Best of the Blog
Ten years in, I will point out some of my favorite, and notable surprising, posts.
First, a quick guide to perusing the blog. The over 300 posts are viewable in reverse chronological order, but many have been sorted into collections, which can be filtered using the category titles at the top of the page.
The groups are largely self-explanatory: Advertising (commercial work), Behind the Scenes (stories behind my sessions), Books & Promos (highlighting my three books and numerous printed promotional pieces), Insights (posts that endeavor to impart some wisdom, either mine or borrowed), Interviews by Buck (Q&As I’ve done with photographers and other creatives), and Kith & Kin (of friends and family).
The life’s-blood of a blog are the stories behind the shoots. Often I’ll write about a contemporary session, but I’ve posted many from the days before the blog existed (as it started twenty years into my career). In 2019 I wrote about the harrowing experience of photographing an uncooperative child model for Country Crock, and it became of my favorite on-set war stories. While pitching for more political portraits in 2011, I retold the story of photographing William F. Buckley, Jr. in 2004.
With the Kickstarter for, and then release of Uneasy, many stories behind the portraits were posted. A few favorites are Chris Rock, Tony Curtis, Sally Mann, and Leonard Cohen.
The best posts related to my first, and new, book might be the ones about the photographers who came before me, in some regard paving the way. In 2012 Presence Progenitors tracks six shooters doing work that reminds me of my project, and last month came Foreword Favorites, on the six artists that foreword author Lily Burana name-checks in contextualizing Gentlemen’s Club.
Along the way there have been some epic stories, but it’s the oddball posts that I find most charming. Like the story on my matching wooden (looking) watch and iPhone case, or the fun tributes to my portraits on Tumblr and Instagram. And of course the proper release of an experimental jazz album based on ten of my photographs.
One of the surprises in revisiting every blog post was how many were related to Frank Sinatra, there are five in total. Two specifically discuss his album art’s influence on the look of a shoot, one for Google Play, and the other with Jimmy Kimmel, but the best one is the story behind an eighties Revlon advertisement that a colleague happened to work on.
Of course a deep dive will also bring the missing bits into relief. For example, I had never posted about my important 1994 sitting with Chris Farley (before last week). So, aside from exciting new sessions, I will be on the watch for the stories from my career that have yet to be told in this space. Perhaps now that Donald Trump has left the presidency it’s time to post about my three shoots with him.
Photo: Frank Sinatra puppet, Atlantic City beach, October 1998