A tremendous collaborative effort led by super talented Diego Orlando, we created, printed and published our second book over at BURN Magazine, and we named it “BURN.02″.

Almost two hundred pages of pure blood, sweat, tears & pride… with much original and commissioned work, never seen elsewhere.

I’m tremendously proud of the stunning work in there, and the fact that David Alan Harvey was able to pull it off yet again. And again, also this book is literally flying out the door… We printed a limited edition of 1,500 copies in Italy at Grafiche Antiga, and at the rate things are going, we’ll be sold out pretty fast. Not bad for us tiny little team… and kudos to Diego formaking it happen.

Have a look for yourself: the first page of every essay in the book… (images © copyright the respective photographers)

It’s a true collector’s item, so please… order your copy, spread the word, and support us in our cause… BUY BURN.02 HERE…

I though this one would be fun… this is my actual setup for shooting 893-Yakuza in Tokyo… super super lightweight & urban.

Almost all items here are obviously weather specific and location specific: in November-December it’s cold and rainy in Tokyo.

I’m NO tech person, but here’s the list:

• a pack of paper hankerchiefs, a lens cloth
• any random palstic bag
• a woolen cap, a super lightweight raincoat
• a “pocket communicator”: crucial for situations when you don’t speak the local language and need help
• my passport and credit card and other necessary travel/ID docs
• extra batteries
• flash
• secondary camera (set up as rangefinder)
• main camera (rangefinder) with just one lens (but a great one)
• pens & pencils, markers, little notebook
• memory cards
• audio recorder
• super dooper business cards with images of my work (extremely important in Japan)
• mini tripod
• signed David Alan Harvey bag, with custom padded inserts

Money and phone are usually not in my bag.

There are some specific realities to shooting in a metropolis like Tokyo, all of which obviously affect my setup: if anything breaks, I can usually have it fixed it within hours, or event rent or buy new equipment; that’s why I have no no need for more than one main camera/lens combination.

The bag is of course crucial: this particular bag is the lightest one around (I have to be able to carry it for a long long time), completely waterproof when closed, is low key black, has very easy inside pockets, a cross strap, and room enough for my gear sitting in padded inserts. And of course having it signed by David Alan Harvey makes me invincible :-)

If i shoot video, my setup differs suprisingly little to the above:

• add video camera + batteries (video camera uses the same lens as the main rangefinder camera)
• add shotgun mic
• add tripod, steadycam, scorpion

As you can see, I’m more of a traveller than a tech person… Obviously the reason for this all has to do with subject, location, type of project, type of photography… but I think I’ve nailed my setup pretty good this time: every element in the bag is crucial, and as far as I can tell I can’t leave anything more out of the bag to make it even lighter. I seldom use my flash, so I would be inclined to maybe let that one go first…

Any thoughts?

check out the story here: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/showcase-76/

Check out the post on BURN Magazine…

We both committed to BURN in NYC in December 2008 (after a large gathering of great friends & fellows where the BURN idea actually crystallized – read this), shook hands, and simply went for it. I know we launched on an impossible moment right before or after Christmas – I can’t remember which day exactly – but right now, either one of those days sounds like impeccably bad timing from our part :-)

And throughout the first month we called each other daily… setting up essays, finding new talent, going through submissions, helping photographers deliver their essays and singles, taking care of the tech side, setting up an essay system, spinning ideas…

These days we still call each other daily. Make the editor’s decisions together. Discuss BURN’s future and how we should handle it. Half of the time I’m hopping between Brussels and Japan, and David’s flying from Mexico to Spain to NYC… The time zone differences are massive. We work together from different continents but we do it really well, only needing “half a word” to understand and act. This is our strength…

Of course there are people helping out right now, to whom we are massively indebted… Michael Courvoisier, Bob Black, Kerry Payne, Chris Bradley, and many others that are going to kill me for forgetting them, are all doing extremely valuable work… And of course not to forget the past work of the whole team at the infamous BURN initial meetup at the Kibbutz in NYC……. thanks a million…

David’s DAH man, but BURN is the both of us together… together making the editorial decisions, guiding the photographers to submit their work, doing the online and offline mentoring, Work-in-Progress and workshops, preparing the carefully targeted marketing of BURN, pitching the BURN story and our ideas to the right people – or at least, what we think are the right people… Looking for funding, hiring staff, freelancers and searching for talent, literally putting young photographers out there to create content for BURN, doing the same with iconic photographers, and pushing forward with the incredible stuff we still have in store…

Keep an eye on BURN… it’s massive. It’s there.

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