stuart Elliot writes that cover advertising is a trend. The examples he cites seem far tamer than what PDN did. It’ll be interesting to see where this leads.

Even without the front cover ad issues, photography and design industry publications look to be trending toward competitions funding more and more of their overhead. PDN feels as if it has a competition in every issue and *Communication Arts has announced that it will be publishing less often and with each issue containing one of its contests. On the one hand, if this type of action helps a publication survive the recession then more power to it. On the other hand it feels risky and a bit much. Are these magazines taxing their own readers – the ones most likely to enter a competition? With the cost of printing and the staff time involved running a contest, it’s hard to imagine that publishing a contest every issue does not sacrifice editorial content.

Back in college there were a number of competitions hoisted on students annually. Photographer’s Forum comes to mind. As a student you thought, “Wow, I’ll enter this! Maybe I’ll get in.” And you did get in and you were excited. But once you got your expensive hardcover book of winners and finalists, saw your picture printed postage stamp size amongst hundreds or thousands of others, it quickly became obvious that this was more about selling books to entrants than anything else. You only had to learn that lesson once.

*Full Disclosure: As I write this I am preparing my entries for the CA Photography Annual. They are due tomorrow. Clearly, I’m a bit conflicted on the issues… I guess my fear is that the emphasis on a competition every issue will make that the issue.

One final thought as I write this. I realize the driving force here is the economy and the recession’s dearth of print ads but I wonder if this trend (competitions every issue) is also a reflection of trends in other media. After all isn’t a competition in every issue of a printed magazine similar to reality TV? If you grew up with or care about reality TV maybe you’re more accepting of this in your magazines?

In my last post I mentioned a secret assignment. I had gotten the call a couple of weeks prior. “Hold the date March 6th, can’t tell you what it is, assume it’s on a very large scale.” Given the scale, the secrecy, and the security, I assumed it had to be political or entertainment. Some googling quickly pointed toward U2. They had a new album coming out that week, were doing a five-day stint at the Letterman Show, and were giving a Good Morning America concert on Friday, March 6th, at an undisclosed location. Need I say more… It’s nice when everything comes together like that.

Dream New York, NY, NY, March 5, 2009

I found myself at Dream New York on Thursday night. It’s a funky hotel with backlit glass topped desks and blue accent lighting in every room. I had a portrait to shoot Thursday evening and then a very early morning call to be on location for a secret assignment. Here I am in my flannel shirt, the King of Anti-Funk.

The secret gig will follow in another blog post. I’m still catching up on sleep, editing, and processing. It’s been a good start to the year in a down economy with an annual report, some portraits, and the job I just mentioned.

I’ve been meaning to post but fell behind. A few links I wanted to pass along. I thought the Paolo Pellegrin series in the NYT Magazine, Great Performers, was just stunning, and Nadav Kander’s portrait of Oscar de la Renta, the week before, was a knock-out as well. More in line with what you think of as one of his than the Obama’s People series.

So, back to Dream. I stay at Dream. I’m a good boy, I’m in bed by 10pm. I have to be up at 3:30am to meet the client at 4am. I don’t sleep a wink, probably just a little anxious about getting up and the next morning’s assignment. Somewhere in there is a Steven Wright joke waiting to break free.