2020: This was a shoot I needed to be schooled on, even though I lived during the heyday of professional wrestling, I was not aware of Ric Flair. From meeting him, he’s a total character and a living legend of the sport. I brought my lighting kit complete with backdrop but I quickly realized it wasn’t that kind of shoot. I had a short window to photograph him and it was going to be in the lobby of Rosemont’s DoubleTree Hotel. Rick and his wife were in town for the World of Wheels event prior to them heading to Austin for SXSW. However, life changed quickly. SXSW was the first of every major festival and event to be canceled and that was announced as Jim and I arrived. Still, myself and the writer Jim Ryan were there for that brief moment to capture Ric as the world was about to stop completely.

Ric’s wife Wendy Barlow first appeared as Ric slowly made his way down. We already were learning to not shake hands but the first thing Ric did was shake our hands and we reached out without a though. I immediately saw that Ric had cut himself shaving and that was going to be a issue to deal with in post.

Before we even got started, his fans started to hover and try to engage with Ric. He was cordial but clear he was doing a photo shoot and they pulled back. As I tried to conduct the photo shoot I was quickly aware I was the one that was going to figure out how to make the photos pop. Without my lighting or backdrop I realized this was going to be a challenge, as Ric wasn’t going to be too outrageous.

The first setup got the job done but it wasn’t quite right…

We then moved to the interview and immediately I realized this setup made more sense. As Jim began the interview, I leaned in to Wendy and stated I wanted to do one more setup and she said no problem. I tweaked the curtains, the couch and I waited patiently for the interview to conclude.

With that I moved Ric to the new spot and the images speak for themselves.

I was even able to get his wife Wendy to participate in a shot!

2020:

Today was a day that booking an assistant would have come in handy. It was the first day of C2E2 and I had a portrait session with the band Fitz and the Tantrums for Forbes.com. I had everything planned and then it all fell apart. Well, sort of. I planned on picking up the back drop paper on the way to C2E2 but didn’t foresee it not fitting in my car. I turned right back around, sawed off a chunk and then right back on the road.

C2E2 went smooth and with the writer Jim Ryan in tow, we headed to the venue. Arriving a bit early we secured a close parking space and had lunch at a local Mexican restaurant just up the street.

With Jim’s help we grabbed all we needed and slowly headed towards the Riviera Theatre’s marquee. Fearing that we were going to have to go in the back way was quickly squashed when we saw what we thought was a familiar face smoking a cigarette outside the front entrance. He smiled and said, “I can let you in here and I suspect you are looking for me anyway.” It was Michael Fitzpatrick the lead singer of the band and one of my subjects for today.

Jim was escorted back to the green room and other than the tour manager popping up at the right time to assist me in raising the background, I was left on my own to quickly set up in the lobby of the Riviera. Set it up quickly I did indeed. Jim completed the interview in ten minutes and he was back just in time to help me tweak the lighting.

Michael Fitzpatrick first arrive and then Noelle Scaggs appeared slightly distracted with phone in hand, dealing with the post office. As Noelle waited on hold, I continued to adjust the lighting.

Soon I was ready to shoot, Noelle was off the phone and here we go…

A little too lackadaisical but we’re getting there.

Now that’s more like it and SCENE.

2019: One of my all time favorite movies is Jaws. To think about the opportunity to meet and photograph a two time Oscar winner is insane. Yet here I was with writer Jim Ryan, on my way to photograph Richard Dryfuss, in a snow storm. Never having been to the Tivoli Theatre, I remember saying to Jim on how awesome it would be if the backstage had one of those classic theater mirrors with all the lights framing it.

This shoot had been confirmed for weeks, we were asked to arrive early with what we assumed meant we would do the interview and photos before the event kicked in, but that wasn’t the case. The event consisted of Meet and Greet packages, a Q&A on stage and then a screening of the movie Jaws. When we arrived we were greeted by Jeff and Steve of J&S Promotions and that’s when things started to go a bit off the rails. They were nice overall but couldn’t give us any solid answers of where or when it was going to happen. With that in mind, I was unable to utilize my time to set up my lights and realized I was just going to have to wing it.

We watched the clock tick away as Dreyfuss conduct his Meet and Greets and then it was time for the Q&A.

Jim and I secured decent seats and I decided to photograph it because, to be honest, these might be the ONLY photos I’m going to get tonight. The Q&A was interesting in not what was discussed but what wasn’t, more on that in a bit.

After the Q&A, we spotted Jeff and Steve and followed them backstage as the screening began. Arriving to the green room lo and behold, the classic theater mirror complete with lights that I had fantasized about. Jim was given a very limited time to conduct the interview and I started suspecting I was not going to get any time to shoot.

I soon realized another person was with us and came to the conclusion this was probably Richard’s wife, I was correct. I introduced myself as Jim continued the interview and asked if it was okay to take a few photos after he was done. She couldn’t have been kinder and said yes. I then took the opportunity to see what was going to be reflected in the mirror and started to get my set ready. After the interview, as I suspected, J&S was trying to put the kibosh on my photo shoot but Richard’s wife interjected and even against Richard’s original wishes, she insisted that he needed to take the photos.

It was on, I suggested Richard lean and almost sit on the table portion by the mirror and he followed my direction perfectly.

After a few shots I could feel the eyes of J&S on the back of my neck. So I decided to start talking, I said I noticed there were no questions regarding Jaws, was it on purpose? Without a pause he said “Oh yeah.” I then decided I was getting the same shot and tried to mix it up a bit and I asked him to maybe look at himself in the mirror.

He started following my direction and then he quickly turned back to me and said, “Let me tell you about the mirror. When I was young, I went up to my mirror.” And as he said this he got right into my face. Then he continued, “And I said, one day you’re going to be a star and then I kissed it.” Smack, inches away from my face, without any hesitated I say, “And that was it?” “That was it,” Richard reply.

Now in retrospect, maybe he was trying to intimidate me but I was all in. I was having a moment with THE Richard Dreyfuss. After that, we continued taking photos, I felt he was now relaxed and perhaps enjoying it might be a bit of a overstatement, but at least not hating it.

I decided to be bold and ask him about an early movie of his career. A movie I had been teasing and trying to get the writer Jim to watch leading up to this night. I said, “I recently watched the movie Inserts.” He seemed surprised I could even find a good copy of it or knew about it. I said I had and that I have been trying to sit down for a while to watch it. I wasn’t sure it was going to be good I admitted but that I did ended up liking it and thought it was such a bold movie for it’s time. He seemed a bit puzzled and I said well it was X-Rated when it was originally released. But considering it takes place during the 1930s about people trying to make the transition from silent films to talkies and that many turn to shoot stag films, it’s understandable and necessary. He asks what do you mean? I say well there’s full frontal nudity in this film both male and female. And he gestures to himself and I go no not you, but it’s there. I say trust me, I just watched the film, but I continue to praise it. He seems genuinely shocked to be even talking but the film from 1975 but he was completely engaged in the conversation. He even cleared up a gag that kept happening in the film with Clark Gable continually arriving at his character’s door. “Well the rumors go that Clark did porn before he became a star,” Richard explained.

Little did I know that at least one of the J&S guys was losing their shit behind me. My writer Jim later told me he had to almost physically hold the guy back, as he kept saying to Jim, “Are you or I going to tell him to stop.” Now, to be fair, I did say I would make it quick. And as it began, it did not seem like Richard wanted, or more importantly was ever informed, he was going to take part in a photo shoot. Which one could make a case that it is on J&S for not informing him. However, Richard is a big boy and if he was done I don’t think there was a chance in hell he wouldn’t let me know. Plus, his wife was there too and neither ever gave me any inclination they were getting antsy or frustrated with me.

But I needed time, I needed Richard to relax and because of it, I got this shot. This shot is exactly the original setup, but here’s the thing, I hadn’t earned his trust.

I may like it in B&W the best but it’s the shot I was waiting for and then I was done.

2013: I’ve had some crazy gigs through the years and the one that I always come back to, is shooting for Vogue magazine in Chicago for George Lucas’s wedding reception.

Talk about something one shouldn’t be allowed in, that has to be up there on the list. You can only imagine some of the attendees including the wedding band…

So with that said, this is how I met Anthony Daniels and his wife back in June of 2013. I remember walking up to both of them and asking if I could take their photo.

I believe I introduced myself as the Vogue photographer. I tried to be transparent every time I approached anyone but as you can imagine, most people thought I was just the wedding photographer. That did help in a sense that no one looked at me as the enemy and were more than happy to oblige on this celebrated occasion. Anthony then noticed I had a tie clip that was the symbol of the Empire and I explained it went better with my tie. I was surprised on how friendly he was to me. He asked how it was going and I said it was going okay but it was challenging. Challenging in the sense that I had to be missing out on people I should be photographing. That prompted Anthony to ask who he was and I said you are Anthony Daniels. How do you know that and I said because I was nine when Star Wars came out. Which he seemed to get a kick out of it. I was correct though, for every Mork from Ork…

a Wicket the Ewok…

and even a author and a Yoda,

there were reverends and…

a film producer/president and a jedi.

It was a crazy evening that I was told I had full access but I kept waiting for the axe to fall but that happened.

So with that in mind, it was great to see them both Anthony and his wife when he unveiled his cover for his biography at the Star Wars Celebration.

2007: I would get these shoots from Rolling Stone Magazine that I would call “non-stories” that were really just a way to promote a new tour or album. They were for the Random Notes section that was a paragraph with one photo to sell it. One such shoot was with the Danish indie rock duo, The Ravonettes. For some reason I was asked to take them to Chicago’s Navy Pier, so I scouted out locations the night before. Navy Pier for Chicagoan’s especially back in the mid 2000s, was a wasteland and was a tourist trap. I’m still not sure why my editor requested the spot but I took on the challenge. I spent an hour walking around the place and had a few kitschy ideas to thrown at the duo the next day. They were playing the Empty Bottle, so after their sound check I just picked them up like their chauffeur. I had never met them prior but they seemed very polite, well, that was until we arrived at Navy Pier. At this point they too understood the location, the confusion and challenges it came with it. At one point one of them asked me, “Does Rolling Stone hates us?” It was a fair question but I assured them I had a few ideas to play with. The first stop was the Children’s Museum. I walked through it the night before and thought it had potential. However, it turned out to be a bust, it was not open. My next idea was for them to ride the children’s train that had an alligator head on the engine. I thought it could be fun but they didn’t seem amused, so we moved on. The next stop was a kiosk booth that did temporary tattoos. This interested them. But the challenge was the tattoos were done with a airbrush gun by the guy working the booth. I explained this was a photo shoot and that I wanted to stage the shot but he didn’t seem to understand. It took a few times but eventually he got the idea. In retrospect, I probably just had to offer more money and this would have been solved quicker. Still, the results I think worked well and was a great start.

I don’t like to give just the client one set up, so I had one more idea. There was a “Amazing Chicago Funhouse Maze” and I thought that could be fun and I was right.

I still think these had potential to be used as publicity photos but that never happened.

I worked hard for me to not be in my shots and then found even one more set up on the way out.

But in the end, the photo that ran was one from the first set of images.

That smiled seemed genuine and the moment felt real.

The Raveonettes at the Temporary Tattoo Art kiosk booth at Navy Pier. Sune Rose Wagner adds the final touches to a temporary tattoo with the likeness of a Ramones eagle to band member, Sharin Foo, as they make a stop to play at Chicago’s Empty Bottle on Friday October 19, 2007. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen)

2006: I was spending an extended weekend in Kansas City, MO for a bachelor party when I got the call, the call was unexpected but in some ways, most welcomed. It was from Rolling Stone Magazine and they wanted to see if I available for a portrait shoot with a Chicago Rapper that was about to release his debut album. The catch was, it was the next day. It only cut a day off my trip and the friends were fellow photographers so they understood. The artist was Lupe Fiasco who had created a buzz working with Kanye West and that got the attention of Jay-Z. I left the next day on a flight that was too early for the amount of sleep I had, but better safe than tardy. Which in turn is what Lupe was and changed the time frame for the shoot a few times that day. Regardless, once we met up on Wacker Drive it was a great afternoon of shooting. We started out at the hotel he was staying at. He too, as it turned out, had just flown in to Chicago that day as well. While I was waiting for him to show, I saw the possibilities of using this sign of a parking garage.

As I was shooting, I saw the possibilities of the words spelling out You Are King, well sort of…

“UR King”…looking at it now I think it works. Especially for a rapper that has the whole world ahead of him. I think I needed to play with it a little more and gave up on that idea too soon. Perhaps had him block the writing with his body but I think shooting in the other direction was a little less picturesque. Maybe I’ll come back to this with a future session.

From there we started to walk south on Wabash for a block. I had an idea to go into another parking garage and treat the moment as a day for night shoot. With my handy flash bar, I would drag the shutter and give the image a warm quality to trick us into thinking this was night time and not the middle of the afternoon.

I think with that said, even rendering them in B&W works quite well.

I had one more spot in mind and Lupe was happy to comply. So we continued south a few more blocks on Wabash until we came to these stairs that lead to the Chicago’s classic elevated train platform. The “El” is pretty unique to Chicago and the stairs with the color signs listing stops is a great place to start.

Lupe had brought several changes of clothes and periodically would change. I think for the bridge shots of the platform he changed back to the original outfit because we weren’t convinced those first shots worked.

In the end Rolling Stone ran with one of the parking garage photos.

Looking back I like a lot of them so it’s tough but I think I would have picked maybe one of the shots on the EL stairs.

Perhaps this one-

Overall, a very successful shoot.

2006:

Rolling Stone Magazine use to have this feature in the front of the magazine entitled, Random Notes. I shot for it quite a few times, sometimes they ran and often they did not. It was pretty hit or miss but I still got paid. Sometimes the reason was old news by the time it was ready to hit the presses, or it got bumped for something bigger and sometimes, the idea didn’t come out as they had hoped.

The members of MUSE are big poker fans and during their 2006 “Black Holes and Revelations Tour” they decided they would give fans a chance to play poker with them backstage at every stop. Well almost every stop. The promotion was connected with local radio station and for some reason they did not do it at the Chicago date. Yes the same show I was shooting for the magazine. They decided to send me anyway and I arrived at the Aragon Ballroom right after sound check. Right off the back I confessed I had no understanding of the game. The trio was kind and walked me through some of the basics. My initial thought was I needed a fan or at least their hand in the shot.

But pretty quickly I realized I needed to just focus on the three guys. As they continued to school me, for some reason I was obsessed to have Matt Bellamy drop poker chips and I had him do this again and again.

Through the course of the shoot I think the band had a lot of fun.

Even in the final shot, although not obvious, it’s still Matt dropping the chips.

2005: In 2005 Lollapalooza ceased to be a touring festival and dropped anchor in Chicago. With the inaugural year, I came out to cover the festival and was also hired by the company Sennheiser to do a backstage portrait with their product. I had never met Steve Stevens but was a huge fan of his work with Billy Idol. I was asked to arrive hours before they were suppose to hit one of the main stages. There I sat with the “hurry up and wait” mentality. I missed several of the band’s live sets during that time. Which would have been fine but no one was assisting me in any type of direction of how, where and when I was going to do the shoot. I’ll admit I was also a bit green dealing with these sort of shoots on location especially without any assistance.

So I waited and waited.

Then Steve Stevens just walks up to me at 5:25 PM and goes, “lets do this, I have five minutes before I’m going to hit the stage.”

So I scrambling to figure out the game plan with the guitarist whom keeps shooting down my ideas. No, can’t do it on stage before our set, no, I can’t grab a guitar because they are already on stage and it went on and on all the while my precious minutes are slipping away.

I had seen the touring cases and I thought maybe I can use these to get some kind of backstage vibe. I show Steve the shot and we start to figure out how to place him in the background.

Normally I focus on the subject’s eyes and if the rest of the subject matter drops out of focus, that is fine. However, in this case the product is equally important. The Sennheiser product in mind was a little square wireless guitar transmitter the size of a wallet. Not the most visually exciting thing to hold in your hands. I realized quickly as the clock kept ticking down, I need both his body language and my composition to bring the energy needed to pull this photo off.

Steven started doing a few poses but to be honest, they just weren’t doing it for me. He was trying but I felt there was still something missing.

Missing was showcasing the product, it was getting lost in a already cluttered background. Bring the product to the foreground was the obvious way to handle it. Okay, starting to come together but need to put his head up.

Okay, I have now spent a minute and a half figuring out the composition and the next hurdle presents it’s self. How do I get both Steve and the product in sharp focus without losing the dynamic of the perspective I just created?

Any thoughts?

Either from pure arrogance, ignorance or a little both, I came to only one conclusion… shoot the shot twice, once with the hands in focus…

and then one with the focus on Steve and figure it out in post!

Which is exactly what I did.

We shook hands, he walked onto the stage. I proceeded to shoot most of the show from the side stage as the rain fell down.

As I was walking to the next stage, a golf cart goes flying by me, it’s Steve on the back, he sees me and he goes, “are we all good” and not knowing I just gave the thumbs up and hoped for the best.

I came home and I was surprised how easy it was to merge the two images. The main shot is Steve Stevens with the second focusing on the product, his hands and some of his arm. I never told Sennheiser for the fear they might be able to see through my Photoshop skills. But all these years later, I think I nailed it. Especially for a shoot that I did in three minutes!