I was thinking a few months ago about my influences. There are a few extraordinary people who have influenced my throughout my life.

Some of those people might be obvious. Many of them wouldn’t. We can’t always explain how someone has affected our lives.

I decided to start a new art series. Legends. The name is a bit ostentatious, but its better than “Idols”. Its a series of portraits of extraordinary artists who have either influenced me or whom I view as being paragons of their field. This will be an ongoing series. I don’t know when I will be able to add to it.

Some of the people I hope to include in this project are writer J. Michael Straczynski, Professor Jordan Peterson, comedians Dave Attell, Steven Wright, Joe Rogan and Dave Chapelle. At least one of these people has seemingly rejected my offer. And I expect to get more rejections, obviously.

The first person to accept my offer is incredibly appropriate. I wouldn’t be able to do this without him.

Jason Lanier is one of my biggest influences, for obvious reasons. Even though I approach photography from a different perspective than he does, he gave me the tools and the confidence to be the photographer that I want to be.

Jason just happened to be in town this week, but he is an incredibly busy guy. He took time out of his schedule to meet me with at the Jax Brewery in downtown New Orleans.

I’m an awkward human being at the best of times. But taking the portrait of a master photographer is (to a lesser extent) like being asked to play guitar in front of Jimi Hendrix. I think I did okay.

The image above isn’t one of the finalists, but I liked it enough to include it here. I actually got to shoot with his Rotolight Aeos 2. Pretty fantastic light.

So thanks again to Jason. Check out the final 2 images from the shoot. It’s over on the Legends tab, under Art Series.