This shoot had all the ingredients for a real Hollywood moment…..yes, she’s the daughter of Patti, great-granddaughter William Randolph Hearst, the shoot was done at The famed Chateau Marmont Hotel in the actual bungalow where John Belushi overdosed……. and finally halfway through the shoot actor Jeff Goldblum casually walks in to say hi! Just another day at the office.

This is a story i shot a while ago, but always wanted to make a directors cut, if you will. For me, the fun part about shooting a story, is maintaining a sense of narrative throughout, so it feels like your going on a journey. To me that is the most powerful piece of story- telling, and reportage work is nothing if not that. There has to be a sense of experience, just like any good documentary film. And Ultimate Fighting is a great subject for that, whether your a fan or not, you have fighters on the fringe of making a name, and wearing their life and scars literally on their sleeves, for everyone to see. As a photographer, you cannot wish for any more than that.

Above is our recent shoot with former US Open Champion at Congressional, Ken Venturi, who won in 1964, in the current issue of Golf World Magazine. Ken was great to work with, and at 80, was quite happy to work through a number of different shots around his home in Palm Springs. In fact we just basically turned it into a photo studio. But he was cool with that, so i can’t argue. He has a fascinating story of how he fought massive heat stroke to win the title back in ’64. I guess they didn’t have tiny little water bottles in those days! And below current US Open Champion Graeme McDowell. We shot him a few years ago, when he was nothing but a wee lad. Look at him now, all growd up and winning majors!

Last month we did a fun shoot with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on the golf course, obviously! I have to say she was great to work with and quite malleable. I use that expression in terms of how open a subject is to ideas. Sometimes, with high profile people, you just never know. It can go either way. But i think after having been doing this for twenty years or so, that’s where the experience comes in. Knowing when and how to open your big mouth. This is in itself the art of portrait photography if you ask me. Anyway, the other personally gratifying aspect of this shoot, is that i was in effect backing up a personal photo- hero of mine, none other than the great Walter Iooss jr, who i believe was originally slated for this shoot. It feels great to be in such good company. You can read the full article here: http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/2011-06/condoleeza-rice-interview

I’m pleased to announce our first collaboration with an online- only magazine, Wavelines from Nomad Editions, clearly signalling the ipad-ization of the publishing industry. I may be an idealist, but i’m also a pragmatic realist, and the ipad-istic magazine is the future my friends, whether you like it or not. Me, personally, yeah i love print, nothing is better than holding your published work in your hands. But let’s face it, the future is the digital press. To me there’s no question about it, and you just have to run the numbers yourself to figure it out. The other bonus of this project is i got to work with photo- editing rockstar Laurie Kratochvil, who surprised with an out of the blue call while checking into my hotel in New Orleans last week (where ironically enough, i was sans-wifi to view said online magazine).
The only problem with this format is over the past twenty years i’ve painstakingly managed to build an archive of most of the magazines my work has been published in ( the ones i know of at least), but how the heck do you archive a website?

Here’s a really nice shoot we did, in this weeks People magazine. A four page story about a family of race- horse trainers, who’s father was nearly killed by falling hay bails, and the family business had to taken over by his teenage son. The son went on to win his first race ever as a trainer, and is now a rising star in the horse racing business. On a personal note, i have to say the family were the nicest, most down to earth people you could find, and were very accommodating for our two day shoot, with a shooting schedule of early mornings and dusk. But the good news is…. i did learn how to rope a cow, cowboy style! Ok, so my cow was a wooden one, but still, it’s a start.

Earlier this year we did a fun shoot with a new upstart in the golfing world, a punky little O.C. skate-dude by the name of Rickie Fowler. Now, any time a magazine spends the time, effort and resourses to focus on a ‘hot, new thing’, then you know they’ve probably got their finger on the pulse enough more than me, to know what they’re actually talking about. But when i met Rickie, i kind of had a feeling this kid’s gonna be something special. Guess what, he was just named PGA Rookie of the Year, and that’s after having been a key player on the US Ryder Cup team this summer! Oh, and by the way, he’s a kick- ass motocross rider too…. and has a bit of that Zac Efron/ Justin Bieber thing going on. Can’t you just hear Nike and MTV swooning?

Here’s a great post blog post from my rep Wonderful Machine on our recent adventure-filled shoot with John Mellencamp.

Thursday November 11th, 2010

Robert Gallagher has risked his life for rock n’ roll. The LA-based WM photographer recently had a potentially jarring experience involving famed rock star John Mellencamp and a three-foot blade pulled from the top of a walking cane. According to the profile in Q Magazine, Mellencamp started the photo session by “swishing about” said blade, declaring, “alright, you’ve got 30 f***ing minutes!”

Mellencamp, apparently, is not fond of photo shoots. But where a lesser photographer may have faltered, Robert, undeterred, rose to the occasion. “That pretty much set the tone for the afternoon,” Robert told me. “But to be perfectly honest, it didn’t bother me. I didn’t feel he was really trying to threaten or scare me.” Though Robert wasn’t scared, the article describes Mellencamp delivering a knockout punch to a previous photographer, who invaded the temperamental rocker’s personal space to make adjustments. Nevertheless, Robert had a strategy:

“I was confident that if I just focused on my thing, to capture the devil-may-care artist, then he’d get it and be on board with me creatively. And that’s pretty much what happened. In fact, the 30 minutes turned into 50, which his manager pointed out never happens, with a quick jaunt around the area in his little bone-jarring ATV to shoot some artworks he’s collected.”

I caught up with Q photo editor Russ O’Connell to hear a little bit about why Robert was such a good fit for this assignment. “I knew that I could depend on Robert to shoot him in his natural environment, his home,” Russ explained. “We were lucky to have unrestricted access to John at his home and Robert’s work fits perfectly with the type of images I was looking for, nice raw uncomplicated portraiture. He’s also great at that important reportage angle that I needed for the feature… what you see is what you get with his work, and that’s down to his skill in camera.”

Robert is “particularly proud” of this shoot. First of all, he admires Mellencamp for “his political beliefs, despite the negative attention he draws. He is someone I greatly respect for standing up and being counted.” The wider reason is that he sees Mellencamp as an “outspoken cultural icon, a driven creative spirit, and someone whose sounds represented the freedom of the American spirit, which we’d crank full blast out of a convertible Triumph Spitfire back in our college days in North East England.”

-Asad