A lot of people have asked about the photo that comes up first on my website, so I am going to tell you. A couple of months ago I was asked to do a shoot for L’Uomo Vogue of a young director/artist named Martin Sastre. Martin is a video artist that has been directing full length movies lately. He’s from Uraguay, but now lives in Madrid and happened to be in LA to scout for his new movie.

Djuna Bel, the very talented stylist, was nice enough to let us use her house as home base to get Martin ready for the first shot at the Hollywood sign. Martin showed up and was a really nice guy. He got suited up, literally, and we cruised up to the sign and started the shoot. The suits were great (Phillip Lim and Burberry) and Martin played the mod role perfectly even though it was unbearably hot to be wearing a suit. At least it was peach and not black, I guess.

After we finished up at the sign we went back to Djuna’s place to get the next outfit and headed to the Griffith Observatory. I am sure all the people reading this in LA have been there, but if you haven’t, you should. It is an amazingly designed place. It feels like you have just stepped into a set for Blade Runner or something. It was finished in 1935 and is one of the coolest Art Deco buildings that I have ever seen. Go! We had to “guerrilla” it because we didn’t have a permit to shoot there, so we had to try to be as inconspicuous as possible. Because we were shooting natural light and not getting in anyone’s way, security seemed to turn the other cheek. So all of that to explain the main shot on my site, Martin walking away from the observatory. All in all, it was a great shoot and we had a lot of fun running around the LA landmark. Below is a kind of timeline of shots: