Todd Glasers love for underwater photography. Todd is a San Diego-born photographer, surfer, and waterman. A SURFER Staff Photographer for over a decade, Glaser is prolific for his young age, earning more than a dozen covers during his tenure at the magazine. Equally talented shooting land, water, and lifestyle photography from another generation.
093 | Now is not the time to post your adventure photos.
Post something anti-racist instead. Better yet, do something anti-racist instead and trying to understand the conversation. I have friends from all corners of the world and even though I don’t consider my self someone who has ever had discriminating thoughts, it is important to learn about how we consciously or unconsciously hurt people with different skin colour. It does happen more than we think, even though we don't mean to and don't know it. We all have to educate ourselves and learn more about the history to understand the conversation no matter what our roots are. Education is the answer to change and the way to equality. Please use some of your time and learn about the past and the struggle cause black lives matter. I will commit to listen, learn, and take action.
092 | Forest man.
Since the 1970's Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a barren wasteland, into a lush oasis. Humble yet passionate and philosophical about his work. Payeng takes us on a journey into his incredible forest.
091 | Backups.
People often ask me how I manage and protect the footage I’ve shot when I’m constantly traveling and moving from shoot to shoot. Back in life before Corona the first thing I would do when I got home from a shoot was dump my bags and get the backups going. I can’t relax until that’s up and running. Traveling with content after a shoot still makes me nervous, even after all these years. What if I lose the content? What if something happens to the memory cards? What if we get robbed and my gear gets nicked? These questions are always in the back of my mind when I’ve got a bag full of fresh photos, because it takes a lot more than just me and my camera to create the content for a shoot. A standard crew usually consists of two people doing production, at least one person for styling/makeup, an art director (sometimes), a videographer, a second photographer (sometimes), models, and of course, the client. It is the collective efforts of all of these people who make a shoot possible. And then when it’s done, all of the work we’ve created becomes my responsibility, something that even as a seasoned photographer still freaks me out. Over the years I’ve developed a system that works for me. Nowadays my camera has two separate memory cards, so every photo I take gets backed-up straight away, and if for some reason one of the memory cards decides to take a day off I know I have an alternative.
Coming home to find my computer working on a back up calms me. By the time I’m on my second cup of coffee and the second copy is underway I’m all zen. As the internet gets faster and more reliable I’m guessing updates straight to the cloud will become the new normal, but I don’t trust it yet, not completely. The gigabytes pile up pretty quickly when you shoot over multiple days, and dodgy internet connections and constantly switching locations and being on the move makes it hard to manage all of your content and get all of your files synced. So until our friend 'The Internet' becomes more reliable worldwide I’ll stick to my old routine of keeping copies on multiple harddrives, while I keep the originals separate from the harddrives, which I usually stash somewhere sneaky and/or give one to a crew member for safe keeping. It might seem like a complicated system, but it’s my job to make sure that the content so many people worked so hard on doesn’t disappear somewhere between the shoot and its final destination. So my advice is BACK IT UP! And find a system that works for you, that you know you can trust, no matter what happens.
090 | The midnight hour.
Neither man set out to be a songwriter. Jack could have made it in surfing, and Ryan as a bull rider. In this 1st episode, they find a likeness and a naturalness in one another’s music and the identity searching that lead to their sound. YETI Presents the first episode 1 of The Midnight Hour, featuring Jack Johnson.
Featuring – Jack Johnson, Ryan Bingham.
089 | Long live the kings.
I remember it very well, seeing this video in 2012. It awakened another form of adventure withing me. "I need to get my motorcycle driver license and get lost". Explore the world in a different way to be as free as you possibly could be. A short documentary shot on super 16mm relating the hopes and desires of those who go for a motorcycle road trip. A film by Clement Beauvais and Arthur de Kersauson and Edwin.
088 | Nü Rythmo.
Michael February finds the rhythms and pacing of a sand-bottom point wave. With the rhythm of hypnotic music from West Africa, this will give you a great 12min watch. Amazing! By writer and filmmaker Sam Smith, photographer Alan Van Gysen, cinematographer Wade Carroll and of course Mr. February himself.
087 | Second act.
In this unscripted series by Mailchimp and VICE, we follow five people who decided to change everything about their careers and try something new. Watch Second Act, only on Mailchimp Presents: http://expi.co/01nRwH
086 | The unknown part1.
It’s all a little different for us right now, it’s a weird time. While being in isolation I find my self being fascinated, observing the world go on pause. Who would have thought that this would be possible while our earth was spinning faster than ever before? It feels like we have all been sent to our rooms to think about our actions and the world we have created. For me personally a lot changed. For those that know me, they know that I am traveling most of the year. I am on the road mainly for my clients and I absolutely love it. Seeing places, become part of another culture for some time, eat their food and execute creative ideas with friends or people that become friends while working together. I always have, and now even more so the feeling of being blessed to have experienced this and I hope this all will come back, the freedom and new friendships to be made and the places to explore. That was life as I knew it, and that's done, for now, I hope, but what if not and what will the future look like? Questions that keep my mind busy but also can let it all go. No one knows. We’ll see and we keep fighting to maintain my work as a self-employed creative with the freedom I have always known.
Denni / Photo by Amy Cornelius
085 | Alone together.
This is the story of Todd & Nicola, Who share more than love, Freedom. A film by Sebastien Zanella.
084 | Morning glory.
With my morning drink in my left hand, which is most of the time / always coffee, I peeked through the thick palm tree forest that's almost annoyingly blocking what I want to be looking at. It's 6 am and I see a rastaman smiling while maneuvering his 9'4" longboard over little waves. Not complaining, just smiling and just loving it all, and why not? There is so much beauty out here in Sri Lanka, pelicans, warm water and waves and even palm trees decorated with bright colored male peacocks. After my coffee, I decided to swim out with my camera to meet the rastaman.
082 | Soho with Alfredo Gonzales.
#work
A new collection demands new content. With a fresh sock collection made in Italy, Alfredo Gonzales takes us to the UK. This time we decide to shoot this collection in the streets of London, the streets also provided the changerooms. We were happy Nancy, our styling queen joined us once again with two suitcases full of clothing and magic. Rainy London is what we wanted and that what we got, luckily we brought umbrellas along printed with the same prints as the new sock collection which provided all you need in the streets of Soho and Notting Hill. It was great to see all the skills come together and finding the Good Life vibe in the capital of pre-Brexit England.
081 | September session.
#inspiration
Growing up in a time without the internet it was rare to see things you actually wanted to see on the TV. Sometimes MTV would give you 18 minutes of snowboarding or surfing, back when MTV was the best thing in the world. My friends and I always tried to record it on one of my mums VR taps which would usually be taped over with one of her favorite shows. Sometimes I got my hands on a copy of a surf magazine from the US (surfing didn't exist in the NL) a thing you wouldn't find often. I would read it from front to back and then again followed by me cutting out pages to hang in my room. Inspiration was not everywhere like it is nowadays. So as a young version of myself I would keep changing channels to hopefully find something that would satisfy me, something I could visualize for weeks and discuss with my friends. A couple of years later Dvd's became a thing and based on the cover I bought this 16mm documentary surf film 2002 and it was called The September Sessions by Jack Johnson. It happened to be the best 30 Euro I had ever spent and I used to watch it over and over again. I still love it, the images, stories, voices, and music, I hope you do too.
080 | Just shorts.
#work
Two guys with a dream to develop the perfect short in all of the stylish colours of the rainbow. Mr. Marvis, they named it after they found out Mr. Goodlife was taken. With not much of a plan, they approach me and asked if I could help them out to create and find a feel for their brand on the go. Who doesn’t like a challenge? Honoured to be chosen together with a bunch of kids we set off for Spain and took it day by day directing and photographing the coloured shorts. It’s always interesting where you end up if the plan is freestyling on the go, lots of driving and of course seeking spots you’re not always allowed to be. For example, the place with the pink walls is called la Muralla Roja, a postmodern apartment complex in Calpe build in 1968. This place is wicked and well known by people that love architecture like Ricardo Bofill Visions, but only accessible for the people living the apartment complex. We didn’t have anything plend let alone a permet to shoot there so getting the shot took a lot of sneaking around, hiding and climbing fences. Below you can get an impression of what I found when I shot for them a few years back.
079 | Darkroom with Grant Brittain.
#inspiration
Grant Brittain has been shooting skateboarding for decades and there are countless classic images that he’s been known for over the years. Take this stunning photo of Tod Swank, for example. It first graced the cover of Transworld’s June 1987 issue, and now Grant is going back into the ol’ darkroom to develop it once again. Check out his step-by-step process and get a little history in this video. Here another video of Grant shares stories from his 40-year long career.
078 | Working in Africa.
#work
Nine photoshoots per year Perry (Sports) used to do, nine! That's a whole lot. Think about it, organising it all for separate shoots, locations, samples, models, crew, transport, food, post production etc. Definitely double if it is a fulltime job with no other distractions. When Perry approached me and told me about 'the nine', the first thing that came to my mind was “how can I get these nine separate shoots bundled into 3 or 4. It is quite a challenge to set up every shoot, especially for production, but apart from that, there is also a lot more possible if you manage to stick 3 shoot days together instead of 3 separate ones. For example, you can bundle the travel time and go to a different location with a better chance for the right weather conditions, the production team can also get a better offer, we stay longer and bring a big group which is often where businesses can help out with a discount. It is also great for the energy of the group. With the models, in particular, I like to learn who they are, understand where they find themselves in life and see how I can make them spark in a natural way. This takes a bit of time, it takes time to get to know each other. Just as everyone is used to one another and comfortable, you hear "it is a wrap", I often wish we could keep going after the workday and add a couple of days like to get to know the people I'm taking photos of and the crew I work with. Together with Perry’s marketing manager and CJ Laros (production), we reshaped the 9 photoshoots to 3/4 a year and it has been great. At the start, we could only shoot in the Netherland and now, more than 2 years later, we did a four-day shoot in South Africa. One of the biggest challenges is to get the samples on time and once again it wasn't on time. One important item wasn't there and had to be sent from the Nike HQ in the United States via Amsterdam to arrive in Cape Town on the last shoot day. A cliff hanger but we got it!
It all starts with scouting locations, spots that fit the concept but also not too far from where we stay. Perry sells a lot of the main brands like the North face, Fila, Nike, Vans, Adidas, etc. Every brand needs another location and the models have to be diverse in many ways. They have to look good in a bikini, but also know how to run / workout or have a good look/vibe during a lifestyle shoot and most importantly being a great value as a travel buddy. As soon as all the crew and models had landed production finished the plan and the four days shoot started meaning early mornings and late nights and lots of coffee.
077 | Hono.
#inspiration
Last year I got to meet and hang out with the World Champion of women’s longboarding. Honolua, a lovely lady and great surfer. We hang out during a sunset somewhere in Portugal created images together. Now a year later Ben Ono a.k.a Silkymerman and Nash Howe directed this beautiful piece called ‘Hono’ featuring the very same Honolua Blomfield, the queen of longboarding form Hawaii.