The Jazz, The Amp, The Chicken.
A Lovely day with Yosef Gutman Levitt
One of the greatest aspects of my job is that I never know who I am going to meet next.
In my travels as a Portrait photographer, I’ve been lucky enough to photograph a diverse set of humans. From a cutting edge neuro researcher to inspiring blues musicians from the Mississippi. The CEO of Mobileye-the autonomous car company, to a pianist that builds his own piano effects. Ive shot the portrait of a Grammy winner, a bird whisperer, a craft beer brewer, a music video director, architects, and just people that have a lovely face and a kind heart.
Its always a thrill to step into other peoples lives, even briefly, and try and distill a moment that can incapsulate a certain aspect of their being.
Pre Shoot:
When Yosef Gutman levitt first contacted me, he was a few weeks away from releasing his new album. He sent me the finished unreleased tracks and I was blown away. I don’t usually “get” jazz, but I really connected with this album. It was so communicative and beautiful, there was not much to “understand” just be swept away by it.
We discussed different ideas, thought of different ways and places we could shoot an interesting portrait that would invite people to get a glimpse of who he is, and perhaps elicit some curiosity to want to find out more about him.
I always ask people I’m about to work with to send me images they like of other musicians, or any portraits they connected with. This helps me understand many things about what we are going after, as far as composition, lighting and most importantly- the vibe and mood we are trying to capture.
We talked about the fact that this album was a top tier, serious jazz album- but at the same time the images Yosef sent me had something playful about them. They all portrayed a serious musician with a little twist that hinted there was something different about the person photographed.
We talked more about art creation, and the new album- and it seemed Yosef’s method of creating music was similar to the way I like to create photographs- Create a starting point and then discover what you are really after through collaberation on set.
Yosef sent me some photos of his beautiful studio space where the album was recorded (later I would find out it was all recorded live, with all the musicians basically playing in the same space, capturing that raw collaborative spirit).
I immediately noticed the sound damping panels, beautiful wooden panels engraved in a way that made it look like they were emanating something, perhaps sound waves, energy, or maybe even fire.
We decided we would create our portraits using these panels as a background and utilize some of the high end sound equipment Yosef used to create the album.
Most times when you have a beautiful space and an interesting person, thats really all you need to start from. With that in mind I felt we had a good starting point to create something interesting.
“Oh, one more thing,” he said, right before he hung up the phone-
“I have chickens”.
“You have chickens.”
“Yes”.
“…”
“…”
“Do we have access to these chickens?”
“I grew up on a farm in south africa, I love animals. Yes, we have access to the chickens, they are my
chickens”.
That was it, that was the missing piece. I told him the first thing he should of said when calling me was
“Hello, I have access to chickens. Lets work together”.
I pitched to him the idea that we create a sharp looking portrait, of him sitting in this high end, wood paneled
meticulous space. And there, sitting on one of the amps, in all her glory would stand a chicken.
In the photo, he won’t acknowledge its presence, it will just be part of the world.
Yosef agreed imediateley, but said this might be challenging for a few reasons:
-Shes a chicken. She does what she wants at any given moment.
-A lot of the time, what she wants, is to poo.
-She will be standing on a rare “Walter Woods” Bass amp, that is almost impossible to replace these days.
“But lets do it”.
The Setup
The Chicken stood still, moving her head ever so slightly, giving directions was hilarious.
“Look to the left” I said. Yosef looked to the left. “no I meant the chicken, you look this way”.
Good times were had.
These are the types of shoots I live for- a person that trusts me to make them look awesome, creating a truly
collaborative image, a beautiful location, and a chicken that seemed to really tie the room together.
You can listen to Yosef’s music here-
or on Spotify here-