My dad sent me an e-mail with the news that Arlen Ness died…he was 79, happily married for almost 60 years, and an icon in the world of motorcycles. I actually met him, and was honored to do a photo shoot with him many years ago while I was still in school. I used to walk by his shop in Dublin on my way home from San Francisco and sometimes I would just wander around in the museum and dream about having a radical looking bike one day. When he died I realized what an impact he had on me and my career, and so I started to deconstruct that.
There is a specific reason why Arlen Ness was so influential in my career. My experience with him literally shaped the way I looked at my journey in photography - let me explain. I was in school, I think it was my 2nd semester, and I was taking a lighting class. I don’t even actually remember the assignment, but it had to do with lighting a portrait on location. I had the crazy idea, as I often do, to shoot with Arlen Ness in the museum upstairs at his shop….so I sent an e-mail. Let me tell you right now, since I’m sure that sounds fairly straightforward, it was terrifying. I sent a cold e-mail, to a person I didn’t know (who was quite famous), and asked if I could take their picture. This was the first step, and the beginning of a philosophy that I’ve carried with me ever since. If you’ve followed me for any length of time then you’ve probably heard me say it - “if you don’t ask, the answer is ALWAYS no.” Well, now you know how it started.
So that was the beginning of the idea, but what happened next was the beginning of the journey….they said YES. I honestly didn’t expect them to respond, much less say I could do it! I went through the process of setting up the shoot, and I showed up with a bunch of gear that I rented from school…that I didn’t really know how to use! I was in WAY over my head, there was shiny objects and reflections everywhere, I was just learning lighting on location, and I was shooting a celebrity. I was not only nervous, I was inexperienced. You might be expecting me to say, it was the best shoot ever and the stars aligned to make a magical image of him, but that’s not what happened. I took a mediocre portrait of an iconic human being. You know what though? I took it.
Many of you ask me what you should do when you get out of school or how you get a career started in photography, and this is the answer: YOU BEGIN. It takes courage and hard work to be successful, and you can start doing those things any time you want. You’ll fail, that’s good, but then you’ll learn, that’s better. What you have to fight is fear, the fear of failure, the fear of no, the fear of looking silly or being embarrassed. After you fail, and failure is the one thing I can guarantee, figure it out why and don’t do it again! Now, go be awesome, and enjoy this sorta decent portrait of Arlen Ness.
