Monocle Magazine Shoot: Darwin, Australia

Last month Monocle Magazine sent me up to Australia's Northern Territory to cover a story on their burgeoning capital city, Darwin.  Darwin has become big news in the last few years as the United States has promised to begin stationing several hundred troops there in an effort to re-establish a naval presence in that part of the world. There's also been some massive investment in natural gas by the Japanese and French to the tune of $39 billion AUD. Monocle wanted to find out how this new interest in Darwin might change the city and what the people and government thought about it. I teamed up with Darwin journalist Eric Tlozek to meet some VIPs there and shoot everything I could with the 2 days that I had. I've included the tearsheets here and just a few of my favorite shots from the trip.

It was over 90°F and 99% humidity when I was there so my lens would fog up every time I took the lens cap off and I was dripping with sweat pretty much the entire time. I was dying to go for a swim but couldn't because the water is filled with deadly box jellyfish. I also had the strange experience of getting thrown out of public spaces and people making me delete pictures because they were afraid they might be in the shots- I guess they're a little spooked up there about strangers walking around and taking pictures.

In my own experience, a lot of the people didn't really like all the new attention that was being brought to Darwin and quite a few didn't like what the new money and gentrification was bringing. One guy told me how much he missed the Darwin that he knew before the streets were paved (which wasn't all that long ago). Conversely, we had many people welcome us into their homes as we took pictures of the unique style of architecture in Darwin designed specifically for the tropical climate called Troppo Architecture. I also met people who had a key role in bringing about Darwin's change including the Deputy Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, the head of the Northern Territory's Cattleman's Association and a couple who successfully launched the first lifestyle magazine and gay nightclub in the entire Northern Territory. In their eyes the timing of Darwin's coming changes is just about right.

Ad Campaign: GoodStart Early Learning 3rd ad

These images are for the third ad of the GoodStart Early Learning campaign that I shot with the ad agency The Monkeys. To continue with the concept used in the first images that I shot for this campaignwhere the tagline is physically integrated into the image we wanted to create life-size letters that the children could interact with. When I first saw the concept drawings for this ad I was really excited with the idea of the kids running around and interacting with the letters in the shoot. I had a pretty specific idea in my head as to how big the letters should be and how they should look so that they were the right size for the kids to play with and that their scale would read properly when set at different distances when placed in the large room. I jumped in and offered to build the letters myself. I had studied glass sculpture in college and one of the things that was a constant part of the creative process in sculpture was the act of building a maquette out of cardboard, wax or other materials before one went on to attempt to build the final object. This helps the sculptor visualize how the final product will be assembled, how much material will be needed and what obstacles one might come across in the process. I spent a lot of time gluing cardboard together in college although it didn't really help all that much since I broke just about everything I made...  But I was pretty sure I had the chops to make the letters for this shoot in the way that I wanted them to look.

In some cases I had to distort the letters so that they would look normal in the lens width and perspective that I was planning to use in the shoot.

At first, spending long days listening to music while working with cardboard and hot glue was sort of fun and reminded me of college years. One of the interesting challenges in this project was being reminded that I now live in a fairly small country (Australia with 20m people) and it's not like where I used to live (the U.S.) where you can get just about anything and get it cheaply. While back in the States I could go to just about any packing supply shop and easily buy or find cardboard with a white side to it, white cardboard just doesn't seem to exist in Australia.  I was quoted by some company that it would cost me several hundred dollars for them to print the color white onto the amount of cardboard I would need and it would have to be rush shipped up from Melbourne at no small expense and it would probably arrive late. I ended up having to paint the letters myself and I was surprised at just how much paint a thirsty piece of cardboard can soak up before it looks like solid white and ended up painting 4-5 coats for each letter. After getting about halfway through the letters (and about a dozen hot glue burns on my fingers) it came flooding back to me how tedious this kind of studio work was.

At the shoot the kids had a great time playing with the letters and drawing all over them. Hiding in the rocket ship seemed to be a pretty big deal and a pecking order was immediately established as to who could spend the most time in the ship. It was only when they realized that they could kick and throw the letters that the shoot started to get a little hectic as the client, the agency and myself realized that the letters could get destroyed before we finished shooting. I had to jump in and run around, playing with the kids and distracting them from destroying the letters while I shouted instructions for when the art director should shoot, as he had become the camera operator about mid-way into the day so that I could manage the craziness.

All in all, it was probably a bad idea on my part to decide to build these letters the week between Christmas and New Years- which happened to be the week my baby daughter was due to be born. Having a baby is stressful enough but having to make gigantic cardboard letters while wondering if my baby is coming every time my phone rings is a bit more stress than anyone needs in a decade.

I finished the letters and we had the shoot 3 days after my daughter was born. It seemed like the minute the shoot was over and I was back at home I slept for what seemed like days. It might be a while before I volunteer myself for prop making but all in all I was pretty happy with the experience and end result.

Good Weekend Magazine crew rowing story

A few months ago I was asked by Good Weekend Magazine to go down to Canberra and shoot images to go along with a series that they were doing about a few writers trying their hand at training for a day in an Olympic sport.  I followed writer Mark Dapin as he went through a light version of the incredibly intense daily workout regimen and technique routines of the crew rower.

Ad Campaign: GoodStart Early Learning

In December I worked with the impressive Sydney agency The Monkeys on a three image campaign for Australia's GoodStart Early Learning Program. The GoodStart program has hundreds of early learning centers around Australia focused on children's learning development in the crucial first 5 years of their life. Our approach to the shoot was to capture children engaged in discovery and play with their environment and the tagline, "Minds Now Open," becomes an integrated part of the image and the activity. Here are the first 2 images, already out on the streets. The third will be up soon as the finishing touches are made.

Pampers Village- Images for Global Website Relaunch

  This past July I had the fantastic opportunity to go to New York and work with Saatchi & Saatchi and Strawberry Frog to shoot a series of images for the global relaunch of the Pampers Village website. Pampers Village is a site overseen by Pampers as a resource for parents and parents-to-be that serves as an information hub and an online community. The site covers a huge range of information for parents from learning about prenatal care to preparing your child for her first day of school.

The goal was to create a small library of images that would cover a broad range of ages and demographics so that as each country- or region-specific Pampers Village website rolls out they would have the appropriate imagery. Among the usual challenges of finding a range of locations, ethnicities and strong talent covering a lot of ages, we had to have it all in one place (and where else but New York?!). For about a month of pre-production I had to get up around 4am, work through the day and go to bed around 1am in order to be on the same page with the clients, the agency and my production team. I was in Sydney, the Creative Director was in Capetown, my producer was somewhere in southern France, the web design team were in the Netherlands, the agency was in NYC and the client was somewhere in the wilds of Canada (Toronto, I think). As one group of people were going to bed somewhere in the world another group were waking up somewhere else. By the time I arrived in New York we were hammering out the final details and the shoot went like clockwork... mostly due to the efforts of my indefatigable producer- whose name I reluctantly share- Annika Howe. It was a great week of shooting and working with Saatchi & Saatchi's Global Creative Director Tris Gates-Bonarius was one of the best working experiences I've ever had.

Here are a few images from the new Pampers Village (the first site to roll out with the new look has been the site for Ireland.) As more country sites come out I'll put up more pictures from the shoot.

Good Weekend Cover and Story

A story I shot a few weeks ago for the Sydney Morning Herald's weekend magazine, Good Weekend, just appeared this past weekend as the cover story. It was one of those happy instances where printing on matte newspaper stock made the pictures look fantastic and I was really happy with the end result.

Sydney Magazine Shoot- Sonoma Bakery

A few weeks ago I did my first shoot for Sydney Magazine covering the day in a life of a loaf of bread as it's made by Sonoma Bakery every day. I was pretty excited for this story because I'm big into cooking and baking- I make my own beer and cheese and had been baking bread for a while but I hadn't really had much luck with the sourdough.  It was inspiring to see a bakery at the production level of Sonoma still using the best ingredients and making everything by hand. In order to follow a loaf of bread from start to finish I had a 1:45am start time and finished around noon. Those kinds of hours do all sorts of interesting things to the eyes and brain when trying to shoot- I have absolutely no idea how doctors do 30 hour shifts.

Sydney Magazine- Our Daily Bread

A batch of fresh dough coming out of the mixer.

A kalamata olive dough resting.

Dividing the dough into loaf-sized portions.

Preparing baguettes.

One of the many bakers who hand-knead the loaves every day.

Loaves proofing in bannetons.

Retarding the loaves in a cooler to improve texture and flavor.

Dusting the loaves

Scored loaves ready for baking.

Just out of the oven.

Bread lands on the table at a Sydney cafe.

Interview by THIS IS THE WHAT

Last month I was interviewed by photo blog This Is The What run by a photo editor from New York. You can read the interview here: http://www.thisisthewhat.com/2011/07/10-minutes-with-joe-wigdahl/.

Cover and leading story for Good Weekend

I shot the images for the cover story of this past weekend's issue of Good Weekend, a major Australian magazine distributed in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age every Saturday. It's Australia's equivalent of the New York Times Magazine. I'd like to say it was a challenging shoot but getting teenagers to look like they're playing video games is just about the easiest thing in the world. It was my first Australian magazine cover and my first time working with the people at Good Weekend and I had a great time.

New lifestyle work for a Sydney real estate company

Back in April, a design firm based in North Sydney called Delivery Inc hired me to shoot some imagery for a new real estate development there called The Belvedere. The challenge was to find compelling imagery that told a story about working and living in North Sydney for them to use on the web, in print, in billboards, etc. I had only been living in Sydney for a few months at that point and hadn't really been to North Sydney so I needed to do some exploring. I spent 16 hours walking many miles crisscrossing North Sydney, Milsons Point and Kirribilli and shot many, many images.  It was exhausting but a lot of fun.

Hey Graduates!

This is a really good article on internships and an employer's obligations to interns (and the government) when taking them on. It's important to know the difference between offering opportunity vs. exploitation. I wouldn't be a photographer without the internships I was offered and I was fortunate enough to have fantastic on-the-job experience from amazing people. I worked alongside others who would tell me about horrible hours doing dry-cleaning pickup and fetching lattés only to get screamed at for zero applicable work experience. Of course, there's going to be a lot of bummers about starting off on the bottom rung and getting the unpleasant jobs, but try to see if your internship is a mutually beneficial experience for you and your new boss. Keep in mind that a really negative experience may be as important as a really positive one.

If it doesn't feel like a mutually beneficial experience why not ask yourself a few simple questions-

1) Are you learning anything?

-Even if your boss isn't spending hands-on time with you to show you the job, or if the boss doesn't talk to you at all, there are learning lessons all over the place. As an intern and an outsider you have the opportunity to peek in on a business or individual you admire and see how it works and how it doesn't-

-Is the business organized or not? How does that impact the business, the working environment, the product and the people that work in it? The handful of times I worked with a photographer I didn't like I learned something about what not to do when I would became my own boss someday down the road. The converse applied to the photographers I loved.

2) What were/are your expectations of the internship position?

-Did you expect to have a full-time paying job with benefits in six months with working expertise or were you looking for something to do for the summer while you applied to grad school? Knowing what you want and what your future boss expects of you in your internship and what the internship position is will be a big help in managing your disappointment. Simply asking honest questions about this on the outset can clear this up for you and manage expectations.

3) What do you hope to walk away with? If you don't know this already or aren't able to ask yourself this and get a (somewhat) clear answer you should move right to the next question...

4) Are you really right for the job to have a future in it?

-Maybe you always saw yourself as a photographer or a designer or whatever but it's a hard question to ask one's self if the dream and the reality don't align. Use the internship to find out what your strengths are and move towards that. It's a process of discovery. Average life span in the U.S. is 78. You've got a couple decades to screw up and start over a few times and no one except your credit rating agency is keeping score.

5) Are you getting a brand name with the internship?

- Some internships are totally abusive, meaningless, exploitative and/or a waste of time but the caliber of the name you're working for opens lots of doors. It's your call.

A lot of people will be getting out of school this May in a tough job market and will be tempted to take work that will be called an internship but may have the patina of "unpaid menial labor" instead...check out this article and learn about your rights and what you should expect.

Take care and have fun with it.

Oh- as an addendum I would add one more piece of advice...it might be wise to clean up your presence on the internet before you apply for internships. Don't think that just because it's an internship that your potential new employer won't google you to see what your work is like. I've had a few instances where I googled an internship applicant and in a 2 minute search saw that they posted writings or pictures of themselves naked, doing drugs, writing graffiti, having eating disorders, self-harming etc.

You're free to post whatever you want online but that also allows everyone else the freedom to judge a private life you've decided to make public. And posting proof of illegal activity just really isn't smart. Seems like common knowledge but I guess it isn't.