Ming-Na!

I'm on my way to the airport with SmileyJohn about to hop on a flight back to NYC.

The week was great. I'll try to post an update but with my track record lately that might take a year.

A super week and weekend culminated today with a photoshoot for the amazingly beautiful Ming-Na, star of the Joy Luck Club, ER, Stargate Universe, and the upcoming Law & Order: Los Angeles.

She was so wonderful. And at 46 is still completely flawless.

This is a rando unretouched shot of her just sitting in my car getting ready to shoot.



She was so funny and warm and I love her and we shared some Hurry Curry after the shoot and now we have started a game of Words With Friends on iPhone and I am going to destroy her.

Mimiiiii!!!

Sorry! I've been so bad lately. So behind on stuff. So much to do.

I've been back in NYC for a few days. I just haven't updated.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of photographing ReneeGoldsberry, famous for playing Evangeline on "One Life to Live".



I've never seen it.

What I HAVE seen her in though is her incredible performance as Mimi in the final cast of Rent back when we won the lottery.

Unfortunately the show has closed, but happily the final performance is preserved forever in the Rent: Live on Broadway DVD.

Check out Renee's performance of "Out Tonight/Another Day" in the clip below, she looks awesome in those blue "pants" on film...but in-person it was breathtaking. KG and I couldn't stop commenting on how ridiculous her body was.



Renee also played Nala in The Lion King and originated the role of Nettie in Oprah Winfrey's The Color Purple

She knows Oprah! Although, in her words, "I mean...I can't just call her up....but yeah, I 'know' her...".

Also...would you believe she's 39 and has a baby? She doesn't look a day over 29 and has the body of a 21-year-old supermodel!

She was just wonderful and hilarious to work with.

Love my job! Love getting paid for something I'd do for free!

Celebrity Auction!

Cathleen and Carly are wonderful little Hoochies that work at Chelsea Piers.



They organized a fancy dinner/charity auction a couple of weeks or so ago and their friend who was the auctioneer needed a photographer to capture the event and some of its celebrity attendees, so in I went.



It was a big event.




The food was epic.




There was a musical performance by Bernadette Peters.



Lots of random fun things being auctioned, from Jonas Brothers memorabilia...



To a guitar signed by U2 complete with a pair of front row VIP meet-and-greet tickets...



(I think it sold for like $150,000 or something crazy.)

To other things like trips to Italy, Emmy award tickets, American Idol Finale tickets, etc etc.

They raised a lot of money.

Lots of random celebs were there, like Law & Order's BDWong.



And EdieFalco from Nurse Jackie and The Sopranos...



And U2's The Edge...



Does anyone know what you're supposed to call The Edge?

When I met him I was just like, "SO great to meet you Mister...um....The Edge..."

Super awkies. But I bet it happens to most people.

It was a really fun event!



Nice job organizing guys, and thanks for thinking of me!



I always love being able to partake in the fancy-ness, eat great food, meet celebrities, AND get paid!

Gossip Boy!

Took some pics today for Connor P. who plays Eric van der Woodsen (Serena's little brother) on Gossip Girl.



He sure has grown up fast!

We were going for not-smiley, not-happy, not-preppy, angsty, troubled runaway.

Mad Man

Today I photographed Bryan Batt, one of the stars of Mad Men.



He's from New Orleans!

He was so super duper nice.

Pretty New Postcards

Spent all day designing them yesterday. Yay!

Celeb Photo Shoot: Marshall Flinkman!

Does anyone remember how great a show Alias was?



In its first two seasons it had to be one of the top 5 action adventure shows in the history of television. Senior year Munish and AC and Arj and Euge and Felly would all come upstairs to marathon the show with me. Oh those were the days....

Well, over the weekend I photographed Kevin Weisman, AKA Marshall Flinkman.

I'd been anticipating this shoot for over a month and was really excited.

He looks exactly as you would imagine and was a totally awesome guy.



He's in a band with Jack Black! He lives next door to Brad and Angie!

Who knew?

Campus Movie Fest: Red Carpet

So I got to the Paramount Theater at the Paramount lot to shoot red carpet pics for the grand finale of the Campus Movie Fest, the world's largest student film festival.

There were a good deal of people. 36 teams of student filmmakers to be exact. And all their family and friends.




All the young filmmakers were a fun and good-looking bunch.

There were some quasi-celebrities on hand...

And a smattering of actual celebs like Christian Slater...




Gale Harold from Queer as Folk/Desperate Housewives...



(Who is INCREDIBLY good-looking in person...)



(And wearing the TIGHTEST skinny black jeans ever.)



Oh and some dude from Resident Evil/The Mummy and a chick from Heroes.

John Cho was running late and missed the red carpet. Sadly I could not stay to wait for him.

It was a fun, relatively chill first red carpet work experience.

But the best part is, the event was sponsored by AT&T and I'M GETTING A NEW IPHONE 3GS!!!!

Will work for iPhone!

Funny that on the eve of my departure from LA I get called in to shoot my first red carpet event!

Thanks to Mark, I got hooked up as being the red-carpet photographer for LA's Campus Movie Fest. (www.campusmoviefest.com)



It's an International Student Film Festival and there are going to be all kinds of random celeb presenters (Sean Connery, Gale Harold, Christian Slater, and John Cho are a few of them) and though I am doing the shoot for "free", they're going to hook me up with the NEW iPhone!!!!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

We all know I'm a huge starf*cker and I've secretly always kind of wanted to be paparazzi (but not the annoying stalker kind), so this is very exciting.

Alright I'm off to go earn my new iPhone from 6:30-8:30 and befriend Harold/Sulu (John Cho) and then it's back to packing!

Thanks Marky! I love you.

Crazy Marathon Work Weekend

So it was busy busy weekend in NYC.

Life moves so much faster in The City than it does out in LA.

So I woke up early Saturday (after going out until 4am Friday night) to meet up with Anne and shoot this silly silly video (currently editing) by following these ridiculous instructions.

After the shoot we grabbed a burrito and I prepped for my first big photo shoot of the weekend.

The Jackson Five. Four kids and mommy. The four kids all had the most striking eyes and perfect skin.

That shoot took all afternoon, with changes taking half an hour to an hour. (Mom was really particular about styling.) But in the end the kids all looked impeccable. So it was totally worth it!





Immediately after that shoot, Cousin Jon and fiancee Jen met up with me for their engagement shoot.





That last shot (above) is my favorite new "dead baby" type of shot. Basically I tell the couple I'm photographing to walk slowly holding and consoling each other as if their baby has just died. Fun fun.

Following the shoot we had a delicious Italian dinner after which I headed off to SombreroFest 2009.

Again I got home about 4am. Had a couple hours sleep before waking up for my first Sunday shoot, the incredibly handsome Aaron Tredwell.



That shoot was super easy. (Photographing good-looking people always is because you don't have worry about finding trick angles and hiding double-chins or lazy-eyes.)

So with a couple hours to kill before my afternoon engagement shoot, I popped up to NYU for lunch with MAO at Dojo.

Mmmmm...healthy...




Following lunch I headed way uptown to Central Park for an engagement shoot for referred clients Leo and Hayley.



They were cute and also pretty easy to shoot.

My foot was exhausted though from walking around all day so I hopped in a pedicab out of the park. Fun!




I then headed over to ConCon and Kristen who hired me to take a few pictures for them for their Mommy for Mother's Day.




Dad picked me up on his way to Hong Kong (he flies out Monday) and we met up with Cousin Jon and fiancee Jen again for yet another meal at Kabab Factory before heading out for my third night out in a row. (Will post pics from that soon.)

Got in around 4am again. Woke up four hours later to prep for a last-minute photoshoot with this awesome guy Eddie who booked me last minute on Friday.



Grabbed a burrito, then headed to the airport for my flight back to LA!

I am crazy!!! NYC is crazy!!! I love it!!!

WORK!!!! MONEYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!