Miami Photographer Joshua Prezant

Photographing professional dancers during a show is both a blessing and curse.  On one hand you have these top athletes performing amazing dance moves with the agility of a leopard. On the other hand they are doing this under less then ideal lighting and they are moving very very fast.  The lighting on a production is great for viewing as an audience member, but not great for freezing the peak action of the dancers’ moves in a camera.  This even becomes more difficult when it is a large number of dancers dancing at once.

Joshua Prezant Photography is no stranger to the wings and the orchestra pits of theater houses.  So when the call came in to do Production stills for the Doug Varone and Dancers dance company we were equally excited and up for the challenge. The client did not want to pose and of the shots so we shot well they were doing a full dress rehearsal.

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Recently I had the honor of photographing an old friend right before she gave birth. It was a lot of fun and she looked amazing while carrying at 8 month!  Dad even got into the fun for the shoot too.

Shortly after the maternity pictures were taken I got to photograph the little guy ( now just a few days old) that was inside during the first shoot. Both mom and son were great subjects.  The little guy only peed once on set!

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Joshua Prezant Photography was hired this week to photograph in a true Paradise hideaway: Bimini Bay, Bahamas.

When a client calls and says, “Get your passport ready.  We have a private plane on standby.”  You know you are in for an exciting shoot.  What I did not expect is how amazingly beautiful and peaceful it was going to be.

Vail Resorts, one of my new favorite clients, recently took over management of the Bimini Bay Resort and Marina and needed some marketing and PR photography for their new property.  Bimini is a quiet little paradise just 53 miles due east of Miami. The island is not that populated and meagerly developed. It is consider one of the world’s top big gaming fishing spots and is a regular hideaway for boaters from South Florida looking for a quick getaway.

The photo shoot could not have started out better.  A nice private plane with leather seats was waiting at the Tamiani International executive airport. With the majority of my clients, commercial airlines are the norm.  With that comes getting to the airport 3 plus hours with all my equipment ready to be checked and screened, making sure that some over zealous TSA or airline employee doesn’t  mishandle my equipment luggage and damage my gear. And in the old days the struggle to make sure that the 100 plus rolls of slide film you were carrying did not go through the X-ray machine and were hand checked…every last roll of film.  Then there is the waiting and the cramped seats.   But not on this flight.  Within 20 minutes we were descending through an amazing array of puffy clouds to reveal rich turquoise water of the coast off the plush green island of Bimini.  Not a terrible day at the office!

It was a great assignment for a great client.

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In a senate bill ( SB 1246) filed Monday by  Sen. Jim Norman, R- Tampa, photographing a farm without written permission  from the owner would be a first- degree felony.

To read more about this unconstitutional bill see the article by Bruce Ritchie in the Florida Tribune.

Please let your local political representative know how silly this bill is.  Last time I check anything photographed ( not using a “super telephoto lens”) from public property was fair game.

Dairy cows eat, rest, and bask in the sun Tuesday afternoon in Cooper City, FL on "farm land" on the North West corner of Sheridan Street and University Drive. As this was once a normal scene in West Broward County, it is becoming more rare with the huge growth in population that the county has seen in the last 15 years. It will not be before long that this land is filled with a strip shopping center or townhouses.

Thousands of journalist from TV, Newspapers, Magazines, Websites, and radio descended upon Dallas, TX to Cover Super Bowl 45.  Many have been there for over a week battling only the cold weather.  And later today they will report and show everything that is going on before, during, and after the game in living color and HD.  Many of these journalist will be doing so from the warm cozy press boxes at the covered dome in Dallas.  The biggest danger to be had by the press will be those photographers and videographers on the side line that could be be mowed down by a player being push out of bounce…..  But lets not forget or take for granted those journalist putting their lived on the line to cover the revolution in Egypt right now!!

A member of the press lies on the ground after being attacked by mobs while soldiers surround him in Cairo February 3, 2011. The United States and Britain condemned the intimidation of foreign reporters covering protests against President Hosni Mubarak on Thursday. Picture taken Fenruary 3, 2011. REUTERS/Kyodo (EGYPT -Â

This Thursday Feb. 3, 2011 photo shows injured Associated Press photographer Khalil Hamra during clashes between anti-government demonstrators and their pro-government supporters in Cairo's Tahrir square, Egypt. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based media watchdog, said Thursday that it had recorded 24 detentions of journalists, 21 assaults and five cases in which equipment was detained over a 24-hour period. Foreign photographers reported attacks by supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak near Tahrir Square in central Cairo, the focal point of increasingly violent mass demonstrations demanding Mubarak step down after 30 years in power. (AP Photo/Mohammed Abed)

French photojournalist from SIPA Press agency Alfred Yaghobzadeh is being treated by anti-government protestors after being wounded during clashes between pro-government supporters and anti-government protestors, in Cairo's central Tahrir Square, Wednesday Feb. 2, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt. The Egyptian military has started Thursday Feb.3, 2011 rounding up journalists, possibly for their own protection, after they came under attack from supporters of President Hosni Mubarak who have been attacking anti-government protesters. (AP Photo)

These journalist,  like the ones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and throughout the world act as the eyes and ears for the world.  They are on the front lines so that most americans can sit and watch, read, or listen to the happening around the world while eating a hot meal in the comforts of there own homes.   So the next time you see or speak to a journalist thank them for the hard and dangerous work they our doing.  THEY ARE WRITING THE FIRST DRAFT OF HISTORY.

Having worked in Egypt as a photojournalist I can tell you first hand that it is not like the US.  There is no freedom of the press.  The police can and do tell you what you can and can not photograph.  I had a not so undercover undercover officer follow me all around Egypt the whole time I was there making sure that I did not photograph “the poor” or anything else that would NOT show Egypt as a great tourist destination. I witnessed first hand the brutality of the state police and was helpless to show it.  And this was in a time of calm and peacefulness.   I can only image how difficult thing are on the ground right now.  When I was there working I was somewhat welcome as a foreign journalist that would show the wonderful sights of Egypt ( barring that I did not photograph the extreme poverty and police brutality).  But with everything going on there now, the regime knows that any journalist on the ground there now is not there to shoot scenic pictures of the pyramids and the markets.   They are there to report to the world what is really going on.   Lets hope and pray for their safety and the safety for all those in Egypt

Journalists in Egypt, especially Cairo are being assaulted, detained, and stripped of there gear.   There is even reports of a journalist, Ahmad Mohamed Mohmoud, being shot and later dyeing after working for the Newspaper Al-Ta’awun.  He was shot by what the newspaper says was sniper fire while filming a clash between security forces and protestors on January 28th.  He died from his wounds on Feb. 4th.

FROM THE COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALIST.. WWW.CPJ.ORG:

In the last 24 hours, CPJ documented another 10 anti-press assaults, 10 detentions, two attacks on newsrooms, and the hacking of a major news website. In all, CPJ has documented at least 101 direct attacks on journalists and news facilities this week, and it’s investigating numerous other reports.

Here is a round-up of new attacks on the press:

• Egyptian security agents have detained Al-Jazeera Cairo Bureau Chief Abdel Fatah Fayed and journalist Ahmad Youssif, who was with him at the time, according to Al-Jazeera’s website.

• Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor at the U.K. Observer, and Jack Shenker, aGuardian reporter, were stopped today while trying to enter Tahrir Square, the Guardianreported. The paper said they were intercepted by government forces, forced to kneel facing a wall, and interrogated. Beaumont was quoted by the Guardian as saying: “Although the square itself is calm, things around the periphery are very different. We were taken at a checkpoint and led to the Ministry of the Interior … We were held for two hours … and we were both warned that if we came anywhere near the square again, things wouldn’t go so nicely for us.”

• Al-Hurra’s Cairo bureau was targeted on Thursday, the U.S. government-funded station told CPJ in an e-mail. Men stormed its offices and “threatened to kill Al-Hurra’s two on-air journalists–Akram Khuzam and Tarek El Shamy–if they didn’t leave the building,” the station said in a statement. The bureau was immediately closed.

• Two correspondents for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Robert Tait and Abdelilah Nuaimi, were detained in Cairo, the U.S.-government funded station reported. “We call on the Egyptian authorities to release our correspondents and their equipment immediately,” RFE/RL News Director Jay Tolson said.

• Andrew Henderson, a photographer working for UAE-based daily The National, was attacked on Thursday by a group of young men who broke his camera equipment,National reporter Hugh Naylor told CPJ in an e-mail. “Were it not for a bit of help from the military, he would likely have been mauled to death by an angry mob,” he told CPJ. Naylor himself was punched several times in the head “by some angry, plainclothes youth standing near the foreign ministry yesterday,” he said. “I will credit one apparent Mubarak loyalist for essentially saving my life. While pretending to be angry at me and taking my passport, he walked me away from the crowd and back safely to my hotel.”

• Al-Jazeera’s Arabic website was hacked today, the station reported on the air. According to a statement from the station, “For two hours this morning (from 6.30 am-8.30am Doha time), a banner advertisement was taken over and replaced with the slogan of ‘Together for the collapse of Egypt,’ which linked to a page criticizing Al-Jazeera.” A spokesman for Al-Jazeera said that engineers “moved quickly to solve the problem,” TheGuardian reported.

• Al-Jazeera’s Cairo office was stormed today by Mubarak supporters, the station reported on the air. Its office was vandalized and it equipment was set afire.

• Prominent Egyptian Blogger Wael Abbas tweeted today that he was detained and later released by military forces. He said he has been “getting stopped by every single checkpoint.”

• Al-Jazeera English producer Abdullah Mussa tweeted today that he had been attacked. He wrote: “Released from street checkpoint. Three machetes to my neck and angry mob. Foreign journalists are being accused if inflaming situation.”

• Eric Feijten, a reporter for Dutch news broadcaster Nederlande Omroep Stichting (NOS), was arrested and released at least twice in the past two days. NOS released a statement after his first arrest saying that Feijten had been beaten and threatened. “Finally after 17 hours without drinking or eating, he was released in a small hotel near the airport,” NOS wrote. He left Egypt today and tweeted: “At the airport and there was even a ticket. Kicked out, so i am not happy because i failed to do my job.”

• NPR reporter Lourdes Garcia-Navarro was attacked on Wednesday, the station reported. Garcia-Navarro was preparing a piece about the impact of demonstrations on the daily lives of Egyptians when she and her colleague, Ashraf Khalil, were surrounded by dozens of men. “We were asked if we were Israeli spies, or employees of the Arabic news network Al-Jazeera, who have been a particular target of the authorities here. It began to get heated and they wouldn’t let us leave,” Garcia-Navarro said. She added that Khalil was punched repeatedly in the face.

• Andrew Butters of Time magazine was attacked on Thursday. “I was grabbed by a young guy with a club who hauled me over to an improvised checkpoint,” NPR quoted him as saying. He said it was clear that the actions were being coordinated by police and security agents.

• Radio-Canada cameraman Sylvain Castonguay and Radio-Canada producer Jean-Francois Lepine were badly beaten by pro-government supporters near Cairo’s airport on Wednesday after their crew’s interpreter was assaulted, CBC reported.

• A group of Chinese journalists were briefly detained on Thursday after customs officials discovered bulletproof vests, satellite phones, and walkie-talkies in their luggage, according to news reports. They were released but part of their equipment was confiscated

To read more reports:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/detained-in-cairo.html#entry-more

http://500photographers.blogspot.com/2011/02/unconventional-post-egypt-attacks.html

http://cpj.org/2011/02/egyptian-media-say-foreign-journalists-have-hidden.php

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/02/postcard-from-tahrir-square-kate-brooks.html

RIP DON.

I am fortunate to get to photograph the music giants of today often.  However, it is much more rare that I get to photograph the legends of yesterday. One legend that I was able photograph was The Man with the Golden Ear: Don Kirshner.  Being a bit too young to have been a fan of The Archies,  The Monkees or Bobby Darin in there day, I became a fan while in the back seat of my parents car as we drove all over South Florida listening to  FM 102.7 the oldies.  I can still see myself seeing along to “ I’m a believer.”

I photographed Mr. Kirshner near his home in Boca Raton a few year back for a story that ran in the Washington Post.  I remember him being a real pleasure and easy to photograph.  In between setup he filled the time with some amazing stories from his days in the music industry. Even in his 7o’s he was full of spunk!!!  RIP.

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