Broadway Bares is an annual burlesque show fundraiser created in 1992 by legendary choreographer Jerry Mitchell as an entertaining way to raise awareness and money for those living with HIV/AIDS. The 29 editions of Broadway Bares have collectively raised more than 21.2 million dollars for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids. I have been collaborating with SpotCo Design and BCEFA on the promotional campaign for Broadway Bares every year since 2002.

Oscars In 2016, ABC asked me to photograph Chris Rock, host of the Academy Awards that year. Soon after The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited me to set up a portrait studio at the actual event and photograph the winners when they came off stage. The Academy also entrusted me with photographing the Nominees at luncheons in 2017, 2018, and 2019 along with creating group portraits of the Broad of Governors those same years.

Nordic I met my now wife Meryl in the summer of 2011. She had booked a trip to Iceland in November of that same year for her Birthday and I essentially invited myself to come along. It was there that we both fell in love with the barren Nordic landscape and more importantly with each other. Iceland is quite simply the most beautiful place I have ever been. It’s black volcanic lava covered in bright green moss and its Arctic white snowy Tundra created the perfect backdrop for what was our official first date. We returned to Iceland in 2013, visited equally stunning Norway in 2015, and were married in Malibu, California in 2019.

Ailey in Africa In 2015 I was invited to accompany The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on their historic return to South Africa for the first time since 1998. I photographed and filmed the company for 3 weeks while they rehearsed, performed, and engaged in community outreach. Featured here are personal sessions I produced with some of the companies elite dancers on location with and without African animals near Johannesburg and Cape Town. Below the gallery is a 7 minute film of me and the dancers collaborating on these photos.

New York Rangers I grew up in Toronto Canada and began playing ice hockey at age 6. I love the sport now as much as I did then and still play at least once a week. In 1999 ESPN Magazine sent me to the New York Rangers practice facility to photograph newly traded Theo Fleury. By the time I was done my agent had worked out a deal with Rangers public relations representative to shoot the team’s Yearbook photos. I’ve been photographing them annually ever since.

YouTube Upfronts In March of 2019 I collaborated with Cindy Hauser of LA Creative making portraits of Content Creators for YouTube’s BrandCast event to be held at Radio City Music Hall in May of that same year. In January 2020 I spent 3 days shooting and filming an even larger group of original and talented creators but unfortunately 2020’s event is suspended due to the Corona Virus Global Pandemic.

Quarantine Everyday during the 2020 Coronavirus Pandemic LA County Stay at Home order my wife Meryl and I would take walks around the Mar Vista Oval behind our apartment. It’s a unique neighborhood feature that is an oval shaped residential street exactly one mile in diameter. We would sometimes do as many as 3 laps in a day and every time we walked I would see something different. One of the silver linings to this “Great Pause” we’ve experienced is to notice the beauty in our everyday surroundings. We’re both truly grateful to have such a lovely place nearby to spend this time together. Here’s a small collection of images I made on our walks.

Conceptual Throughout my career I’ve been assigned to shoot conceptual photographs to illustrate magazine articles and to be used for advertising. I’ve always loved doing this kind of work as it’s a nice departure from the celebrity portaiture I usually do. This is a collection of images, some personal, along with others that I’ve shot for clients such as New York Magazine, Psychology Today and various Entertainment Studios.

Sky Like all photographers I’m obsessed with light but also with where it comes from which is usually the sky. I’m also drawn to distant horizons and people-less landscapes. Over the years I’ve often looked up or down (depending on whether I’m in a plane or not:) at the ever-everchanging cloud formations and found it to be an endless source of inspiration both visually and spiritually. A few years ago I started going through these pictures and realized there’s quite a nice collection of painterly images here.

Outsiders In the early 1990’s Art & Antiques Magazine sent me to the Deep South to make a series of portraits of Outsider Artists (also referred to as Folk artist) who are mostly self taught and live well ‘outside’ of the mainstream Art World. Galleries and Dealers had been exploiting these artists for years by coming to the South, buying their work for next to nothing and selling those same pieces for astronomical prices in cities like New York and Boston. Some of the Artists were famous but barely made enough to get by, they were in fact living in abject poverty. It was my job to capture the Artists in their true surroundings and reveal to collectors and the general public the exploitation behind the unjust acquisition and reselling of their uniquely powerful Outsider Art.

Polaroid 665 Early in my career I fell in love with Polaroid 665. It was a positive negative Black & White instant film that came in cartridges designed to fit on the back of various medium format cameras, in my case the Mamiya RZ67. After exposinging a frame you would pull the Polaroid sheet through the rollers and out of the back then carefully let it process for a minute or so. When the time had elapsed you would peel the positive print off of the negative, coat it with fixative then place the negative in a solution of Sodium Sulphate diluted with water. Later you would rinse the negatives, dip them in Photo-Flo, and hang them with close pegs on a line to dry. You could make stunning prints from these negatives with or without the funky border from the schmushed chemicals created by the rollers. I would travel with light safe plastic tubs along with the solutions I needed and made portraits in various locations around the World. I even slipped around the oil slick rocks of Valdez, Alaska with a tub of Sodium Sulphate! Sadly 665 is long discontinued. Of all that I miss about shooting film, I might miss Polaroid 665 the most.

Dr Ken Leistner, simply known as Dr Ken, was a renowned fitness expert and guru of H.I.T. or High Intensity Training, meaning lifting absurdly heavy things in a very short period of time. Standing only 5’6’’ and 145 lbs, Dr Ken lifted as much as 370 lbs of tractor tire barbells and dragged ship anchor chains across his Great Neck Long Island driveway for me one summer afternoon in 2006. At the height of his body building career Ken weighed in at 232 lbs and in competition once lifted 660lbs. He trained NFL football players, body builders, and athletes in his home garage gym. Dr Ken and I stayed in touch long after our shoot. He was kind, gentle, and we became friends. I visited him and his wife Kathy on Long Island and met his kids. He said something during our shoot when describing his philosophy behind strength building which I have kept as an analogy for life to this day, “Doing a little bit of hard work will get you much further than doing a lot of work that’s not very hard”. Sadly Dr Ken passed away on April 6th, 2019