On a recent photo shoot, my client asked me what was my most memorable project.

I had to think about it for a sec, and although there were projects I loved shooting – my most memorable was actually as a photo assistant.

The photographer was hired by Seabourn Cruise Line to capture images for their catalog, and I was the chosen one to schlep all the gear for 20 days on our voyage. We started in Venice Italy, sailed down the Adriatic Sea into various cities in Greece, then through the Corinth Canal into the Black Sea, stopping off in Ukraine, Bulgaria, and finally ending our trip in Istanbul Turkey.

 

This was a trip that opened up the world to me – a city boy that never traveled further than Las Vegas, let alone been on an airplane. I learned about different cultures, their food, the architecture, art, really – just everything.

 

Several years later I photo assisted Doug Menuez on a project when he was still a West Coast guy. Doug was looking for a studio assistant around that time, so I met him at his home in Mill Valley where he showed me all the beautiful images he shot that needed to be organized. Soon thereafter he moved to the East Coast, I never had a chance to work with him again, but was always impressed by his photographs. Years later I saw a book called “Heaven, Earth, Tequila”, photographed by Doug which is filled with gorgeous black and white images of an area in Mexico that makes tequila. Along with all the other countries on my bucket list to visit, Mexico was on top of the list.

 

When we started moving from film to digital, I did several workshops with Seth Resnick. During the d65 workshops, Seth would always mentioned various photographers like Stephen Wilkes, John Paul Caponigro, and Jay Maisel. To me – Jay defines the word “photographer”. Jay spent decades shooting commercial projects, but more importantly his self-assigned photography projects of New York and around the world is amazing.

 

I always wanted to take one of his workshops in New York, but the timing was never right. Then in 2008, Jay advertised that he was doing a 4-day workshop in Seattle at Art Wolfe studio. Around that time, I was shooting a Farm-to-Table book and a Food Truck book that had me traveling around the country. I felt Jay’s workshop would help me be a better photographer, so I drove up to Seattle to attend the workshop. I’ve been lucky to have great professional photographers teaching me in art school, commercial photographers that took me under their wings and taught me the business of photography, but what I learned in the short period of time from Jay changed my way of seeing. Sometimes it just takes one person to explain something to you a certain way, then all of a sudden, everything makes sense. Jay is that guy.

 

We were all gifted a piece of paper at the workshop that said “Assignments for the Rest of Your Life”, a way to create self-assignments to continually shooting for the rest of your life.

So anytime I’m not busy shooting in the studio, I like to give myself assignments venturing out into the world meeting people locally and abroad to learn about them and their culture.

 

The journey to Oaxaca de Juarez is a cumulation of all the above events to just go out and do what Jay calls “visual push-ups” to become a better photographer.