Robert Lustig - Pacific Standard Magazine
If you had one of my business cards or other pieces of my identity in front of you it would be easy to see why the layout for an article I shot for Pacific Standard Magazine is one of my favorite uses of one of my images I've seen. Since you probably don't have my business card in front of you, you can see by my website that I'm a big fan of minimal design with primarily two colors: black and white. The shoot was of Robert Lustig. You may be familiar with Dr. Lustig if you were one of the millions who watched Dr. Lustig's video about sugar that went viral last year (or maybe you caught his interview with Alec Baldwin). I actually had seen his video, so I was familiar with Dr. Lustig before the shoot.
What I also like about the layout is that it's partly driven by my photography and the choices I made during the shoot. I was asked to do a simple and strong portrait of Dr. Lustig against a white backdrop. I was asked for full body shots. After I had a good variety of full body and 3/4 shots, I decided to move in as tight as my lens would allow and make the lighting a bit more dramatic. I didn't really think this was anything the magazine would want to use, but it was something I found a bit more interesting. I liked the shots and figured they would go on my website and that would be that; I was happy when I was sent the layout and they selected one of the tight shots for the article. Of course, I can't take any credit for the actual design. That goes to Craig Edwards, the Art Director at Pacific Standard Magazine.
As for the shoot, Dr. Lustig was great to work with and he put up with my personal questions... I knew I was a mostly lost cause when it comes to desserts, but I wanted to make sure we were starting our daughter off correctly. So, I took advantage of my time with Dr. Lustig and gave him a rundown of the foods we were feeding our daughter. Our main concern was her maniacal love for blueberries. She goes batshit crazy for them... literally screaming like a lunatic at the sight of them. She eats entire containers in one sitting (do you know how expensive organic blueberries are!!!). We were concerned she's getting too much sugar through the blueberries. But, Dr. Lustig set me at ease by telling me that since they are high in fiber the sugar is offset and to make sure we're not juicing our fruits (juicing gets rid of the fiber and just leaves the sugar). So, I was glad to hear that we were doing a good job with our daughter's diet.
Of course, later that night my girlfriend decided to make chocolate chip cookies, of which I ate more than I should have. Here are some outtakes from the shoot.
