Joseph Cultice is a creative commercial pop star photographer who has shots print and advertising campaigns for bands like no doubt, Ozzy Osborne, Kelly Clarkson, juicy J, 3oh3, moby, Korn, Enrique Iglesias, Marilin Manson, Christina Aguilera, Joe Satriani, nine-inch nails, Rod Stewart, Garbage, beck, kid rock, Boy George, sting, brjork, Outcast, the chemical brothers, The Jonas Brothers, Jeff Lynne, and Beyonce, just to name a few. Today we talk about what it takes to take photos of pop stars.

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In This Episode You'll Learn:

• How Joseph got started in photography

• When Joseph Cultice knew photography would play a major role in his life

• What Joseph Cultice struggled with most when getting started in photography

• What is the job description of a pop star photographer

• Who reaches out to start a campaign for a musical artist

• How to build report when working with new artists

• How much of the final image comes from Joseph Cultice’s vision vs the bands vision

• A misconception most people would be surprised to learn about being a pop star photographer

• One of the most challenging shoots Joseph Cultice has had and how he handled it

• How to create images unique for each artist while still keeping consistency across your body of work

• How Joseph Cultice knows if he did a good job

Resources:

• Pop Star Photographer Joseph Cultice’s Website

• Joseph Cultice on Instagram

Did you enjoy this episode? Check out more recent interviews with other great guests!

Full Episode Transcription:

Disclaimer: The transcript was transcribed electronically by Temi.com and may contain errors that do not reflect accurately what the speaker said. Because of this, please do not quote this automated transcript.

Raymond: 00:00:00 Normally I ask like I always love to start from the beginning. But for you, I want to take a little bit of a different approach because you've been doing this for so long. So my question for you is 30 years. Tell me when you knew that photography was going to play a major role in your life.

Joseph Cultice: 00:00:17 Well, see, I grew up in Phoenix and I was in a couple of bands, punk rock bands and I was taking photographs all the time at the punk rock shows. And that was my, a hobby. I was doing it in school, but I'd never really imagined a life as a photographer. The meat puppets lived down the street from me and they knew I was taking photographs and they were like, can you take our photos for this thing? And I'm like, sure, just don't, you know, I don't know if I said don't tell anybody, but they didn't tell anybody. And then they didn't use my name on the picture credit for the album. So I probably did say don't tell them cause I didn't want to be known as taking photographs for whatever reason that picture came out. That's in the back of me puppets too.

Joseph Cultice: 00:01:06 And then I started doing more and more pictures of them later cause I was in a band and the band just dissolved. And I had gotten a couple of little tastes of what it was like to be famous for an a band and I just, I didn't want to do it anymore. I don't think any of these are conscious decisions, but they, when I go back and have to answer these, this question, that's the that's the real reason I didn't want to be famous. I'd rather be behind the scenes. So then as the photography grew and I got better and better at it and got more a warm fuzzies for doing it, I became a photographer and then I really did make it a conscious decision that I'm getting, this is what I'm going to do. But it was all because the meat puppets asked me to take their band photo. I was taking tons of pictures, but it wasn't like, here I want to do a band album cover

Raymond: 00:01:55 Music was your first love. What would you say was the difference? Like how did you approach it differently? I'm assuming at the time you were just shooting?

Joseph Cultice: 00:02:02 Little Pentax me, supra with a bad Sigma lens that makes it really funky and distorted. I had like a 50 and a and a 28, that's all I had. And I was just shooting you go on my site on the Papa's personal and see all those early punk rock pictures. And there was just like a, a point where when I would take the camera to every show I was now, I was like, I'm really going to take pictures unconsciously, but it was just a way, you know, it's also a way to, to be a part of the music scene and to be part of it. And my band sucks so

Raymond: 00:02:41 I never got to play any of those great shows. So for that first album cover, was it just a portrait? Was it, you had to come up with concept? It's

Joseph Cultice: 00:02:50 Dragged me. We went out to the desert and it's really just be to smoke pot the whole time. And I was taking pictures with my Pentax black and whites and they, we had a Polaroid camera on SX 70, and I was taking pictures of the SX 70 for fun and it's a silhouette of them against the the desert sky and it's not even the whole band is just like Kurt. And that's where they ended up using was this that was the back album cover. That's the band photo.

Raymond: 00:03:21 Your your idea at the time was, Hey, we'll just go out, we'll have some fun and whatever you like you can use for whatever you want. There was no rationale behind those,

Joseph Cultice: 00:03:30 No rationale behind it. It was just take pictures and they were like the first band I really thought to graft a lot. They literally lived three houses down for me and I don't think they ever paid me any money. So when, so when that happened, did something change inside of you that you decided I'm going to pursue this philosophical? Really? I think it was just a, it was something I was good at obviously and I enjoy doing. And then like I said, people appreciated it. So then you got warm fuzzies from people for doing it and then I just continued to do it and then there was a certain point in college. I was in college at the time. So then what am I going to be? God, it was the last two years of college. I got really serious about it. I started shooting for the new times, which was the village voice of Phoenix and I got to shoot, it was funny last night friend of mine posted a picture of Johnny Eisman and that was the first celebrity ever photograph besides the meat puppets I guess was Donnie Osman, someone from my childhood.

Joseph Cultice: 00:04:32 But I photographed him with a 50 millimeter lens really close to him and it makes us forehead like that much. So it's just like you realize, Oh guy, I have no idea what I'm doing. Most of those things where I had no idea what I was doing, but I was given, I kept getting opportunities, like the shoot for the newspaper to shoot for other bands and I just happened to be the only guy around that was really doing it. And that's how it just, yeah, it's really, you think that's how you got those gigs? Oh yeah. Well I'm a hustler. You know, you have to be a hustler. So I hustled it. I don't think anybody I don't think anybody said, here you go, here's your career. I just kind of hustled my way through it and I, and it really was like the last two years of college, I really was busting ass to take photographs constantly.

Joseph Cultice: 00:05:19 I just became a fan of Gary Winogrand who would just shoot tons and tons of film. I thought it was Gary Winogrand, but when I go back and look at these shoots and stuff, I would shoot, like if I shot 10 frames, that would be a lot of frames. I'd go and there'd be rolls at contact sheets where the top part of it, there'd be portraits, portraits of Genesis, pure edge. And then there'd be like a picture of the somebody at the house or the cat and then there'd be a picture of a I would go and take pictures of people who started restaurants, like the Thai restaurant down the street. And I get the two owners holding up their favorite dishes. There'd be four frames of that. And then there'd be pictures of like Timothy Leary literally on the same 36 frames and then maybe some pictures of the cat. And I had a process the film and get the prints ready for the newspaper and all that. Like I went into Timothy Leary's dressing room and begged my way in there and got four frames. That's all I did and there, and he's just there. That's fine. But that's just how different now I shoot gazillions, all the rolls of film I would shoot when I was shooting film, you know, 80 rolls was pretty of two 20 would be pretty regularly expensive. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I wasn't paying for it. That's what the 90s, the hay day.

Raymond: 00:06:40 So when, so when you'd go in there and you know, you would only shoot for frames so you'd have one roll that just had so much variety on that. Was that because you were so limited on time or because you got what it was that you needed? Was there something else behind that?

Joseph Cultice: 00:06:55 I don't think film, costed money. I don't know. It's kinda, I kept looking at it going, I expect you to go and look at my contact sheets as I stay. I scan my archive and see, you know, half a role on Timothy Elyria at least now there's only four frames. I'm like, wow, what was, I don't know what I was thinking, to be quite honest. I just, I think a lot of times half the, the energy was spent getting into the dressing room with Timothy Leary convincing his rotor manager, even though it was sent there by the local newspaper, the local liberal newspaper to get them to let me do it. I talked my way into run DMCs dressing room and to Billy Idol's dressing room to do pictures of him. And I'm just a kid and I had really long hair. I was super skinny. I had black, blue, black hair, I wore all black. I looked like Nick, kinda like a Robert Smith, Nick Katy kinda character. And with a camera, a little bag full of like a bad little umbrella with two battery powered strobes in it with like a, a long cord. And that was my whole lighting setup in a hot light sometimes. So

Raymond: 00:08:07 And, and, and so these photos that you're taking was those for the paper, these were commissioned things you had to get these right. So, so during this point, did you say to yourself, or I guess, let me, let me re ask the question. When do you first feel like you considered yourself a what do you consider yourself? Right now I pop star photographer. So when was the first time that you considered yourself pop star photographer? J

oseph Cultice: 00:08:38 It's, it's odd. The whole world. The whole thing of calling yourself an artist or you know, a big photographer or whatever. I've never been comfortable with that because I have Picasso [inaudible]. Gary Winogrand is another example or Avedon. I seen those guys and they never stopped doing photography. Picasso, he just painted every day, all day long. I've never had that kind of tenacity to do it constantly. I have a life outside of taking photos, but those avid dons and artists, he never stopped working. He was constantly working like, and that's that. And he had no personal relationships to speak up because of it. You don't consider yourself an artist. It's a weird world. My word, cause my son gets mad at me. Like you're totally an artist. Come on. What are you talking about? I guess I'm an artist. Yeah. But I saw like, you know, rappers, they'll make one for songs and like I'm an artist, man, an artist, yet man, you gotta do this your whole life. I think at 30 years, dime to doing it and I haven't let up. I'm being, I'm still, I'm hustling now harder than I ever have to continue to be able to do this.

Raymond: 00:09:51 To find out what you would, what you would define an artist as, what would you say the definition of an artist is?

Joseph Cultice: 00:09:58 Well, it's funny cause there's a, the definition artist really is somebody who works in their craft all the time, which is the most art as a craft. It's being very disciplined and doing it constantly. And I guess I do do that. Maybe not to the degree of Avedon Donner Annie Leibovitz. She's a, I mean that's, she just lives and breathes it. But that's her entire identity. I think a, I think maybe after I had my kid, my identity shifted a bit. You know, he is more important to me than pretty much anything. So and cats are too that's great. They get, these are all these big philosophical questions about photography or [inaudible]. I love taking pictures. It's talking about jobs like it's when I get a, I'm super motivated when I get a job of my own, I mean our job that I'm in the commission for and it's a blast and it together pitching the ideas, figuring out how I'm going to do it, realizing that now I've just pitched an idea that costs a lot more money than then I said it was going to cost. They just go back and go, can I please have 10,000 more dollars? It's not that much. The last garbage shoot was always that much, but they're, they're used to me doing that at this point.

Raymond: 00:11:19 Well that's funny cause that, that brings me into kind of where I was going with all of this, which is like where you're at now, you're working with lots of artists, you're working with lots of bands and you're not doing a single portrait. You're doing essentially not only a a cover shoot I suppose, but like a whole print and advertising campaign. Like these photos are going to be used for lots of things. So who reaches out to you and where does that process start?

Joseph Cultice: 00:11:45 Well, you know, it's changed since the heyday of the nineties, per se, where there's just so many record labels and so many magazines. Like I've worked, I worked for American Vogue for 10 years. I worked for every major electric record label I've shot for just about every cable company. There is some repeat customers, some not in the cable world, but they reach out purely just from you hustling to get your work in front of them and then keeping that relationship open with them. And I've been lucky that I'd say about five or six art directors I become good friends with and they, I don't feel bad when they don't hire me for things. I grumble about it, but but they've become friends, but they're, they're, they're, it's hustling and it's getting out there and talking to people. If you just sit on your, yeah, it's all our directors.

Joseph Cultice: 00:12:42 Yeah. Like Annie Jew and Jeff Schultz and Todd, I can't say Todd's last name too. Well, Galop Bailey for meat and potatoes. But the art director is the one who will reach out to you if a, if it is a new artist. Well, it's when they know, they know I'm a hustler, so they know I'll come, I'll bring something fresh to it. It's like I always have, I have a huge cachet of ideas that one pop star said no to or didn't work for a TV show and then I'll just reuse it or, you know, refine it. I don't think I do too many images over and over again because lighting might be consistent. But the the concept itself, you can't, you know, it's like I can't go and shoot one artist and have them show up around the same time with this similar photograph.

Joseph Cultice: 00:13:33 That's why I say Anton Corbijn used to be able to get away with that for whatever reason. He would do every big, humongous band in the world from Depeche mode to you two in the exact same style. And they'd be, their pictures would be everywhere and it's obvious it's Anton's pictures, but for then it worked. It was a style was almost like a, a a sign of that it was a sign of the time. So it was kinda that kind of look, the 90s, early two thousands. So you take them to get bored doing the same picture all the time. I think that's always been my excuse. I just can't do the same picture all the time. I'd go crazy. So when we, so you have this whole list of ideas that you have, is it typically you who approaches the artist? I have this idea.

Joseph Cultice: 00:14:23 Yeah. It's usually me actually. I'd say it's, there is a, I'm a good crossover. Like the stuff I did with Joe Satriani just recently, Todd came to me and said, I want to do light painting, you know, cause blah blah blah, you know, it's called shape shifting. And then I went and dug up a whole bunch of pictures. Todd dug up a bunch of examples of light painting and we basically kind of figured out which one we liked, what part of it and then just put it together. But that was a, his impetus. But then like say with the most recent garbage shoot, I just there's a desert X is what it was called, was out in the middle of the desert and they put all these huge mirrored houses and mirrored ABO obelisks out in the middle of the desert and it reflected everything around it.

Joseph Cultice: 00:15:10 So I just became fascinated with mirrors and then I talk surely into, let me do a picture with mirrors. Which costs money. It costs more money than we thought because it had to be real mirrors. It couldn't be plastic ones. Why is this? Cause they distort. Ah, okay. Yeah. No clean the heat now just in general cause they're plastic. So then we, you know, but the, it was fun. It all worked out. It was that we can talk about that shoe later. But so the ideas come from a little, a mixture of the art directors, but a lot of times I think they're so burned out that they want to find an idea. They're are hoping that you have some thing that you can come up ready to go. But a lot of times the artists, that's not true. Like a [inaudible].

Joseph Cultice: 00:15:56 Well, it's weird like a joy wave. That album cover I sent you. The guy's like chopped up cubes. He has a mustache in my kind of glasses. Those are all from a series of photographs I've done called the arc and they're all personal photographs of family members with that lighting. That's all really low tech, home Depot, Kino kinos and some weird hot lights I have. And a battering light. The one at one point I built a bad ring light, but now I actually have one of those plastic ones. But they had, I had gifted those prints or maybe, I can't remember. Cody bought these prints of me and my family and they sent them to their studio in Boston and put them up on the behind the reception desk. Really huge prints of them. Oh wow. And so the, it's just so this just a weird how coincidences work.

Joseph Cultice: 00:16:48 So the the band joy way, Daniel, the singer was at that photo studio to do a shoot in Boston pro for whatever reason. And he took a picture of those with his phone and thought they were cool. So then he's sent the art director, any Jew, the here I like, I like these pictures, you know, can we do something like this? And he's like, well, I know that guy. That's one of my photographers that work with all the time. And then there we go. And then I don't know where my, I thought I started experimenting with the picture of chopping it up and then end. He was like, Oh, here's a picture of a costume, make it that concert thing. We keep talking about the cubism thing and then I just worked with that until it turned into what it was. And it was a gift to, that was the other part of their marketing was a GIF, so has lips and I hadn't do a million strange faces.

Joseph Cultice: 00:17:36 It was good for fun, but that's all with $50 with a lighting, maybe 75 but this whole idea came from essentially a personal project. Is that, did I hear that right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. If you go on my site, it's in under personal, it's the art and all that stuff they shot was just bad lighting on purpose. It all came from that. I sent you that the thing you have everything you need, which is kind of similar to what you had talked about in your email of Oh, what was her, you used to work with what you have or Meg. Danica may do, sounds a little sends down, you have everything you need. So when I moved to, when I moved to LA from New York, that person's posters were all over silver Lake and Atwater and I was sitting in my office and this right when the huge economic downturn happened and I have like 80 grand worth of cameras and computers, but not too many lights.

Joseph Cultice: 00:18:36 And but I had those fluorescents. I had a bad low hot light kit from, for I've had forever and ever and ever. I don't even know how that ended up in my house. At one point. I tried to figure that out. But anyhow so I, I realized I have everything I need to make some photos to start a series. So I literally just kind of figured out the lights and then I realized I really wanted to ring light. So then I took a construction was being happened in the bathroom and they had pulled the old circular fluorescent off the ceiling so that I took that, got new bulbs, stuck it on a piece of wood and it was really heavy. And I looked this thing up and down. That would be the ring light with one one, one a one two by two, one two bulb, four foot a Kino.

Joseph Cultice: 00:19:25 But it's actually just a home fluorescents with the actual keynote silver factor for reflector in there. And that was the light. And then with two hot lights behind their heads. But that took a couple of them. I shot my mom and my kid and a couple other friends and then I've done that. I've probably done it 300 times now with different people. I do it with this different groups of families. You go to their house and they have a couple of years from when the little kids, you know, they're teenagers off from our schools. Yeah. It's really beautiful. And I love the way they look. So that's where I started getting back into hot lights and blurry stuff. And I like blurs and cliques and it's fun. It's hilarious. And cheeks and cliques, you know, the little thing in your eye, you know, so that's always, it's always interesting to me because I'm not sure if there's, it really feels like there's always really two Pete type of people, those who need everything to be perfect in order to just to get started.

Joseph Cultice: 00:20:23 Yeah. I think that I'm one of those unfortunately. And then I then, then there's those who are just going to get started no matter what, and then they're going to refine as time goes on. Would you say that before this moment where you found this ring light, the circular fluorescent, you were one of the other? No, I think I've just always just done, you know, using your thing. I have, I have, and I have to do it right now. I think that a lot of that came from when I was working for the new times. I'd be forced into a dressing room in five minutes with somebody and I'd have four minutes to take a picture of him. So I decided to make do with whatever I had and sometimes it was really successful. And then, you know, most of actually most of the time was pretty successful actually.

Joseph Cultice: 00:21:11 I kind of missed that. When I used to work with Annie, we'd spend all this time in these huge productions and sets and then she would just, we'd just race off someplace else and take other pictures. Same with like ockenfelds I think these, like I went to school for photography, but I really learned how to become a photographer when I was an assistant in New York. Like what the, the game really is and how you make it work. The big show as they say. So you just make do with what you have really. That's kinda your thing. You have everything you need right there. They're both the same. It's a good, yeah, it's again, it all, it all comes back to the same, right. It's all kind of the same message. But I like what you said. Mine kinda sounds a little forceful.

Joseph Cultice: 00:21:56 You just do it. You make just two a minute. You got nothing. Yeah. Come make sense. Let's just try to be positive at the time too. It's was like, we're like, I went from doing a 10 shoots a month to do intense shoots a year, like within a year. I'm like, what the fuck just happened? And that was after moving from New York? Yeah. We were really lucky though. I had a, we owned a brownstone in New York and we sold it not knowing that this was going to happen and we made money on it. So we were fine, but it was just like, wow. It was weird. It was really weird the whole why it's changed everything. I dunno what happened. Yeah. But how's he this? What's gonna happen now? Yeah, I know where it's uncharted territory right now. It's a very, it's a very interesting time to be alive and to be working as a commissioned artists.

Joseph Cultice: 00:22:42 But I want to go back to New York for a second. You moved from Phoenix to New York. So like I go back to Phoenix, there was at a point when at the end of it cause I just had this discussion with cat Sarah. It was I'd spent a lot of time in LA when I was growing up of when a bands would go play there, I'd go see shows and really to become a professional photographer. Then it was either into being an assistant, was to either move to LA or move to New York. And I had never been to New York. So I knew LA was filled with flakes, so I decided to move to New York just like on a whim. And at the time my girlfriend at the time she was going to summer school at NYU, so I got to go and see New York and I just went there with resume and a portfolio of one of those bad plastic kind of weird plastic portfolios.

Joseph Cultice: 00:23:38 The whole thing's plastic fill with tear sheets in my photos and just started bugging photographers to be an assistant. Like Tom Katrina was a big J crew catalog guy, one of the first guys to hire me out there and I'm who I'm still friends with now, especially on Instagram. Makes me feel good all the time. But but I went there and learned the show. Like things you just don't learn in school, I think, I don't know what schools are like now, but back then it was there were either all the fine art stuff or only technique and neither of those things will mesh well together. You need both. Like literally no one used any strobes. When I went to college, I was the only person who had strobes. It was all about interesting the light, find that natural light.

Raymond: 00:24:24 Oh, that's very strange. It's very strange. You think it was just purely an aesthetic thing? Yeah, I guess. I don't know. It's Phoenix. Who knows what Phoenix? My mom, my mom lives in Phoenix right now and we we just went out last year. Yeah, it's so, so when I'm, I'm always interested about these, these early days as a photographer because it's always fun. It's as somebody who's in that spot, you can't look forward and see what the future is gonna hold. Right. So at that point, were you taking every gig that came your way? Were you specifically looking for bands or where you

Joseph Cultice: 00:25:01 Yeah, I just took, I just took every, I took every gig literally. Now if you look at all those old black and white rolls of film, I took every, every gig, every gig. Then you times I did for your times. I think they paid me $75 for every more. Yeah. We got to cover, it was like $300 may or maybe they sent me to photograph the real estate rapist in prison and it was a cover and I didn't know he was a rapist. I had no idea who this guy was. They didn't tell me, how do you shoot something like that then? Well, they came back with the photos and they're really like, he looks soft and I was making pretty pictures. This guy felt bad for him. He was in prison. I didn't know for years he had been a luring women to open, you know, to look at the house and then, and then afterwards they tell me I'm gonna go, why didn't, why didn't you tell me why this guy was the real estate rapist? Because when they said he's the real estate rapists, you going what? Cause I knew that I'd heard about it, but yeah.

Raymond: 00:26:06 Yeah. You were, you were within feet of this guy and you had no idea that was it. No, I was in a cell with this guy. Oh no. Inside a prison cell with him and they let you have a camera. And some lights set up with him.

Joseph Cultice: 00:26:18 I brought my little strobe thing. Yeah. And I got some daylight, him and the bars and look into the bars. Yeah. Very. Yeah. I don't think it was going to rape me, but you know, he looked real. He looked really sad and pathetic. He lives, he was busted. Yeah. You know, it was horrible. He's a monster. You ruin lots of people's lives. But so the, the, in new times, God, I still have those, the letters to the editor because they gave to me, they thought I was funny cause it was like you made him look so empathetic. Like you know, we should be feel sorry for him in the pictures. They don't read the article. Of course they just look at the pictures of Christ. Yeah. And yeah, that's what, so you just, I took everything, but that was fun. You know, I, it's funny now I wish I could go and do more of those kinds of pictures.

Joseph Cultice: 00:27:04 At a certain point in New York, I was getting offered lots of politicians and I had to take pictures for the cover of parade. Right. So basically I'll do anything, you know, I slept for parade, tons of stuff for FHM and Maxim tons and I should probably start posting that stuff cause it's pretty funny. It's hilarious actually. But they may, they paid really well. Prey pays really well. They paid like three grand for the cover, but please complete it. Sure, sure. It's monster. And I knew that going in, it made me feel so dirty and gross that like the next week, you know, when you go and take pictures and I'm like, absolutely not. I'm done no more of these. Am I going to give my love to these horrible politicians

Raymond: 00:27:50 When it came to you know, being in New York, at what point were you at what point did it switch from I'll take a gig to now, this is what I do and, and artists come to me.

Joseph Cultice: 00:28:05 Well, I think when I started making some really big images and are getting a lot of magazine covers, like option and Ray gun, a few spin covers, the music work just rolled in. There was all that editorial back then. If you were in the magazines then the band, well, my big break was nine snails. So I was working with Frank ockenfelds as an assistant and he turned the people on a musician magazine to my work. And I was starting to shoot a lot of my own stuff, bands, portraits of actresses and stuff and putting out cards and you know, doing the hustle, trying to get work. And Frank was nice enough to I wish I could remember that art director's name, but he told him and then about me and I think I photographed like Cypress Hill. I'm a jazz guy that was a famous jazz drummer.

Joseph Cultice: 00:28:56 I should photograph television for them when they came back out. Tom, Tom Berlin. But then they, I got to shoot Trent and that was right when he put out, he had just signed to Interscope. He was on a broken, was the EEP put out. And I knew nine snails. I liked him, but I wasn't a Trent freak or anything. So then what I photograph trend, every musician in the world wants to be as cool as Trent Reznor. So then they hire the guy that photographs Trent. I photograph Trent for a musician was a really big spread. And then me and Trent got along really well. Unbeknownst to me, he liked me because I did like five setups in like an hour, just walked set to set. I thought that was the reason cause then they musician ran with one picture, which I love. And then Trent bottle, the rest of them to use for his PR for press because it was done, it didn't cost him very much money.

Joseph Cultice: 00:29:56 I became best friends with his publicist, Susie Zimmerman from formula at the time. Now Magnum PR and but years later we all talked about your why, you know, why'd you like me and stop blah blah blah. I don't know why that came up. But he was like, Oh cause you had received peanut butter eggs, which are those, it was like after Easter and they were on sale. So all I had, there was a bunch of boxes of receipts, bean butter, eggs and coax. Cause I knew there was no money, was no musician and pay any money. So literally I used to assist Matthew Austin a lot at, and we would shoot at studio one in New York on fourth and Lafayette. So they let me use a studio, I think for free. And I shot, you know, Trenton, they're all, you know, for an hour. I had the morning to set up.

Joseph Cultice: 00:30:41 You shut up. We did it. But he really liked the pictures. But it was the end. It was really that he liked the Reese's peanut butter eggs. That's his favorite candy in mind too. So then that was a, that was probably five years later. He told me that I may really cause any, just started hiring me over and I would do shoot music videos. I would go on the road with them. I did part of a concert film that took years and years later to come out. I did a just tons, tons of photo shoots with him. So then those images, my name was next to it and that's how, that's how I met Manson. We met Manson before he was even a rock star. He was a writer. And so I've known Manson before he was even a rockstar back to the whole Trent Reznor thing real quick without peanut butter eggs.

Joseph Cultice: 00:31:28 I think what's really interesting is that building rapport is something that a lot of photographers don't think of when they think about getting into photography. So nowadays when you're working with bands like garbage, right? Yeah, very well known bands. You have Bay come in, you have to introduce yourself and you have to build rapport quick because you're in charge of their image. So how do you build that rapport efficiently? It's, it's not so much building reports just like Shirley's and surely and garbages a perfect a Shirley Manson. It's a perfect example of it. You just don't be a flake and being a flake is don't over promise and be realistic with what you can do. And if you're going to be late with something, you don't wait until the day it's due to say it's going to be a day late. If you know two days before that this retouching is not going to be done, let them know that it might be late.

Joseph Cultice: 00:32:25 And then surprise them if it's early. It's just bait is basically not being a flake and keep it on top of it surely is a really good example because like when we did the last record, I literally, I was lucky too. I wasn't, I think maybe back in the day would've been harder to keep up on this. But she had an idea of, we photographed him in the back of backyard. It's the double truck of their album and they're in this big backyard with lollies flowers, three grand worth of flowers. Another example of, I come up with great idea, and Shirley, we have a $10,000 budget and I find out my God, flowers costs three or $4,000. I had no idea. And she was like, really even fake flowers cost that much. So she's like, it's a fucking genius idea. Let's do it. And I found the backyard behind my the studio anyhow, so she had the idea for their website of having them dissolve into the photograph and then undissolved, you know, there's an opener.

Joseph Cultice: 00:33:21 She asked me to do that. And of course I had plates in the backyard. I put that together for probably in an afternoon and so, and then sent it to her. So what I'm getting at is to build a rapport with musicians, TV studios, magazines is you just, they've hired you and you just have to really be on top of it. You can't be a flake about it. It's, and then the, they will come to you because they know they can rely on you. So once you've built that rapport with them and keep it up as well, then they, they just keep hiring you because there's a lot of flakes out there. The horror stories, the horror stories I've heard from rockstars about they do a photo shoot, they give the person, you know, 20 grand and then it takes them a month to get a print out of them.

Joseph Cultice: 00:34:11 And then, you know, all these kinds of things. I'm just like, really dude, I'm all over this. Like you'll get these, you'll have these up online tomorrow morning. You crazy. That was like Gary Newman, his album cover before that, he said it was a nightmare. It took them like six months. They had a delay putting up the record and all the press because the people that they had hired to do these great, great pictures in the end, they, it, they just flaked on them constantly. So then the other part was he said that he wanted it to be all crunchy and worn and they were like, no, we don't want to do that. I'm like, well, I have dark. The Gary Newman wants you to make it crusty and Warren just do some treatments, make your crusty and work. So you literally took the prints, they send them, put them on the the cement in front of this house and just rubbed on the cement and then they rescanned it and that's the cover and you see it, it looks really chunked up like it was on cement. A gun. Oh yeah. That looks really real because it is completely real. But you know, I was all over Gary. He was happy lead. We'll do the new one. Yeah.

Raymond: 00:35:16 Oh, that's horrible to hear that, you know, cause obviously a lot of money's going to go into creating an album, putting it out, doing advertising and stuff. The fact that a photographer is going to hold something up like that, essentially you're done after that. Right?

Joseph Cultice: 00:35:28 I want to send the [inaudible] and then they, the, I would imagine I don't know if Gary a bad mouth them, but when they did, he didn't tell me their names. It doesn't matter. You can tell her they did. It's just like, it's not going to help your career at all. So especially in this day and age when there's so many freaking photographers that can just take a Canon five D and put a pretty girl against the wall with the right styling and hair makeup, then you've, you know, that's half the battle. So you put in front of the camera. It's easier now than ever just to point something and make it happen. Back in the day, you would have to know how to expose film and take it to a lab.

Raymond: 00:36:05 So looking at your photos, that is the exact opposite of what you do. It looks very rarely do you just put somebody in a spot, snap the photo, and then you're done. There's a lot of work that goes into your photos. So I do want to talk about one photo in particular, and that is, I guess not one photo in particular, but Jeff Lynne of ELO. Oh, cool. Right. His new album or their new album, yellow's new album. You were the one who shot photos for Jeff when somebody like Jeff Lynn comes to you, right. I'm sure that you're not coming up with a crazy idea, like, let's go out into the desert. This was something a little bit more subdued. So interestingly enough, rarely subdued. Yeah. So where did that idea come from? Okay, so Jerry Haydn, who is

Joseph Cultice: 00:36:58 [Inaudible] smog design and they've done tons of huge packaging that you'll see, but they do, we work with them and garbage a lot. And I've done stuff prior to to garbage with Jerry, but at smog design, Jerry and Brian and Ryan's, her partner, they wanted me to shoot Jeff Lynne and I just came up with some rough ideas. But the main thing was to get Jeff to say yes to doing a photo shoot because he never does photo shoots. He has not done a photo shoot. And I think it was like, I don't think I'm exaggerating 20 years. He just doesn't do photo shoots and he wants photos come out, but it's like his friends at a studio, him sitting on a couch with a guitar, they're all kind of useless photos for the most part, other fine for Instagram or something. But I mean, dude, I love ELO.

Joseph Cultice: 00:37:53 I forgot how much I love to ELO until I got the job. And I realize this was the music of my of my teachers. I'd sit and that out of the blue album cover, I would sit there and look at that and does listen to it over and over and over again. So it was a, it was a real rush when it all started to come together and happening. And Jeff is an eccentric rockstar. He wanted to be near his house. He wanted certain kinds of food. All these things you'd expect. Like I was kind of petrified Jerry and those guys were petrified that he was going to show up and not want to do it. Get away.

Raymond: 00:38:31 Yeah. Let's see if you can see her right there in a way. Yeah,

Joseph Cultice: 00:38:36 Right. I was trying to get cats to walk around and lingerie behind me, but she give it time. Okay. Cat, are you gonna do lingerie thing? No. Darn it. But J I'm gonna say it's me. Jeff really liked me right off the bat. I didn't have a lot of strobe stuff. It's literally those bad kinos mixed with some little inky hotlines and just had fun with him. And the, the, the oddest thing about the shoot is that in a lot of Jerry's a, the manager is Craig that runs basically day to day with Jeff, a huge management company. He really helped get Jeff to go from here to there. But Jeff had fun on the photo shoot. He did seven setups in three or four, about three hours, which they didn't think he was gonna last 40 minutes like he'd want to leave.

Joseph Cultice: 00:39:43 And I also had a shoot with my phone. A commercial of him reading a script for, it's great cause I have all the raw footage of it and he messes up and he's, he's just like Ozzy. He has the same accent as Ozzy. He's from wherever that part of England, Israel had that. Oh yeah, you're blind. Me. You know they had that accent, which is funny cause you never hear Jeff talk. And then he talks and it's like, Oh my God, are you from the same place as Ozzie? He sounds just like Ozzie. It was good fun. But we got along great and he danced. He played guitar. But the crazy thing about the shoot is that there was no music. We didn't play any music cause it's in a bouncy Cove studio. It's hard to hear, to begin with. And Jeff since he's been doing this for so long, all those really rock stars didn't have ear plugins when they were their ears are fried, they're fried.

Joseph Cultice: 00:40:43 And Jerry was saying, or Ryan, Jerry's partner, when he would go to the house to listen to like the record, like in the studio, he'd have it so loud, it rattled their lungs and, but that's how he can hear it. So the only ruins his hearing more. A lot of us, yeah. A lot of, a lot of the older pop stars their hears are fried and then the newer ones aren't going to have that problem cause they just have perfect in sound, you know, monitors and it's not very loud on stage. You can have a conversation on stage that's so weird about it. It's really weird. And I don't know if that's, it's not that much fun really. I'd rather be loud as if I was in the middle of yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Metallic music. Dead quiet on stage. There's no monitors on stage, blah, blah, blah.

Joseph Cultice: 00:41:32 So Jeff, what can I you about Jeff? He's just an absolute gent. He's so great. And then we we just, little inky lights just playing with them. It was slow shutter speeds. He played guitar. I couldn't help it sing songs to him. There were his songs cause I listened to it the week before and he was like, Oh yeah, that's not bad, eh, he's had a good time. It was it was really magical, but it was over in like three and a half hours in the door and out really fast. It was situation

Raymond: 00:42:06 That, that, that, that brings up that question again about building the rapport. You know, you hadn't done a photo shoot in 20 plus years when he walks in the door. How much communication have you had before that moment?

Joseph Cultice: 00:42:18 No, zero would never, I don't think he even knew. I don't think he'd even looked at my website or anything because Camilla, his his partner is know basically his wife. She was like going, wow, you're really good. This is fun. I can't believe it. And then she was like looking at my website on her on her phone gun. You took all these pictures. I'm like, yeah. So basically Jerry from smog, she vouched for me and I work with Sony a lot as well. So I knew the music and they knew I'd be good for it. You know, that's not the point. Do you, do you feel like there's a level of just trust that has to be, yeah, that's what I'm saying. The report, the report basically comes from a God saying it's just don't be a flake. Flake is not, is beyond just doing your gig.

Joseph Cultice: 00:43:07 It's communicating. And that's the thing about like if you can't over promise something, you can't, you have to know. You can't just say yes. You have to think about what you're really going to do. Are you going to be able to, are you going to be able to retouch all this in one day or is it going to take a couple of days and you have to be honest, give me a day or two in this. Because as you know, with retouching, it sits in, then you go back and look at it and go, Oh, that looks horrible, or I should be more than this, or I should, if I have to do all one day and send away, then it looks a little bit sloppy. It's always great to let it sit there for one day, but that, you know, is get that luxury most of the time. I don't,

Raymond: 00:43:48 I I, I, I'm, I'm under nowhere near the same amount of delivery pressure I guess is you. But whenever I shoot a wedding, it's kinda the same because I will not look at the photos almost for an entire week because if I do look at them the next day, I will, I'll just want to give up. I want to give the couple back all their money and say like, I'm sorry, I'm a fraud. Like you got me. I, you're, I am. You know, I am. So I, I totally get that. That's funny. That's funny.

Joseph Cultice: 00:44:14 Yeah. You don't let it sit for awhile. And I don't think a lot of people understand that because it's the delivery pressure is there a lot of times. And when you, as I did that revolver cover just recently, they gave me the job on a Monday, I it on a Wednesday or Thursday and it had to be done that weekend. It was that past return around. And then I look back at that recharge and go on and I would've done this a little differently now. Plus I had a sh I got a new computer, which goes a lot faster.

Raymond: 00:44:48 Is it the new macro rounds? Insane. But they paid, it was nice. It puts, it's a really great band. That band ginger. It's amazing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joseph Cultice: 00:44:56 Really great. They're really, and they're all really cool and they're all from the Ukraine.

Raymond: 00:45:02 Oh, that, that's, that's all for fun. Joe Biden son. And they used to party with them. And I'm just that brings me to, I mean, is that, I guess is that obviously that's not a common turnaround time, but what would you say is the average turnaround time for a if you're doing some sort of album cover?

Joseph Cultice: 00:45:20 Well, it's, you know, it's kind of weird about the turnaround time thing. It's like I always go back to when a, when FedEx wasn't there, right. And then everybody wanted everything overnighted cause they could, and then when it went from Chrome's to shooting negative, everyone wanted four sets of contact sheets overnight at someplace. So you'd rush charge that. Now with the internet, literally people like, I'll shoot something and they're like, are you going to upload those tonight? Yeah, I'll just, I'll, I'll process the JPEGs and we can upload them and edit it tonight with garbage. You know, I get it to him like the day afterwards and they're like, yeah. And they start sifting through and it's all really fast now. It's all

Raymond: 00:46:09 Internet. Yeah. Wow. In COVID 19 I think is probably makes everything faster. I felt like that has slowed things down a lot. At least I think it's going to change everything. We'll see what happens.

Joseph Cultice: 00:46:24 I think. So this morning I woke up right [inaudible] going to do a nice zoom chat interview in the freaking box just was off. It wouldn't, it's, it died last night. I got a kid at home doing homeschooling on the zoom. I have a fiance katzer upstairs working from home on the internet. So to go to spectrum you have to make an appointment cause they don't want more than three people in the room at the same time. Luckily I got an appointment, went there, got a box, came back, but I could have been on at 11 o'clock but that was like, yeah. And there was a line of people outside the door at their boxes and stuff and the guys, you have to make an appointment and they're going, what? We don't let three people. And it was, it was bizarre. So all this is really bizarre.

Raymond: 00:47:19 Yeah. Yeah. That brings up a question. Technical malfunctions from a technical standpoint, has there ever been, it's always the digital is the digital thing.

Joseph Cultice: 00:47:30 It's always the key. Let's not even talk about the camera then. Let's not even take out the camera from a, from a, from the standpoint of, of building this conceptual idea that you have, what has been one of the most challenging shoots that you've had? Well, the one that the most recent one was the garbage one. If you look at it, it's a, that is a physically an eight foot tall mirror in Vasquez, rocks in the middle of in the middle of the desert. Basically in what turned out to be the, probably the wrong time of the year to shoot it in know, cause it was high winds the weekend before that whole area was on fire. We were supposed to do the shoot the Friday or the Saturday before it and we had a postponement. Luckily all the garbages changed their plans and stayed and we did it the next weekend, but it meant no one, it was a total cluster to get this thing back together.

Joseph Cultice: 00:48:29 The next weekend systems were booked. The park, the park wasn't maybe available. They're going to have a, an event there. They shoot star Trek there all the time. A block it off for a month. Star Trek decided not to do it, so it all worked out. But I took a mirror out in the middle of the desert and high winds. So in the picture surely is reflected in that mirror. She's got another eight foot 10 foot flat that's painted orange that she's standing in front of, on top of a platform on top of with the, the flat behind her reflecting in the mirror. So I have what, five assistants, mainly the assistants and end up being human sandbags to keep these things from cause it was super high winds, like really high winds, which I come up with these ideas and I don't think that our high winds, every time I've gone to baskets, rocks, it's a perfectly beautiful still day.

Joseph Cultice: 00:49:29 And then it turned out to be one of the windiest days of the year. Even the people at the Parker like, wow, it's windy. And I'm like, Holy shit. How much do you think you can prepare for something like that? I just don't, it just totally flew by the seat of my pants. It's like, you know, I think we had put 500 pounds where the sandbags, you know, it wouldn't have mattered how much they had to be to assistance air to kind of deal with the in a band that's known me for years. I've known them forever. That would totally just, I don't have to be nice. That's what I have to say and I have to be like, please would you move over here? You know? Cause they're not tender. They're just yelling at me called ice. I like being ordered around but everyone screaming at me so I would scream at him all the time.

Joseph Cultice: 00:50:18 There's a lot of fun. Yeah. How many people are going to be on set with you when you, when you were creating something that was a big one cause it was how many people was there? What's a big month? Cause you have stylists yet. Hair and makeup. That's when too there was like 20 people. 20 people. Wow. Five assistants, me, truck drivers. We had generators out in the desert and one of the things that LA, I don't know if you know, but if it's a park, you have to go through their film permits and everywhere you turn someone's going, here's, we want our money. So you have to, I had to pay $450 for some guy that never showed up to inspect the generators to make sure you have to have a certain kind of fire extinguisher next to each generator. Yeah, yeah.

Joseph Cultice: 00:51:09 But I do all that production myself and I would buy all those extinguishers, leaving their boxes in this, return them. Tom, I cannot pay $1,000 for the fire extinguishers, but that's so it's funny. He talk about these ideas. I come up with them or want to do them and it's really up to me just to make it happen. And I've just always done that. Even with back in the punk rock days or you know, ideas in New York, a lot of the times they fail. But as I've gotten older and better at this, most of the times they don't. They actually kind of work out. I think I maybe know my limitations now.

Raymond: 00:51:46 Oh yeah. That could be. That can be after a while. You tend to learn who you are and how you work. That makes sense. Yeah.

Joseph Cultice: 00:51:53 I used to make a lot of, there's a lot of contact sheets of bands there. People with like say a some band called glory woods or something. I was supposed to have them with all kinds of of Palm trees and flowers and their arms and everything, and I got them the day before. Not thinking that no matter what I did, they, as soon as they take them from the market, they all wilted. So these guys will hold on to all these wilted flowers and I still did it and it looks horrible. Plus they looked completely stunned like, what's going on here? What's this guy doing? I thought he was good.

Raymond: 00:52:26 This is for our album. Oh, okay. I guess.

Joseph Cultice: 00:52:28 Yeah. Yeah. They didn't go anywhere. They looked like they were two twins. They kind of looked like Crispin Glover to Christmas

Raymond: 00:52:36 To Crispin Glover's. Oh wow. That'd be really looked just like him. Wow. I've got a question for you. And this one came from your website and on your website it says, Oh no, I'm sorry this didn't come from your website. This came from an interview that I read that you did with a magazine, I believe, based in st Louis. And it is in this interview you said when you're talking about the artists that you've worked with, you say, I'm not trying to put them into my photographs. I'm basically trying to make a new image for them. I'm not a cookie cutter photographer. And you talked a little bit about that before, but I kind of get torn right there because I think the, the, the conventional education would be, or at least what I've been taught is that to be known for something, you need to have a look. You need to have a, can you

Joseph Cultice: 00:53:25 Talk about those two things? Well, I think that like I was saying like with Anton, Corban definitely style the 90s, he dominated all the, no, all the bands I wanted to shoot. And that was probably a mistake on my part. I should have been more of a cookie, not cookie cutter, but just had a more recognizable style, but I just couldn't do it. I tried and I think I would fall back on looks or ideas because the like say with Maxim and FHM, that's what they hired me for. They saw something I shot for the source or something in a fashion shoot for the source magazine and they just loved that light. So then I basically, every shoot I did was a version of that light and that's what they wanted. They didn't want me to experiment. I think for me, I just want to experiment in every shoot. The weird thing is I love repetitive images. Like I love Damien Hirst, repetitive paintings, they're all the same painting, just a variation of it.

Joseph Cultice: 00:54:30 Yeah, that's all exactly. The point of that too is to make it repetitive. That's the exact same lighting. And then when I frame them in Prince, their eyes in their faces kind of have to line up in the same spot. So when you see 20 or 30 of them on the wall, even if they're a little baby, their head is that big and their eyes line up there, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you're, you're told to do that. And I didn't do that in the beginning and because I think it was, I couldn't take a picture of nine snails and then go and shoot Marilyn Manson the same way, or like say I just couldn't because those bands that then they would nine snails in Marilyn Manson would look the same. So you can't, and then that they would hate you for it. So I think some people really appreciate that I come up with something new.

Joseph Cultice: 00:55:26 It's the best I can for each artist. And for me it's I don't really think about too much, but I think it is a little bit of a challenge. And you know, part of me too is I'm looking around at other people's photographs. Like, Oh, I love that. Or can I do this? Or I see some art thing like that desert X thing. I really wanted to do something along that lines and I'll go find, you know, somebody who wants to do it right now it's garbage. And Gary Newman. Who else? No. So you know, I put people, I don't want to be a cookie cutter. I guess that's, I've never heard that word. Cookie cutter for a photographer. But I do, I do make images for my pop stars rather than putting them in my photograph. How much more pressure does that put on you to have to deliver and create something new?

Joseph Cultice: 00:56:14 None. I don't even think about it really. That's the thing is I don't even really think about it. I just can't. I just can't do the same photo all the time. And it's like I surprise myself with when photo works. Like with Gary Newman's last album cover, a friend of mine had been out at this location that was a an old book Kinnick crater hole where they used to mind pumice stones. You know the things they put on your arms, you know, rub off your calluses. And also they used to have lava rocks. People used to put that in their front yards. It's our landscaping in my mom's house that that's where it came from. Or it's one of the places and it was way to, to do it legally. It was way too cost prohibited. And I went out there and shot plates of it to then Photoshop Gary into it.

Joseph Cultice: 00:57:04 But I was out there and I realized there's nobody here. I mean this is literally the middle of Barstow in the middle of nowhere. I literally could probably go and shoot a star Trek episode out there and they would have never known there could have been 80 trucks out there. So I said screw it. And I, Gary was nice enough to say the day before he's leaving on a trip. Okay, we'll move our shoot up a day. Then after you do the studio shoot, I'll drag Gary out to this thing. And it was just me and one assistant and I hadn't really shot a daylight thing like that forever. But the light looks so great. I had just one silver bounce board and that was it. And it looked amazing. But I was in the end, I look at the little, got so many pictures from and Gary was having so much fun run around in this new space outfit.

Joseph Cultice: 00:57:56 Gemma happened fun and it was just us. There was nobody there except for these there's caves for people go skunky and or something's, what they call it, co linking where they climb down in a cave. And that's horrible that they couldn't, they just saw Gary running up on the Ridge. They're coming up out of the cave and Harry's running around in his outfit and their age and I was down at the bottom shooting up. It looks like a something out of, you know, like Mars. But anyhow, they just saw this guy running around. It was so funny cause they over like, Oh, it's photos. Oh cool. Sorry, this guy keeps running up and down and back and forth. It was good fun. But that one surprised me that it turned out so good. And you know, I'm such a huge fan of Gary as a person and his music, he got me into rock and roll or punk rock and roll that I did to turn down great.

Joseph Cultice: 00:58:47 I'm so proud of it. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome to hear. It's always, it's always fun to know that like these things can, can still be fun, you know, even at your level that they can be fun and that they don't have to be purely sterile professional. You know what I mean? We'll get on the camera when I get to take pictures is the fun part. It's all the, yeah, it is. Instagram is kinda the way, surprisingly how I get a majority of my work now is through Instagram, which blows my mind. And if I did it and was more involved, I might get more work, but it's hard to do. It's like from when I was a photographer, we are never supposed to talk about photo shoots. Like it was, you know, silence, you know, it was just like, Oh, it was great.

Joseph Cultice: 00:59:34 They're wonderful artists. And now the artists talk about the photo shoots, they bring it, they now will Smith opens up his entire life completely to everybody. We're just five years ago that would have been completely, you know, you have to sign nondisclosure things when you take photographs of them. And now it's like you have to sign a, you were going to disclose everything about you shoot with me. I'm, well now we're going to we're going to make fun of you and take pictures of you and put you on the internet. You, you're part of our story now. It works great for will Smith, but I don't think it would work well for Tom cruise.

Raymond: 01:00:15 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It really depends on the on the type of person for sure. For sure. But it's always fun to, I think, get a, get a peek into somebody else's life. It's funny, I was watching a documentary about the, I guess the rise of factories I suppose. And they were talking about how, you know early 19 hundreds factories were closed doors. Essentially employees have the right sign, NDAs as well. Like, you can't tell anybody how we're making points or Bruins or Coca Cola or anything like that. And now it's changed so much because people love seeing what's behind the curtain, but they will pay to go on tours of a, of certain factories and stuff. And I think that that's, I think that that's what it is. And I can tell, even though you say that, you know, maybe you don't put enough time into it or whatever, but I get joy out of reading your Instagram and I to do it more.

Raymond: 01:01:08 Everyone loves that Joan jet story. Even Joan a pop back going, you know, she was like, Oh, well yeah. Hey, that's a good one, man. I can't do her voice. That's what of voices. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a very, it's a very distinct, it's a fun day man. And it was memorable and it was memorable. Oh, I will, I didn't really talk about the photos. Just talked about the, some people want P people like to look at the photos and decide from the selves, I suppose. But anyway, I'm going to put a link to that in the, in the show notes. So if anybody's listening. Good, good. I'm gonna put that there. I got one last question for you before I let you go. I know that I've, I've, I've kept you for far too long time. There's nothing that's right. That's right. Except my daughter trying to break into [inaudible] no, no, no. She, she's gone. She must've went back upstairs where a mom's folding laundry, I suppose. So my question is I oftentimes find it very difficult to create the type of images that I want at a wedding because I feel like there's a bit of a pressure to deliver still exactly what the client is expecting. So from, yeah. Yes. So from a personal standpoint, for you,

Joseph Cultice: 01:02:20 Without the feedback of an art director or even the artist, how do you know if you did a good job? Oh, Hm. I guess I just I don't have that many expectations about what I'm gonna do. I think at this I've been doing it so long, it's the 10th, the 10,000 hours that I think I even sleep before shoots now. I used to not be able to sleep cause I was so nervous about it. I was going to screw it up. I don't really, I don't get that much pressure from the images cause I know that I'm going to pull off something like with Jeff Lynn, you know, I'm so surprised what came out of that shoot. I'm just, I'm just dumbfounded the pictures and there's still a whole nother way the them that I can't release yet cause they're, they're waiting and they're going to be waiting now longer cause this whole tour is postponed.

Joseph Cultice: 01:03:24 It's the, what am I trying to say? Yeah. I don't have any expectations about any of this now. It just, it just, it's fun to do. So I would say with the kind of work you're doing how much you need to say this and I got to meet him once and literally I was shooting, no doubt for Vogue in one studio. And Helmut was in the studio next door and the same cities that are, that I work with all the time. I want to say Plath is in her name. It doesn't matter the settings that are for Vogue. She was doing helmet and kind of doing us as well, but not really. She was cause vote or no doubt to shut up on all their own clothes with their own stylist. Wasn't a Vogue stylist anyone trying to get out.

Joseph Cultice: 01:04:17 But Helmut said, you know, I always just, I do 50% of the shoot for the client and 50% for me. Like, and I don't care what they say. I'm gonna do 50, I'm going to do my photos in the middle of it at the end of it, at the beginning of it that I'm purely just doing them for me and the most of the time they don't know that I'm doing that, but I'm doing it for me. Unless they're paying me $1 million to do a boost campaign, I'm going to do exactly what I want. And I think that when you're doing photographs or clients, we get hung up on what they need too much. Maybe that's kind of a, if you just do what you wanna do, because the more and more you do it, the better. Better you get at it. They will like what you do. It's like you're not, you're not giving yourself enough credit just to like, just go and do what you want to do. You know, it's like with any of these, you know, pop star shoots. I do so rarely is there any

Joseph Cultice: 01:05:18 Direction. So it's really up to me is to do what I want to do. And I think the same with a wedding. If you go and do it something different. I know there's probably expectations of the perfect kiss. You gotta get the kiss when they, and I've shot friend's weddings and I missed the kiss. I totally miss the kiss. Oh, that's a great, I got a, I'll tell you some other time. My brother-in-law's wedding, it was pretty funny. It's the best kiss photo I've ever seen. They totally missed each other's faces when they, my gosh, eyes closed and everything, huh? Yeah, it was a mess. Yeah. He's funny. He's in Japan too. They just teach us can't, you just have to have fun doing it and not worry what their expectations are because then you'll second guess yourself a lot, you know? I know I have to like, I guess expectations are I should have band and there's four of them. I've got to put all four of them in the frame. Right. And then I got to make them all look good. I've got to remember their names is a good thing. Always important. It helps. It really does help. Sometimes. It's hard. I'm in sync. Told me they said that you have to remember all their names and are memorized all their names and then

Joseph Cultice: 01:06:38 It wasn't Joey, but it was two of them switched their names on me and I'm like, you sure? So they kept like, I'm okay. Okay Lance. And it wasn't Lance and they're all laughing at me. I'm like, Oh, what the [inaudible] just mess with me. Wow. It was the first time I shot him and then after that they were like, Whoa man, you busted out so many photos. Those are great. Then they had, they were nice to me the next time I saw my four or five times. Yeah. You just have to enjoy doing it. I know there's, I don't have any expectations but I haven't screwed a shoot up in a long time. Oh that's good. That's always important. Yeah. It's been a good 20 years since I completely screwed the pooch on shit. Do you remember what that was? Would you be willing to share that?

Joseph Cultice: 01:07:28 I would say that there was no doubt. Shoot I did for their return to Saturn. We had it started too late. I made the mistake of letting everyone drink. Oh, okay. Except for Gwen cause she doesn't drink and it just got to be a total mess. I drank to at a certain point it was still a four in the morning. We weren't done. And they look really tired. And I was, I thought I could push them through all these different sets we had bill. And that way they would do it and they did it. But at a certain point, they all looked completely like tired and every shot and they were worthless. And the art director even told me that day, we can't get through all these in one day. They're not gonna make it. And they've been on the road. And I'm like, but they wanted to do it and they wanted to it. But we wasted

Raymond: 01:08:16 Everyone's time. But in now in retrospect and retouch, you and I could make them all look a lot more away. That was just back with Prince, thinking about going back and and doing that. Oh, I have, yeah, I did the one, the one yellow set. I just switched out the heads where they all, all the boys were the ones that were the sleepiest. Glenn looked fine cause she always looks fine. Yeah, that's Quinn. That's Glenn. Yeah. well Joseph, I can't thank you enough for coming on and we didn't talk about corn. We, we didn't talk about corn. I'm going to save that. I'm going to, I'm going to wait until I cut this audio right here and we're going to talk about that because I might get a little too excited for all the listeners. Wonder what's going on over here. But yeah, again, I just want to thank you so much for [inaudible] you for sharing everything that you did before I let you go. Can you let everybody know where you would like them to check you out online?

Joseph Cultice: 01:09:11 It will go online to my website, Joseph coltyce.com and that's my I spend more time in there these days than updating and making gifts. Instagram is nice cause I do it every day. Joey Cultice at the whatever Instagram, Joey Cultice. If you want to see a bunch of archives, go to my tumbler site, pop. His personal pop is personal and that has a bunch of really old photographs, like all those early punk rock photos I talked about. But that's it. Just the website, you know?

Raymond: 01:09:44 Yeah. It's a, it's, it's where you gotta be. You gotta have that site. Yeah. Well, again I can't thank you enough for coming on and I look forward to keeping up with you and chatting with you again. This was a lot of fun. Okay. Thank you.