Ep 019: Elizabeth Weinberg
A SHOT: So to start, can you describe this photo that we’re going to talk about?
ELIZABETH WEINBERG: This was photographed — which seems like probably 100 years ago — but it was January of 2020, and it was my first shoot for Playboy magazine, in the last-ever print issue. It is Patrick Stewart, and he is a well-known dog-rescuer. He loves fostering pit bulls; this is his thing. The article was basically a profile on him. We had dogs from Wags and Walks, which is an organization that tries to get pit bulls out of shelters and into people’s homes.
So where was this taken?
So I photographed this at the LA Athletic Club, which I discovered a decade ago when I was living in New York and I was out in Los Angeles all the time working. I would always try to find interesting hotels, and what I discovered was that this is a private health club, gym basically, sports club, that has on the top two floors a hotel. It’s very old LA, very art deco. It’s got just a lot of really cool rooms and nooks and crannies. When you think of old 1930s Los Angeles, that’s this building. I had also done a shoot for The New York Times in this exact room, probably in 2015. I shot Michael B. Jordan, and I had remembered how amazing the room was. So when we were coming up with ideas for the location, I threw this out there, and it ended up working out. So that’s where we shot. We shot in kind of the ballroom area.
How does an assignment like this come together?
This one was actually an anomaly for me in that there was more concepting than I usually do. We did a scout beforehand. We threw ideas around. Anna Wilson is the kind of creative producer, and then Erica Loewy is the creative director, and they’re both very smart, amazing women. They were very involved from the get-go about the concept and what this would be like. So we knew we wanted to have the dogs, and being that this was something that we were prepping so much, I kinda felt like I had to step my game up in terms of figuring out shots, and when we were tech scouting, I saw this chess board, and I thought that would be a really funny concept to have the dog and Patrick playing a game together.
When I first stated out as a photographer, I was really kind of a student of that whole Chris Buck thing, where there’s kind of a humor and a concept and something off-kilter about [a photo], and I found myself straying away from that. I really wanted to do that, and then I felt myself realizing that just wasn't where I wanted to go, so I always am wary of falling back into that. I want there to be something smart and funny about a picture, but I also don’t want it to be all about that. So I wanted to embrace a little bit of chaos, which, when you have a dog and a bunch of chess pieces, that’s what you’re going to get. So I didn’t want anything to feel too posed or stilted. What it is about for me is just seeing what’s there and using my eye and trusting my gut into shooting what looks good.
Thankfully the team at Playboy gave me… I didn’t have a digi-tech. They were very trusting in my process, which I really appreciate because when you do have so much riding on it and there’s a lot of people around, that’s not really how I’m used to doing editorial shoots. I have to balance all of the prep that we have done and the concepting with how I actually prefer to work.
So talk about how you prefer to work. You mean just kind of keeping a crew small?
Yeah, and I mean the longer I’m in the game the more I realize it is not the norm and it is not what people are used to, and I often find myself fighting these preconceived notions of what a celebrity shoot is. I guess the way to describe it would be, the ideal shoots and the ones that are still my favorites and the ones that I still go back and look at are literally me and the subject just walking around doing something. I don’t even have an assistant. I don’t have a digi-tech. I don’t have anything. And it’s really about one-on-one, getting that intimate, as if we’re friends walking around, finding the best images of them I can that it’s just subconscious. I just shoot without even thinking in a way. So for prepping and concepting for me, I do that in my advertising work, but at the same time there’s still a level of spontaneity that has to happen for it to get to where I’m comfortable with the way that a shoot is going.
So how do you prepare yourself on the day of? Like, what’s going through your head when you’re leaving your house in the morning with your camera?
I never even think about it, so saying it out loud may seem crazy, but I don’t think about it. I was trained as a photojournalist. I went to college for photojournalism. You don’t know what you’re going to get when you get somewhere for a news story or for an event or if you’re documenting a situation. You just have to trust your gut and know how to make powerful images, so I don’t like to overthink it, and I don’t like to think too much about it beforehand. I just get my coffee, and I get in the car, and I show up, and I see where the day takes us. That scares a lot of people because when someone rolls up and they don’t have a lot of external stuff… Like, I think that people just think that you need lots of stuff. You need a digi-tech. You need to have 50,000 lights around. You need to have all of this stuff, and I’m 100 percent against that. That really comes from just getting people to trust you, personality wise, trust your vision, show them the work you’ve done before. I’d say for my mental prep, I’ll Google image search to see what else other people have shot, and I try to not do that. But the magic comes when you’re not planning anything. My job is to convince everyone else that that’s how I personally work and that’s how we’re going to get the best stuff.
Do you find that there’s anything in particular with this shoot that you had to do to get them to trust you with your process?
I actually don’t. I have all my own gear. I brought one assistant, which I often don’t do, but I needed him just for the lighting and stuff like that. They really did let me do me, and that’s I think the sign of a really good creative, someone who understands who they’re hiring and how it’s going to work and letting them do their thing. You know, it was just showing back-of-camera, and that was fine.
I mean, especially on celebrity shoots, I always find that the less pieces that you have to juggle with, like, if there’s a screen with an image coming up on it, that’s just an opportunity for a million people to say no or to want to change something.
Number one rule for me is never show anyone anything. I remember this — this is a few years ago — Cass Bird once said that she shoots film so that she doesn’t have to have art directors hovering over her shoulders. No disrespect to art directors, but this is the same thing with advertising when you know that people are going to be looking at the screen, which is something you can’t avoid, but letting them know that there’s gonna be a delay, and if you want to catch something in the moment, just let it happen.
What’s your setup for when you’re taking a photo like this?
I’m a natural-light person through and through, but I have started in recent years using consistent lighting. I hate strobes. I think it’s distracting, and I think it’s slow because you have to recycle, and I think it lends itself to making the shoot scenario feel photo-shoot-y, which is kind of a hard thing to describe, but when you see the flashes go off, I think it puts people a little more on guard or on edge, whereas if you have consistent lighting, you can snap-snap-snap, and it doesn’t feel like they always have to be fully on for when a flash goes off, and you can catch those in-between moment, which is such a cliche thing, but it really is important to me. The LED scene has gotten very inexpensive and very affordable and accessible, so I have a couple of LEDs. They’re basically just LED heads that have a Bowens mount so I can throw a softbox on there or I can throw an octobox or umbrella or whatever. So for this, when we had tech scouted, there was one hour where the sun was going to come through the window, which is behind Patrick, Sir Patrick, and we caught that, so that was amazing. It was cloudy that morning, and I was worried, but it came through. So I filled it with my LEDs. Both of them were shining through a really big scrim jim.
So then how quickly do you take this photo?
I was thinking about this setup specifically because you’re dealing with an unpredictable animal, a dog, so I’d say this setup… I can go back and look at my time stamps, which I like to do sometimes just to see how fast things are, but maybe 10 or 15 minutes total for this setup because you just have to shoot and hope it works out, and I love that level of spontaneity and unpredictability when it comes to shoots like this. We had a little bit of time with this light, and we had a little bit of time for the dog to tolerate hanging out on the table, so we got thankfully a lot of really good shots from this setup, but because I straddle the line between editorial and advertising, I’m so used to having to get a lot in a little bit of time. And especially on the editorial side where I get five minutes with someone, I mean, an hour is a complete luxury. As you know too, I’m sure, sometimes it’s like, “What do I do with all of this time?” So when it is kind of a little more time-sensitive situation, I thrive on that. I love it. I’ll just shoot. I’ll really get in a zone, and I’m just laser-focused, like I’m glued to the camera, and I’m just moving around and getting everything we can.
To kind of establish how you work here, let’s first talk about a situation in which you would be working quickly. How would you describe your process of working with someone in a situation where you would be crunched for time, where you might need to get the shot in a couple minutes?
So that happens a lot, especially when I’m doing celebrity shoots and they’re on a junket. They’re kind of just being shuttled from one publication to the next. A lot of the times, it’ll be New York Times shoots, and then it’ll be other publications. I know going in that I’m one of probably 20 shoots that they’re doing that day. You really have to be good at sussing out the vibe. You can see if someone is, from the first second you talk to them, if they’re gonna be down for maybe doing something a little more experimental or if they are just phoning it in. And you know what? Either way works. That’s one of the biggest things that you can’t learn in school. You can’t learn that by reading about it. You have to actually do it and just shoot and shoot and experience it and figure out how to read people and know how to assert yourself creatively but also understand that sometimes you’re going to get what you’re going to get, and that’s fine.
With these really fast shoots, sometimes I end up in a hotel room that I have no idea what it looks like beforehand, or sometimes I will know what it looks like beforehand, and I think it’s hideous, as they often are, so I will put up a seamless or find an outdoor area. I’ll always just say, “Can we find a room with a balcony? Can we find a room with a window? Can we find a room that doesn’t have ’80s carpeting all over the place?” — just something that I can hook some naturalness into. I usually will get there a little early, maybe half an hour, and just kinda scope it out and visualize, but I don’t know going in what it’s going to be, and for me again, that’s what I enjoy doing.
When I get someone coming in, I am not really a big movie person or a TV person, so a lot of times, I don’t even really know much about them, and in a way, I think that’s nice in that I am just there to make a really great picture of this person. I don’t have any preconceived ideas. For me it’s all about stripping away any of that, and oftentimes, it’s not there to begin with because I haven’t seen the movie that they’re in.
So even though those situations are never ideal, there’s definitely sometimes that I really do love working in a time restriction. What does being in a time crunch allow you to do that having hours with a subject might not let you do?
I think you’re getting the best performance from someone that they’re going to give you. I always say I hate overshooting, and I hate the idea of keeping someone there because it feels like you should. It feels like you should be shooting for two, three hours, but maybe you shoot for five minutes, and you have 100 amazing pictures. That’s actually probably far too high, but you’ve shot 100 frames, or you’ve shot 200 frames. And then, you know, they’re going to run two. I think it’s actually better in a way, and they always appreciate it too, and I’m like, “I’m done,” and they’re like, “Thank you!” No one wants to be there for that long. My thing is, I say this all the time, once you lose it with that person, you’ll never get it back. You can never get that un… — I don’t even know how to describe it — that indescribable vibe, if they start getting fatigued or uninterested. It’s never going to happen. My goal is always to get them in and out as quickly as possible while keeping up the energy.
So then let’s switch gears to this shoot. Outside of simply being able to execute the plan for what you wanted to do, did you notice any effect on just the time that you might have spent with him? I know that on certain shoots that I’ve done where I’ve had more time with someone, spending three hours with someone taking pictures can feel like you’ve known them for a month.
Yes, 100 percent. The familiarity increases as the shots go on. I can even see that in the setups as we started. This was probably the middle of the day. I think this was kind of an ice-breaker shot actually because once I realized he was down for this setup and clearly was having a good time… In all the outtakes he’s laughing. It’s so loose and nice and free. Once we got through this shot, this setup, I felt like we had more of a rapport for the later shots. We kind of had this shared, funny experience, and from there we did a couple more setups. So there’s more communication, I think, between subject and photographer when you have that time, especially if you’re not just filling frames.
How would you describe your presence behind the camera here? How are you interacting with him?
My presence behind the camera was definitely I was documenting everything that was happening. We had a dog-wrangler who was Photoshopped out but is directly above Patrick’s head holding a treat, so that was how we were able to get the dog to look up. It was kind of similar to when there’s babies on set. You just have a bunch of people trying to do all sorts of crazy things behind the scenes so that they get the baby or the dog or whoever to look up and stay still. That was all kind of happening at the same time so it was really just about me moving around and shooting. I wasn’t doing much in terms of directing. All the pieces got knocked over, and I thought that was better than if they were set up, so I embraced the chaos with this one. What I also love is that the reactions are genuine. It’s a funny scenario. There’s no forced anything.
How would you describe Patrick Stewart as a photo subject?
Very regal. He just owns the room. He walks in. He’s just so put-together. He’s just so still and calm and has this calming presence, so I had a lot of shots of him sitting in this big old chair. I had him standing. But what was interesting was there are other shots as we moved into the next part of this… It’s funny now to think of how I was just saying this was kind of the middle of the shoot, and you kind of do get that rapport because he ended up being very playful and very silly and very almost undignified as it went. So as he started out, he had that solid, calm presence because we didn’t have the dogs yet. But when the dogs rolled up, he mentally, like you could see it, like a light turn on. And he just became almost child-like. And we had photos of him sitting down with the dogs, playing with them, almost getting knocked over, and it was really wonderful to see this totally different side of him as the shoot continued on. This shot was kind of the catalyst for that. It’s really interesting because the article is literally about his love for these dogs, and you can actually see it in his behavior. There was a playfulness that wasn’t present before they showed up. I mean, even the look on his face in my shot, you can tell he’s stoked to be there.
You mentioned that you liked that the chess pieces were knocked over, but what do you think that detail adds to this image?
So going back, when we were setting up the chess pieces, I was thinking to myself, “Oh ,you’re supposed to have the white one in the lower right corner,” and I was like, “Oh, we’re going to have these chess purists who get mad about the fact that they’re not setup properly,” but again, I didn’t have a chance to reset them because there’s a 60-pound dog who’s next to me, and I just have to shoot it. I think it adds a level of chaos. In a planned photo, which I don’t often do, everything is going to be perfect, and I don’t believe in perfection at all. Wabi-sabi, I want everything to feel a little weird and off-kilter and natural. I loved the fact that there was just a mess and the contrast between him in this really nice, perfectly pressed suit and an incorrectly setup chess thing that a dog had knocked over. I thought it was kind of a great little nod to who I am as a photographer, which is imperfection and just capturing what’s there and not caring about if something is a little bit out of place because my whole thing is reality. I want to capture my version of reality because everyone has their own reality. Everyone’s living in their own universe in a way. I believe in the visualization of my truth, which is what was in front of me.
For me, it’s what makes it believable as a situation. Like there’s plenty of photographers who their aesthetic would be to have the chess pieces set up as if they were playing, but that wouldn’t have seemed like one of your photos, I don’t think.
Yeah, you’re right. I think I could see it being staged in a way where someone had set it up, and the pieces were in the right spot, and you could tell that maybe someone had moved, and there was a game going on. I do see that living in someone else’s mind, but that’s not me.
Some simple details here are that the bottom of the table kind of tracks along the bottom edge of the frame, and there’s also a good deal of space of the curtains above their heads in the photo. What were your thoughts for how you wanted to approach the composition of this image?
I’m always — and this is coming from an advertising background — I’m always so conscious of layout and thinking, “Do they have space above for text? Is this going to be in the gutter?” And there are other versions of this image where I’m a little more three-quarter view on Sir Patrick. Something about this one just felt… Again, I guess I don’t really think too much about the exact composition. It kind of honestly is all happening automatically for me, and there was just something so striking about both of their profiles, so recognizable. Like, I bet if you just silhouetted out Patrick Stewart’s head, you would know who he was.
How would you describe the quality of light in this photo?
It’s kind of my favorite kind of light. I’d say that this is a little different than my normal even, open-shade lighting. And there’s a little bit of drama to it. But this room lends itself to that majestic, painterly light. There’s dark, dark shadows. And I do all of my own color work, and I do all of the contrast and that sort of thing. And it really lended itself to this more dramatic dark-shadow light. The other thing was I knew we only had a couple of minutes of the sun passing through this sliver. There was scaffolding outside. They were doing construction. It’s downtown LA, so there’s buildings everywhere, so you really only get this light for a moment, and when it came through, it looked so good that I just kept shooting and shooting and shooting.
I always do this: I always wonder how I could have processed it differently, and sometimes I’ll go back to old shoots, and I’ll change them, and I’ll say, “Ah, I wanted this to be warmer. I wanted this to be cooler” because that, for me, is such a huge part of a picture. And I know people do this all the time, but I find it very difficult to outsource that post- work. It’s such a personal thing for me. The color and the contrast and the shadows and the highlights are huge. They can make or break a photo for me. As we grow and evolve, our preferences change, and sometimes I’ll go back, maybe a few years down the line I’ll go back to this RAW file, and I’ll change it, and I’ll make it less shadowy and make it seem like it was more even light. But at the moment, this just felt exactly right on. And it does feel a little more lit than I think a lot of my stuff does, but at the same time, you can tell that it’s sunlight, which it is, and I had a little bit of fill in there. So I’m happy with it. I’m happy with how it came out given the circumstance.
How would you describe how you’ve edited this?
I think when I was starting out, I really was trying to emulate film. I was obsessed with making it indistinguishable. And I still kind of like to do that. But for me, it’s a vibe thing. Do I want this to feel warm? Do I want this to feel happy? Do I want this to feel silly? Do I want this to feel whatever? So with this picture, it reminded me of the dogs playing poker, that kind of classic, old-style, very contrasty thing. And I also really like warmth, and I want it to feel more orange and red. The room itself, these curtains are this deep, deep velvet red. I’m looking at it now, the palette is there’s like three colors. It’s red and kind of tan and brown. It’s very autumnal. But the light coming through is very warm. I like to edit my own stuff color wise because I like to give everything a consistent wash throughout the shoot. Each shoot can be different. If it’s a rainy day… You know, it just depends on the vibe, maybe it’ll be really cool, or maybe someone’s skin will have really blue shadows, or cyan. But this one, there’s kind of a comfort feeling to warm-toned images, and it’s very hard to articulate in words what that actually means, but when I’m doing the color, it’s such an automatic thing. I do the shoot, but the fun part isn’t until later for me when I’m in front of the computer and I’m saying, “How do I want this to look?” because same thing when you’re shooting film and you print it and you go into a lab and you’re like, “How much cyan? How much yellow? How much magenta?” I treat it that way. I don’t think what you see is what you get necessarily.
When working with actors in particular, how much do you find yourself playing with their ability as an actor who’s kind of performing for you, and how much are you looking to cut through that?
I really like shooting actors because my work is not about that still. It’s not about the pose. It’s about the movement, and they know how to move. They know their angles, and they know how to move in front of the camera. I don’t necessarily ask them to act a certain way because they already know how to present themselves, especially if they’re television actors where they know how to work in front of a multi-camera setup or different takes, different angles. They get it. They get the angles. With someone who’s just a model and not an actor, I think they’re waiting for you to give them “How do I stand?” Or they will bust out the poses. Whereas what I like about pictures and how I want my pictures to feel is the opposite of that. I don’t want that pose. I want them to move their head a certain way or laugh or be talking to someone or to slink down into a chair at the exact right angle for the camera. And they know how to do that in this very innate way. I’m not necessarily using the fact that they’re actors. I’m not necessarily like, “Act happy!” like in an emotional way because it’s already innate for them. They already know how to move. And I have started requesting when I’m casting for lifestyle advertising shoots people who work in commercials. They know how to pull off this movement in front of the camera. And I like the chance to capture a slice of time within their repertoire of movement.
I would say that there’s a difference in something like this, though, because this is an assignment to shoot Patrick Stewart so there is an element of having to recognize when he’s giving you something that is just him putting on his performance for you. Do you recognize that when you’re shooting someone like this?
I don’t know because especially how unpredictable this shoot was with the dogs, I don’t think that he really had that turned on. I try to strip away all that. I like my shoots to be so lo-fi and relaxing and comfortable that I want to get to the actor, not the act. It’s a search for truth and authenticity. Going back to how we were talking about the progression of when you’re with an actor or a subject for a long time, I think that he was giving me that kind of “This is how I am on camera” vibe in the beginning. And then I think as we broke the ice a little bit, I was getting more of him as the person. I have him as the person, but I also have him as the person who is an actor, so he knows how to be on camera. He knows how to get his angles. But I’m not interested in the act. I don’t care about that. I care about getting who’s this human in front of my lens.
If you can be self-critical about this photo, is there anything about this image that you wish you’d done better?
In a way I’m very whatever happens happens for an image. But I’ll always look back and think, “Oh, I wish I had done this,” and I try not to do that because it’s a slippery slope. I think I probably would have tried to make it look less lit even though that’s kind of what it was. And there’s a sharpness to it that I don’t love. I struggle with wanting to change anything because I always wonder, “Does it still look like my work?” And I feel like this one’s kind of on the edge of that. When you ask me that question, I find myself going to to the technicals. I find myself going to “Oh, it’s kind of really sharp” or “Oh, I wish I’d stopped down.” I think about that stuff. But when it comes to the situation, I don’t think I would have changed anything. I think, for me again, it’s so important to have the exact right grain and contrast and shadows and that sort of thing. I think I always get so worried, because I am working really fast, that I’m gonna miss the focus or I’m gonna fuck up the shutter speed or something. So I think I had stopped down for this more than I normally would. I usually keep it wide open. So yeah, I would say anything I would change actually could probably be done into the RAW file later.
When you photograph a celebrity, how much of you is there in the image?
I think I’m all there honestly. I would try to be. It really does depend on their personalities. Some people will let you do it, and some people won’t, and as I mentioned before, you have to gauge within the first 30 seconds of meeting them if it’s going to work, but no matter what, even if it’s not getting everything from them, when it comes to the way I’m lighting it or the way I’m composing it, that’s always going to be me. One of the greatest compliments I’ve gotten is someone will see a picture of mine and say, “I knew you shot that.” If I can get that out of a picture, that’s all I need.
The more that I’ve talked to people, I’ve never thought about myself as being a part of my images in any way until I started talking to people and seeing how they work, and then I realized that the important thing about every photo that I take is that that person is there with me, so I’m in the photo as much as they are. Which is a weird thing to think that you want to make pictures of yourself.
Well, I think photography is such a narcissistic thing. The act of expecting anyone to care or be impressed by anything that you see in the way that you see it is madness to me, right? I think of this all the time. I’m still blown away when you get a lot of likes on a photo on Instagram. At the end of the day — and Instagram was really good at capitalizing on this — we all just want to be appreciated, and we all just want our efforts to look like they’re paying off. So I think photography really is you’re trying to get people to like something that you decide is good. I don’t think it’s necessarily strange to realize that you’re part of the work because when you take a picture, you’re deciding that this is the way that the person in front of me should look. And that’s a very selfish thing. It’s a very personal thing. I think anyone is always part of every image that they take.
What do you think Elizabeth 10 years ago would have to say about this photo?
So 10 years ago, shootin’ for you, hanging out in Brooklyn… I think— and I read back on old interviews I’ve done and all this stuff — I think I would have shot it the same way. I don’t think I would have changed anything. If it was me 10 years ago looking into the future and seeing that I’d done this, I’d be like, “Damn! How’d I get this client? That’s sick!” because I didn’t have a lot of celebrities in my portfolio 10 years ago. I had a lot of bands, which is fine. I think I would have been mainly impressed with getting over that catch 22 about you can’t shoot a certain level of celebrity unless you already have one in your book. It’s like, “Well, how do you get that person?” And it’s a tough hurdle to overcome. I only really did that in the last seven years or so. But in terms of the approach, I don’t see myself having done it any other way. And I’ve stayed true to that DIY, very chill, low-production thing as the clients and as the talent have been higher and higher levels. And I fight for it all the time. I try to keep it simple, and often times it doesn’t end up being simple even though I really want it to be. But I fight for it, and I believe in it, and I have the work to back it up.
What have you learned that’s given you the instinct to take this photo?
I think honestly it’s just the pure volume of work that I’ve done. I remember so clearly the first kind of bigger celebrities or bigger bands that I shot. I would feel like I was imposing by asking for something or for bringing up an idea or asserting myself in the picture. I said obviously I’m always going to be in the picture, but there’s a level of comfort that I had with that, which is much higher now, so I think I’ve learned that I’m the boss. This is hinging on me. I am not nobody, like there’s a lot of imposter syndrome that comes into photography. I carry myself very confidently, but when I was starting out in these shoots, I looked really young. I looked like I was 18. I was like, “These people aren’t gonna listen to me.” And I had a lot of this internalized “I’m a woman. I’m really short. I look like a child. I can’t get what I want. They’re not gonna respect me.” What I’ve learned since then is just do it. I am the one who is in control, and if anyone doesn’t like that, then screw ‘em. My job is to get the best image I can. And there are shoots that I look back on where I’m like, “Why didn’t I just ask them to do this one thing?” or “Why didn’t I shoot this other thing?” It was just fear of being turned down or fear of not being respected. Now if someone says no, I’m like, “Cool, whatever. We’ll move on to the next thing.” And it’s confidence, and that only comes from being in the game and just doing it over and over again.
So to close the conversation, what’s something unrelated to photography that’s been feeding you creatively lately?
So I hadn’t really left Los Angeles in months in the last year. And I don’t do very well when I’m stuck in the same place and have a monotonous existence, like from home to studio to whatever, so getting out of town in any capacity whatsoever just kind of resets my brain. I’ve been luckily able to travel a little bit more, all within California, but I’m going out of town this coming weekend, and then I’m gonna go to New York for a week. And it just resets me, and it lets me shoot fun photos, and I know you said unrelated to photography, but the travel, I don’t know what it is. It makes me appreciate Los Angeles more when I come back to it, and it makes me think about how lucky I am to live here because I can shoot all of the amazing places that we have to shoot in. My brain needs to be pulled out of the day-to-day in order to be the best creative person I can be. I actually I had two shoots in the Bay Area in March, and I got in my car, and I drove both ways. I drove up and back. I’ve hated that drive so many times, but I was so happy to do it these past two times. You know, it’s a six-hour drive. Just sitting in the car, listening to Spotify, just getting out physically of this square mile that I’ve been stuck in for a year, it just re-calibrates my brain.
Interviewed on May 4, 2021.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity.)
Links:
Elizabeth Weinberg
Playboy: “20Q: Patrick Stewart”
A behind-the-scenes video of the shoot