(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Jamie Chung
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Craig Cameron Olsen
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
Heidi: What are some of the hurdles when shooting elite athletes?
Craig: The biggest hurdle is their schedule. How much time I have with them sets the tone for everything else, and it can change on a dime, depending on training schedule or whether other photographers are shooting them as well the same day.
Does their training schedule influence what you can have them do, ie sprint, run stairs full blast…
Well schedule is followed closely by weather, weather dictates a lot. I find the best tactic is to keep it moving, I have my set ups in mind, scouted ahead, and depending on the editor’s direction, I know where I want to take them. I don’t like to get one shot, I like to play with the possibilities and get as much variety out of my time with someone. With athletes it’s gotta keep moving or they get bored, tired, and it’s over.
Were the permits hard to get or did you run and gun it?
For Mo and Galen, Andrea Maurio at Runner’s World wanted open sky to lay type, and the story was about their partnership-training together. We were on the Nike Campus where they train, so permits were a non-issue. We started on the oval track and then hit a spot I found on the cross-country track through the woods. I found a soccer ball on my scout and picked it up as a souvenir for my son, and it turns out Mo was a big soccer fan, so after the first couple set ups, he saw the ball and started playing…punting it back and forth with Galen, then the next moment they were hitting it each other with it and the spirit of their partnership really came through…and that’s the moment we were all looking for.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer:Darren Ankemann
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Damien Blottiere
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Andrea Wyner
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
Heidi: How does an assignment like this come up? Were you already there?
Andrea: I was getting a lot of work in Italy and Europe, I was already traveling and splitting my time between NY and CA so I decided to add a base in Italy too. Yes, I was in Italy. My assistant and I were so excited , he always wanted to be a Pizzaiolo and learn from the best.
Did you travel with the writer?
Not on this assignment but sometimes yes.
Did you have more then one feature to shot while you were there for the magazine?
I was actually on another assignment for T&L, a feature in Sicily when they asked me to shoot Pizza Quest
Roma or Napoli?
Napoli
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Finlay MacKay
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
Heidi: What made you want to self publish an online and print endurance mountain bike magazine?
Jason: It was pretty selfish really – there wasn’t one and I wanted to read one. I’ve been a mid-pack-at-best amateur mountain bike racer for about ten years and I’ve always loved magazines, especially bike magazines. But no mountain bike magazine was covering endurance racing and riding the way I wanted. I wanted race recaps that were more than blurbs sandwiched between ads. I wanted recaps and stories that went beyond who beat whom and by how much. I wanted personal accounts of the pain, emotion, humor and craziness that comes along with endurance mountain bike racing and epic rides.
What are the visual challenges you have with this project?
Beyond the challenges of being the mag’s publisher, art director and sales rep, along with contributing articles and photos, each issue of XXC has the challenge of tracking down photos that are the quality I’m looking for, of the racers I am looking for and that are available at a price I can afford. As you can imagine not many folks racing a 100 mile race are carrying a camera with them and taking shots while they race, so I need to rely on both pro and amateur photographers that may have been shooting the race. Of course I have received some incredible point and shoot shots over the years from contributors doing races like The Colorado Trail Race, The Tour Divide, etc.
What is your distribution like and how do you hope to grow?
Right now the magazine is available in three formats: free online viewing on xxcmag.com, paid digital download and print via MagCloud.com. The free version gets the most views and often gets up to 4,000+ reads. The paid print and digital version get one to two hundred per issue. Exact numbers are hard to track as the magazine really has an endless shelf life and back issues can continue to be viewed and purchased long after the publication date.
I would love to get the magazine on a solid publishing schedule and be able to have issues printed in bulk that could be sold in bike shops and other retail outlets. Being that 95% of the magazine’s articles are submitted by readers, I am never 100% sure how much content I’ll have for a given issue, so the publication schedule continues to be very much written in sand. Beyond the print and digital magazine in 2012 I have plans to introduce more content in the form of podcasts and video coverage to the website, but not at the risk of the magazine’s quality.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: John Balsom
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Dan Saelinger
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: J Bennett Fitts
Heidi: How did this idea come about?
Charlie: When I was art directing Buzz Magazine (too many years ago) I was able to run a photo essay in every issue for a few years. It was immensely satisfying and fun. The subjects would come from my relationships with photographers I liked and admired. And always from the photographer’s personal passion projects — basically the stuff they’d shoot for love, but needed a venue to show the work.
With my current magazine clients I suggest photo essays whenever my editors have the space. Everyone seems to like them and they’re a nice break from the copy-driven features. The concept I pitched was this: Everyone knows the picture postcard views of UCLA (as seen in countless TV shows and movies) but what about the real UCLA campus, the seemingly mundane places, the in-between spaces, the landscapes that everyone passes but few people notice. Let JB explore campus and find the hidden beauty of UCLA behind and between the landmarks.
Did you give any specific art direction other than in-between spaces?
It turns out that JB used to sneak onto campus as a kid and skateboard. He knew the campus well (or at least the ramps and jumps!) but he hadn’t been back for years. So I pretty much set him loose, with a few general guidelines. I wanted his perspective, not mine.
After he’d been shooting early mornings and late nights for a few weeks he felt he had some work prints worth looking at. We spent a lunch going over them, which was great because at that point he was pretty deep into it but it was all fresh to me. I gave him some notes and suggestions of where he should focus. He went back a few more times and then we settled on about ten of our favorites. It was pretty seamless and I think the essay is much stronger because I knew when to butt out!
What do you look for in photography?
Legendary music producer Don Was, after remastering “Exile on Main Street,” said that what defines rock and roll is the imperfections, what happens when the drummer is slightly OFF the beat. That’s what makes it rock and roll and not digitally auto-tuned drivel. That’s what I wanted JB to shoot — the human imperfections and random moments, the “off-beat” — NOT the visual equivalents of Auto Tune.
Now that everything’s digital it’s too easy to make it “perfect.” What I love about JB’s landscape work (and even more so in portraiture) is the mistakes and imperfections that make it real. We try to do as little “airbrushing” as possible; I think it makes photographs more credible and sincere, though I know I”m fighting a losing battle!
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Ron Haviv
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: James Nachtwey
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Mike Piscitelli
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Brian Leatart
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Nick Knight
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Matthew Pillsbury
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Jason Madara
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.
(click images to make bigger)
Photographer: Tara Donne
Note: Content for The Daily Edit is found on the newsstands. Submissions are not accepted.