It’s not every day you get to be part of a historic event like the one I had the honor to document this past weekend for Sports Illustrated. I got a call from my good friend Brad Smith, Director of Photography at Sports Illustrated asking me to stop by his office to discuss an ambitious project they were working on for the one year anniversary cover of the Boston Marathon bombing. On top of being involved in this over-the-top production, I was able to meet and work with a legendary portrait photographer who was hired to take the cover photo, Gregory Heisler. He’s shot over 70 covers for TIME Magazine, among many more publications. He’s also recently put out his first book, 50 Portraits, which showcase some of his most memorable portraits from the past few decades.

The idea was to photograph the mayor of Boston, along with thousands of Bostonians, wearing Boston sports colors and outfits, at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the site of the tragic bombings one year prior. I know the whole Sports Illustrated team worked very hard to make such an event take place, especially the effort of Brad Smith should be commended. He personally made multiple trips to Boston to convince the mayor to shut down a busy city block for the morning and dealt with all the bureaucratic red tape. In addition, safety was a concern, so there was a noticeable police presence along with bomb-sniffing dogs. Safety was paramount.

The press release went out during the week prior to all Bostonians to show up at the finish line starting at 7AM for the 8AM arrival of the mayor. To our surprise there were already people lined up before 6AM when we arrived! I was tasked with making a time-lapse of the scene and documenting the entire process from a behind-the-scenes point of view.

The whole experience truly felt like a sporting event, as if the marathon was actually happening around us. The amazing thing was that we, the Sports Illustrated team, WERE the event! There was an estimated 3,000 Bostonians who showed up and packed tightly into the single city block. Everyone from survivors, first responders, organizers, firefighters, police officers, EMS, residents, their pets, and even the Boston RedSox World Series Trophy showed up for the shoot!

Gregory took the amazing cover photo while in a massive lift about 10 feet above the front of the crowd using a super-sharp Canon 17mm tilt/shift lens on a Canon 5D Mark III body. One of the things I love the most about Gregory’s work is how he uses light so subtly so that it feels like natural light. The entire street was in open shade, but he used a few strobes with an amber gel to subtly throw warm light across parts of the crowd making it seem like beautiful morning sunlight.

One trait of a talented photographer, beyond technical and creative ability, is how they interact with their subjects. It’s something that makes the best of the best stand out. Gregory got up in the lift and addressed the crowd of 3,000+ with a megaphone telling them how honored and excited he was to be given the privilege of photographing all the beautiful people. He made jokes and immediately lightened the mood causing laughter and cheer. It’s these sorts of traits that I will take with me in my own work and it’s something Gregory and I talk about in our recent podcast.

After about 10 minutes of actual shooting, it was all over and everyone dispersed back into the city. The group of people who showed up couldn’t have been better. There were zero incidents and after the shoot was complete we were amazed to see the streets completely clear of trash…almost unimaginable!

Thank you to Brad Smith and all of the Sports Illustrated team for allowing me to be part of this epic photo shoot. And thanks to the people of Boston for the inspiration showing your amazing resilience. This shoot will truly go in the record books!

Earlier this month I covered the 2013 ING New York City Marathon for the NY Times. It was nice to cover the official race again as last year it was cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy. This year I was assigned to cover the 1-mile stretch of the course in The Bronx at about Mile-20 as runners crossed the Willis Avenue Bridge from 1st Avenue in Manhattan and back over the Madison Ave Bridge into Manhattan.

It was clear security was much heavier this year as the course was guarded from blocks away from the actual course. Luckily, I was on a scooter and was able to snake through the snarled NYC traffic. I parked my scooter near the Madison Avenue Bridge and walked across the bridge into The Bronx. As it turned out I’d arrived quite early as I had to wait about an hour for the leaders to pass.

It was fun to chat with and see all the various supporters from local cheerleaders, a Japanese drumming team, bands, firefighters, and local residents cheer on the runners as they passed.

I made my way to the Willis Avenue Bridge and eventually spotted a building that gave me a great vantage point to make an overall shot and transmit my photos to the paper. It was worth the hike to the roof as the photo quickly made it to the NYTimes.com homepage!

I made my way back to my scooter over the first bridge and got back home to the Upper West Side where I transmitted once more before hitting Central Park as evening approached. I entered the park around 90th Street and walked toward the finish line at around 67th Street. As I made my way closer I was swarmed by Marathon finishers attempting to find their belongings and way out of the park.

One of my favorite parts of covering the Marathon is seeing the runners cross the finish line as it’s a very emotional moment for them. Overall, I had a great time covering this year’s race!

Why? Well it’s because this wasn’t just any runway show, it was Project Subway. As in Subway sandwiches as part of a marketing campaign.

The basics were this….Subway had four designers compete in a challenge, like they do in the TV show Project Runway. The designers could only use accessories from a subway restaurant that were provided; napkins, plastic bags, plastic salad bowls, cups, and basic accessories mostly branded with the Subway logo.

I photographed backstage as the models and designers were getting ready for the runway show and was impressed with what they were able to make out of these materials.

After the show guest judges including Scary Spice rated the looks with a score of 1-5 footlong subs. #nom

After a tie, the one and only Jared, subway’s spokesman who lost 245 pounds on a subway diet voted and Danilo Gabrielli was declared the victor.

He won a years worth of Subway sandwiches…and of course the opportunity to have a show at New York Fashion Week.

My wife, Laia, told me last week that she really wanted to attend the Coney Island Mermaid Parade this year. She’d been to it twice before, once with her family who were visiting from Barcelona and another when I had just started on tour with Justin Bieber, both times I was unfortunately unable to attend. Coney Island is a place I rarely get to, so it was a nice change of pace to zip out to the beach on my scooter with Laia today.

I’m not sure what to say about the parade other than it’s Coney Island’s official start of summer, it has a Mardi Gras feel to it with dancing, some brass bands, and lots of people dressed in ocean-themed outfits. Oh, there’s a fair amount of boobs too. Lots of these outfits are made entirely out of body paint, so there’s some partial nudity.

We arrived before the parade started and walked around, ate some hotdogs, and scouted out locations to shoot. We bounced around from the start and finish and decided to hang out for a while at the end in hopes some participants would peel off and head to the beach. They did, which was nice because it gave me an excuse to get into the water a bit. It was super hot and the sun was taking a toll. Laia and I got a lot of sun today.

We decided to call it a day pretty soon after as we had another 1+ hour ride on our little scooter. Coney Island is the farthest we’ve brought our little bike. Another fun day in NYC! My photos are in the order they were taken.

Ron played for the Yankees back in the 70s and even won a 1977 World Series Championship Ring. He took it off at one point and it was so tight, I didn’t think he’d get it back on!

The shoot took place at Yankee Stadium where I had access to the field and players dugout. I actually haddn’t worked in Yankee stadium since the 2009 World Series where I made a fun time-lapse.

As with all my portraits, my goal is to get as much variety as possible, so I arrived early with my assistant in order to find numerous options. As it turned out, Ron got a bit delated, so we ended up having some time to kill, all alone, while hanging out in the dugout and field. It was definitely a cool experience to be by ourselves in such a famous stadium.

Ron showed up for the shot and was a super nice and talkative. He was willing to spend as much time and pose however we wanted him. I really enjoyed his company during the shoot as he kept it interesting with all his stories from his career.

Another exciting shoot for a great client and awesome editors!

How the photo ran in the Sports illustrated iPad edition.

I keep up in the news, so I was very aware of their collective and the prison sentences some of them are serving for their recent unauthorized provocative guerrilla performance inside a church to protest of the Orthodox Church leader’s support for Putin during his election campaign. After playing only for 40 seconds before security guards stopped them, three ended up being charged with hooliganism and sentenced to prison and two fled Russia to avoid prosecution.

This shoot was different from most for a number of reasons. First, my subjects were anonymous as the group members wear brightly colored balaclavas and use only nicknames during interviews. I was photographing Fara and Shaiba. When asked who was who, one responded, “It doesn’t matter”.

When I arrived, the two small girls were unmasked and very warm to myself and the writer.  They were crashing, at least temporarily, at someone’s home prior to the premiere of their HBO documentary at a nearby theater, which they ended up attended unmasked in secret. What an experience to have to sneak into their own premiere.

I was told by one of their handlers that it was imperative that we not photograph their faces because the Russian government was after them. At the beginning of the shoot, they only wanted me to photograph them while masked inside the elevator of the building. Because that seemed very limited, I asked if we could try quickly taking their portrait, masked, at street level, but they didn’t want to risk causing a scene on the street and getting tracked, especially since their documentary premiere was just a few blocks away. There’s a good chance they’d be recognized and cause a scene.

I ended up scouting the stairwell of the building where, at the top, I found a ladder to the roof of the building. I pitched the idea of climbing up to the roof so we could photograph them outside in the golden light. They liked the idea, so we climbed up and made some really cool images.

I really had a fun time with this shoot. The secretive nature of the shoot was exciting and it felt like I was part of something somewhat historical. Good times!

This particular restaurant, Jeepney, was really cool…and like many NYC restaurants, was very tight. I shot my usual interiors, exteriors, and was set up at a table in the back to document various dishes the critic asked me to shoot. They brought out adobo chicken wings, a dish of pancit malabok negra, Bulalo, a short-rib and vegetable soup with a marrow bone riding on top, and finally the balut: a hard-boiled duck egg with a fertilized duck embryo encased inside.

I’ve never seen anything quite like balut, so in order to take proper photos, the owner gave me a demonstration how the hard boiled egg is served and how it’s cracked and eaten. After cracking open the large hard-boiled egg with a fork, she dug within the yellow yolky interior and came out with fertilized duck embryo (I’ll call it a fetus).

At that point she asked if I’d like to try the balut. Ok, sometimes I find it hard to turn down an offer to taste the food at these sort of assignments…but I had no problem respectfully declining this particular offer…

Anyhow, the balut may not be my cup of tea, but I’d definitely come back for one of their other great dishes on the menu! Fun place! 

Anyhow, this particular bootcamp is called The People’s Bootcamp and is led by Adam Rosante and is a “pay-what-you-can” 45-minute workout. with a warmup and cool down. He had the idea to start his own bootcamp and when researching competition and found the prices of these classes were super expensive (some topping $50/class). Adam’s philosophy is that “effective lifelong fitness should be accessible to everyone regardless of what you have in the bank.” Awesome.

I was so inspired when I visited his class for the shoot that decided to begin taking the class myself and have since been to 5 consecutive classes since my original visit. I played sports all in my adolescence through to the varsity level in high school. Since then I’ve tried to keep in shape mostly by jogging in the park on a regular basis. I’ve tried various classes (yoga/spinning/boxing) and different gyms, but they were never my cup of tea…they also they were pricy. But when I was exposed to Adam’s bootcamp it brought me back to those days in high school when I was a football player and wrestler training. I knew this was something I wanted to do. There’s something about having a coach yelling at you and the camaraderie of executing difficult tasks with classmates all going through the same agony.

So, I highly recommend Adam’s class if you’re in the NYC area…if not, look for similar classes near you…they’re great because it’ll push you to your personal max no matter your fitness level or body type.

Thanks Adam for whipping me back into shape…still a long way to go!

Whenever I visit my wife’s family in Barcelona, we always spend a couple of days in Vila-Sana, Catalonia with a group of friends and family in a large country house that can host all 17 of us. It’s in the nearby village of Linyola that they’re known for its living nativity scene.

Now, when I say scene, that’s a bit inaccurate. It’s more like an entire village from, well I guess around the BC/AD time, in which you’re totally immersed the people of the time. There are farmers, bread makers, craftsmen and woman, angels, devils, real farm animals, and of course the baby Jesus.

As you enter the nativity scene it’s a bit jarring the silence and the stillness of the actors who are posed, like a statue frozen in time. Occasionally you hear one of the many farm animals go BAAAA, oink oink, etc which is pretty funny. There’s also a few characters like e stone man who, though frozen in time, will slam down his axe to give kids a funny little scare…ok, he got me too.

The nativity scene takes about 20 minutes to walk through and honestly I feel like I didn’t get a chance to fully take it in. If I wasn’t with a large group I probably would’ve walked through twice.

The experience ends with some comedy too. In Catalonia there is a unique character in every nativity scene you simply don’t see elsewhere in the the world, the Caganer. Simply put, the Caganer is a man squatting down and taking a poop. His bare ass is showing and there’s even a pile of do below him, though his bare ass and poo were about the only part of the scene that weren’t real.

They take this character so seriously in Catalonia that as you exit the scene you’re confronted with the largest Caganer figurine in the world, 20ft tall with a plaque boasting its inclusion in the Guinness World Records.

Anyhow, I highly recommend the scene if you’re ever in Catalonia, you won’t be disappointed!

The shoot was for the New York Times Business Day article about the company developing a new brand for China.

The assignment was pretty strait-forward in that I was simply tasked to take a portrait of Mr Freda in the lobby which was decorated like the late Estée Lauder home. ie old school wealth.

As with any portrait of a high-profile subject, my time was limited so I arrived early to figure out a handful portrait setups.

Whenever I’m in an office building with a view, I always try to get a nice photo from the window. As I looked north from the 47th floor over Central Park, one building dominated the foreground, the Sherry Netherland Hotel. I even mentioned to the publicist how awesome it would be to have a balcony iin that building. It wasnt 24 hours later that I got a call to photograph a $95 million listing within that very building. Crazy coincidence.