Working Out With Mr. Olympia - Jay Cutler!

I bet a lot of you bodybuilding fans have thought about what it would be like to workout with a pro bodybuilder and even the big man himself - Jay Cutler. Well the only thing I really lifted was a camera but I did get to watch while Jay worked out with his lifting partners in the "Pit" at world famous Muscle Beach right on the boardwalk at the beach in Venice California.

So let me tell you how this happened. I was at the Junior California NPC competition in Pasadena CA on Saturday. Jay was in town as the guest poser for this show along with his good buddy, IFBB Pro Derick Farnsworth. Well I got the phone call in the late afternoon that Jay was possibly going to come out to the "Pit" to workout and he would also be videotaped for his brand new DVD to be released at the end of July.

I am the official photographer for the Muscle Beach Venice shows, so I was lucky enough to get the heads up. Later in the evening I got another message that it was still not confirmed but that I would know by 9 or so the following morning. So Sunday morning came along, I got the call, packed up and checked out of my hotel and headed to the beach. It looked like a good way to spend a Sunday!

Shortly after I got there, Jay came walking along the boardwalk with his buddies. And you can bet there were a lot of looks from the tourists! Although it was a cloudy day there was still plenty of people.

Venice Beach is perhaps the second or third most popular tourist attraction in the world right behind Disneyland and Las Vegas. And at Muscle Beach where most people in the world think muscles were born, the reigning Mr. Olympia came to do his back workout on a Sunday.

The same place where the careers and legends of Arnold and so many else were started. Well after Jay shook hands with some people and took a few photos with the quickly building crowd, Mr. O got down to business.

To see the whole story and more photos just go on over to BodyBuilding.com

I want to thank my very good friend Joe Wheatley for letting me know that Jay was on his way to work out. Joe is the man behind all of the great improvements taking place at Muscle Beach for the last few years. He has brought us some great competitions over the Summer, he is the man behind the BodyBuilding Hall Of Fame Awards and will shortly be officially unveiling the BodyBuilding Walk Of Fame right at the workout "Pit" at Muscle Beach. And with his vision there will one day soon be a BodyBuilding Hall Of Fame right there where it all started. So when you get to Venice Beach, be sure to stop on by, there is a lot to see. Be sure to say Hi to Joe and thank him for all his tireless efforts; And you might want to work out too!


Thanks for looking and keep coming back if you "Wanna See More...?"

Behind The Scenes With Maria Rogers

I can only say that Maria is off-the-hook hot and one of the most outstanding models I have ever worked with. She is getting ready to do the USA in Las Vegas in July and I would say she is looking pretty good.

The set ups on these shoots can be fairly involved. This was the studio we used in donwtown Los Angeles. However all of the lighting equipment is brought in and set up by us. In total just for the still photography we had 6 people on set from the makeup artist, assistants and so forth. Simple things like making sure we bring food in and have a lot of water on hand are really important.


You have to communicate to models about what the shoot is about and what you are creating. It does take some direction. You cannot just tell a model to move around and fire off a few thousand shots hoping to come up with something good. Some idea of where you are going is very important. Maria was a joy to work with, she was able to just turn it on for the camera and was very aware of how to move and pose to look her best.


When at all possible in a studio I will shoot tethered. That is where the camera is shooting right into the computer and the photos come up on the screen as you go. It allows you to make adjustments to the lighting, set, makeup, hair and a myriad of other things that you might otherwise miss. Here I am shooting while Conrad is watching the screen which is a great help to me because I am really busy. Conrad is a top notch fashion post production designer and provided me with a lot of additional ideas and input. By the way over the course of a shoot like this, I only shot 241 photos. Not the thousands that some might think.


This was a very fun shoot and it resulted in a a great set of three free computer wallpapers of Maria which you can get right here. You will also see Maria in a future print ad series.

Thanks again for visiting and keep coming back if you "Wanna See More...?"

A Very Outstanding Maria!

Spending the day with Maria Rogers doing a studio shoot in Los Angeles certainly was one of the better ways to spend time in L.A. Maria is an amateur figure competitor getting ready to do the prestigious "USA" competition in July in Las Vegas. My often quoted statement about her is that she is just "off-the-hook" hot and an outstanding model.


This was a commercial shoot for BodyBuilding.com, the largest bodybuilding and fitness resource in the world. And you will be seeing a lot more of Maria, if your heart and stamina can handle it! Keep coming back here to catch some more photos of her and some 'behind the scenes' of her photo shoot with me. Thanks!

Training Dogs With Charles Glass

Just a few months ago world famous trainer to the bodybuilding stars of the Olympia stage, Charles Glass, had no idea that behind closed doors we had a plan for him…. Dog Training.


It started out like this; we were all sitting around a conference table at BodyBuilding.com in Boise Idaho. One of the big topics was our print magazine ads and the photography for them. And one of the many ideas that came out of that meeting was using Charles Glass and using him to be training a cat running on a treadmill in a gym. My position was that if you want a cat to run on a treadmill I could get it done but a dog might be easier. And so it was agreed that a dog was it, and an English Bull Dog was the choice. So as I returned to Southern California, the art department went to work on designing a concept and I went to work too. We needed a gym that would be empty, that was part of the concept, and an English Bull Dog that could run on a treadmill. And I had a time rush looking like we were going to need to shoot this within a couple of weeks. We did it.


Now this was not an ordinary English Bull Dog but an actual actor, and a veteran of many big time television commercials and major ad campaigns. It took some looking but I found the right dog. And then I was lucky enough to have a great gym to use, Iron Bodies in Costa Mesa CA. And so it was set for the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend. Our own world champ, Bob Cicherillo, gathered up Charles Glass, and our star dog arrived on set with an entourage of two trainers and the owner. They did not however arrive by limo and the press was not invited.


The first thing we had to do was to make sure that our stars, the dog and Charles understood each other. So Charles used a sure fire method that he uses with all Olympia champs, bribery with small food items.


And then Charles explained in depth his training methods and secrets so we would get off on the right paw. Charles did tell me afterward that the dog was quicker to learn and grasped the concepts better than many of his clients.


We did both upper and lower body that day including some bench press.




Preacher bench curls of course are great for biceps, front biceps only.


And of course we got in some cardio.


I did manage to take a few photos along the way while being careful not to fall on Bob from my positon on the ladder. And Bob managed to take it all in and picked up a few training tips himself.


Actually we had a lot of fun and it was one of the more creative bodybuilding ad shoots we had seen anywhere. Bob was actually a lot of help coming up with some really good ideas along the way. And Charles Glass showed himself to be a really good actor. The BodyBuilding.com team told me that they could not stop laughing out loud while they watched the frames of the shoot go by. It is funny. It was not just showing up and taking photographs of a dog. It took some planning, the right people, the right place and the right dog. And it all worked out.

Thanks for taking a look and keep coming back for more!

10,000 Views

This is a milestone for me. A few months back I shot some video of “BodyBuilding Pros Silvio Samuel & Hidetada Yamagishi”. It was edited into a short segment by BodyBuilding.com and it became somewhat of a hit, just today reaching 10,000 views on YouTube. Of course that is less than a lot of videos but I think it’s fun! Take a look at it right here!



Thanks and keep coming back for more!

I Have Been Busy!

Here are a few things that have come around in the last few weeks...

An advertising shoot (appropriately named for this one for sure!)...



The "Cal" Bodybuilding and Figure Competition...



The big Bodybuilding and Figure Competition at Muscle Beach...



A photo shoot with amateur figure competitor, Allison...



And Allison also won at the "Cal"...



Thanks for visiting! More soon, so come on back!

Behind The Scenes On The Bus...

If you have picked up any bodybuilding or health and fitness magazines in the last few months you have seen the BodyBuilding.com "Public Transportation" advertisement. Like so many ads that we do this one started with a phone call to me…


At first thought to some people this would seem pretty simple; get a bus, put some people on it and take some photos. Well it didn’t seem that simple to me because I immediately realized that getting people evenly lit in the interior of a bus to get a lot of good color could be tricky, especially if it ended up being a cloudy day. And then of course there was the part about getting a real transit bus.


Living near the land of movie magic, Hollywood, usually means that you can get anything you want and it all just depends on what it will cost. And as it turned out the bus was available. Actually the place we found had every kind of transit bus you could imagine from 1950’s East Coast buses to current Los Angeles type buses. And while we were finding a bus, I lined up a cast. We had the face of BodyBuilding.com, World Champion Bob Cicherillo, the bigger than life competitor Jerome ‘Hollywood’ Ferguson, stunning fitness model Cara Basso, Mr. Canada Eric DiLauro, and amateur bodybuilding competitors Larry Brown, Eric Domer, and Geoff Etherson, and amateur figure competitor Kim Hill.


Now I have to thank world famous Gold’s Gym in Venice for giving us a place to put this all together in their parking lot behind the gym. So on a sunny morning it all started to happen. A lot of lighting gear got set up, a generator was delivered, the bus showed up and we got going. If you look at the actual ad the things that you don’t see is down the left side of the bus on the outside is a lot of lighting equipment shooting in to the bus at various angles. Down the right side of the bus are two parked cars placed so it looks like the bus is in traffic but so you don’t see that there are no drivers in those cars. At one point we even tried having Bob as our bus driver but we ended up not using that series. The dish you see on the right is an additional strobe that it took to light up Bob deep in the dark in the driver’s seat.


This was another fun shoot and it was interesting to see it all come together from everything from the city permits being delivered to the bus driving in, all of the gear getting set up, the cast arriving and then of course some friends and bystanders. And my personal thanks to everyone who was a part of it.

This next photo is also from a series we did not use. But it does show you what it would look like on an airplane if you put a bunch of bodybuilders in aisle seats in coach! Like my buddy Cicherillo says; when flying you have to change sides of the airplanes each flight so that you get even bruises on the back of your arms from the service cart!


Thanks again for checking in and keep coming back for more!