Miami Photographer Joshua Prezant

On a beautiful sunny, and unusually breezy day in South Florida I found myself driving down a two way road with gigantic mansions on the left and nothing but sandy beach and ocean to my right.  I was headed to the home of the prolific writer James Patterson. I was on assignment for the Washington Post Media Company to photograph James for the cover of their upcoming style section.

When I entered into his home I was immediately in awe.  Not because of the big house or the location, but because of the amazing collection of photography that he and his wife had. And when I saw the picture of James on his mantle with a signed note at the button from your pal Harry ( as in Harry Benson) I got a tad bit nervous. First off, he knew what a good picture was and second off he was pals with some of the best photographers out there. If i screwed up, I would be getting called out by the likes of Harry Benson and Elliot Erwitt!

The assignment called for a very clean background with an emphasis on James’s eyes. I had about 15 minutes with him, mostly talking photography in between shots.  It was a real treat for me to photograph a subject with such a passion for photography.

 

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© Joshua Prezant 2013

A recent magazine cover shoot with the Miami Heat’s James Jones didn’t go as planned…But came out red hot instead!

When the magazine Headwise called  Joshua Prezant Photography and said they lined up the Miami Heat’s forward James Jones to be on the cover of their magazine I knew the shoot would have to be quick and squeezed into the very busy schedule of the basketball team.  When the team is in season the players have very little time for anything but basketball.  So having worked with many professional athletes over the years I knew things have to be ready to go and in place well in advance of the actual shoot.

As usual with shoots like this the first step is to start coordinating with the teams PR representative to come up with a date, time, and place for the shoot.  After finding a day that worked for the team and my crew the next step was to scout the location.  The magazine ideally wanted him overlooking the water with something that screamed said Miami. A few days before the shoot we scouted the location at the American Airlines Arena in Downtown Miami.  We would have to shoot at the Arena where the team played and practiced because right after practice  was the only time James Jones had free.

A perfect spot was picked on an outside balcony and a platform to raise James Jones safely above the rails were ordered up and electrical outlets double checked. And as any good photographer knows, you have to plan for backups just in case of anything.  So we scouted some backups and have a plan B and place C ready.

The day of the shoot my team and I arrived three hours ahead of the shoot time given to us by the team to get set up and ready to go.  As these things generally go, the shoot time kept being pushed further and further back because team practice was going longer then expected ( and no.  You can’t just have the PR guy tell the coach we need one of his players now!) And sure enough with this being in South Florida and all right as the player arrived for the shoot fresh out of the shower a sudden heavy rain band went right over our outside set up.  We had no time to wait out the rain as the player had to get his kids in 10 minutes.  We thought we had 20 minutes with him!

But we were prepared for anything and my team and I kicked into gear and got everything ready to go inside and made some great shots.

It was not what we all were expecting, but the client loved the pictures and so did the subject.

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I was honored to have one of my images from the Middle East chosen to be part of a wonderful gallery show, called THE BIG PICTURE,  put together by friend and photojouralist Carl Juste.  The images are being displayed at about 10 feet wide by 8 feet high. The opening night was a huge succsess and gave me a chance to catch up with a lot of old photojournalist friends.

Image by Joshua Prezant: Left

If you are in the Miami area I highly recomend checking out the exhibit and seeing these incrediable images brought to life in a giagantic way.  The images will be up through October.

The exhibition displays sixteen colossal images by sixteen extraordinary photojournalists. The work is featured in high- resolution quality and size that will make viewers feel like they are part of the scene, allowing them to experience the event first hand.  Each image is a physical manifestation of the expansion of meaning.  The truth and relativity of the facts are the ingredients that expand the comprehension of the image.  The viewer sees the larger context because they are drawn into the expanding frame, hence made to see the Big Picture.

Big Picture will opened August 17, 2012, 7pm at The Little Haiti Cultural Center in Miami, Florida.  It will be open until October.  The gallery is approximately 2,100 square feet with high vaulted ceilings—a perfect venue with ample space for an exhibition of this magnitude.

My image, along with the others are available for purchase in sizes of 30×40, 40×60, and 20×30 through Lena Sendik, Iris PhotoCollective, Director of Sales and Marketing, Phone: 504-756-1492, lena@irisphotocollective.com

A packed gallery!

Click here to see some of the other images and here audio from the photographers about their images

It is not even March and the March clips are pouring in.  Last month found miami based Joshua Prezant Photography photographing lots of high powered movers and shakers in the financial world for different financial magazine. Next clip will be of Ron Stone ( keep a look out).

Each subject that sits before my camera is a another person whom I could learn something from. And when the person sitting in front of you manages over a BILLION dollars with a superb track record of great returns over the last 30 years one pays extra attention to any tidbit of advice for making and investing money that they are willing to share with you.

Bill Dunn, of Dunn Capital was no exception.  If you invested $100,000 with his WMA program (his longest running program) would be worth more than $4 million today!  Dunn created a computer program that helped with long-term-following commodity trading back in the day when the computer program lived not on a hard drive or thumb drive, but on hundreds of IBM punch cards ( see picture in clip).

Bill Dunn was extremely patient and a easy subject to photograph. Despite some rain clouds that moved in on us, we were still able to capture the wonderful view from the back of Dunn’s Stuart, FL headquarters.   It also did not hurt that I thought he was a spitting image of Artist Chuck Close.

Opener in magazine

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One of my favorite clients to work for is the Washington Post Magazine. I always know when the call comes in for an assignment that it will be enjoyable. This assignment did not disappoint. I was sent out to document the “Miami Bohemian ” art scene down in Miami. The images were going along with a first person account/ travel piece that writer Sandra Beasley was doing.

SLIDE SHOW

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