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

He’s at it again, and just in time for some nice pre- Oscar publicity. Go on lad, win yourself a shiny little statue. If you haven’t seen ‘Exit Through The Gift Shop’ i highly recommend it. So entertaining, and in Banksy’s own subversive way, enlightening. Anyway, so i thought what better way to spend this holiday monday than on a little street-art scavenger hunt around LA. I originally had four Banksy’s on my shopping list, but found out the de-faced billboard on Sunset has been taken down (apparently the owners realized it would now be a collectors piece, so put it in storage), and a cheeky cigarette smoking arsonist Charlie Brown, ready to pour gasoline on a burned out building. This was my particular favourite, but that too has been removed somehow (they must have literally cut half the wall out or something). Anyway, here’s what’s left……. so far anyway. Banksy, give us some more of your excapades. By the way, if he wins the Oscar, my money is on Mr. Brainwash doing the honors to receive the award.

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?

portfolio; updated (2.0) from robert gallagher on Vimeo.

Ok, so you wanna flip through my book again, but still don’t wanna wait for that Fed Ex? Well, that’s still not a problem. And now it’s bigger, better and more in- your- face than ever before! Deal with it.

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

I was so happy to hear that Graeme McDowell from sunny ‘Norn Irn’ won the US Open this past weekend. It reminded me of a cool shoot I did with him back in 2004 for The Observer Sports Magazine (UK). We spent an afternoon on a Scottsdale, Arizona golf course, just shooting around making pictures, and he was awesome to work with. No publicists, no handlers, just me and him having a laugh. I still can’t play golf though. I guess i never picked up any tips. Anyway, good for you Graeme. I’ve always been keeping an eye on your progress.

A friend recently posted this link on facebook, which lead to an interesting discussion about real vs unreal, as used in the (mainly advertising) media today. Now I’m told it turns out this is apparently a ‘not- real’ moment, or a created video, made by Gatorade, which has gone viral, which of course was the intention in the first place. But the question is this: At what point do they become in-effective and therefore pointless, and in fact just plain stupid. Now I get that the point is to ‘wow’ us, but when you’ve seen so many just not possible things, it becomes tiresome to me, and therefore probably almost everyone else out there. I mean, now were seeing countless babies breakdancing, day- trading etc etc. I mean, come on! Cheap, tacky, creatively lazy. I think it was effective a few years back, when Nike showed a video of Michael Vick throwing a football beyond the stadium walls. And that worked, because the wow factor had traction. But these days, it’s just so gimmicky and cheap. This is why i honestly believe the need for ‘true’ imagery will always have legs. It’s like this is the current ‘photoshop’ filter du jour, a fad that i hope will soon run it’s life- cycle. Remember a few years back when everyone was producing high contrast, desaturated images? That soon went away. The same will be said for gimmicky, ridiculous, over- exagerated footage. Because at some point, it’s human nature to say ” Ok, that was fun, but show me something i can actually connect with.”

‘LosAngopolis’ part 25; an iPhone journey thru the city of angels

‘LosAngopolis’ part 23; an iPhone journey thru the city of angels