Mary J. and my flu

Wednesday I had a job to shoot the R&B singer Mary J Blige. The job was for the cover of WWD. I took a car service with a load of equipment down to a studio near the Meatpacking District near the West Village. I arrived at 11:00am and walked onto the set. Walking in from outside, the studio was pitch dark and as my eyes adjusted I could see about 40 people shuffling around quietly doing various jobs while Mary sat at a grand piano surrounded by lights, camera gear and thick fog. They were filming a commercial for her new fragrance. Oddly, no one even asked me who I was. At about 12:00 I finally spoke to her assistant who told me I could shoot on set. That's rare, usually another crew doesn't like anyone shooting using their lights and equipment. These people couldn't be cooler. During a lens change on their camera I jumped in, adjusted the light just a bit and started snapping. I had to jack my asa up to 640 to get a decent exposure but with my new Canon 5D that wasn't a problem. The shots came out nice. A little later I asked if I could shoot at her makeup table and was told that probably wasn't going to happen. I told them I needed another photograph for the inside. They finally let me back in the makeup area and I got the second shot (page 3 of article). I left about 3:00pm and ran over to my friend Kristi's to shoot a girl I met on the A train a few nights before. She was a spitting image of Anne Hathaway. We all had a good time shooting and she did a great job. I'll post some snaps of her in the next few days. Click below to get to the WWD shots:




After getting home Wednesday night I suddenly came down with the worst stomach flu/virus I've had in many many years. It was awful. I'm just starting to feel a little bit better after not eating anything for 3 days.