It’s not every day that you’re in the studio working with one of your long-time friends and favorite models when 360 West magazine art director, Meda Kessler, emails and writes, “Hey, shoot me a photo of Hendrick’s Gin for our upcoming issue. Shoot whatever you like.” Knowing that I keep a bottle of Hendrick’s in the studio at all times, she assumed, correctly, that I’d be eager to come up with something for the June issue.

If you haven’t tried Hendrick’s, you owe it to yourself to get thee to a spirits store post-haste. A long-time fan of Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire, I have now relegated them to mixer status. The art of the martini is a delicate one and for my money, Hendrick’s is the only gin worthy of my shaker.

Now one of the many great things about working with Meda is that she’s all about collaboration. She wants the photographer to bring his or her vision to everything she assigns. It’s why top photographers all over north Texas are clamoring to shoot for her and it’s why her magazine, now in its 14th issue, is so gorgeous to look at. Meda is one of those rare art directors who hires the best then leaves them alone to do what they do.

She does not feel the need to change or tweak or put her mark on a photographer’s work. Those art directors are the bane of any creative shooter’s existence. They are insufferable. There’s a special ring in hell reserved just for them.

So, with model Liz Ashley in the studio in a new Zac Posen tuxedo, we conspired to create the photo you see here. Liz and I had been talking about the tux shoot for more than a year and the Hendrick’s shoot just fell neatly into place.

Every once in a great while the planets align and stuff just seems to work.

This and other images from The Robert Hart Studio are available in my searchable online archive:

One of my students emailed me a link to a slideshow featuring Time magazine’s top 10 list of doctored photos. Conspicuous in its absence is Time‘s famous distortion of the OJ Simpson image on its June 27, 1994 cover.

Upon publication Time was criticized by minority groups for altering the photograph to make Simpson appear more “sinister.” Newsweek‘s cover photo ran unaltered, making Time‘s treatment all the more blatant. The uproar was so intense that Time immediately pulled the first cover and published a second, more accurate photo.

Time also neglected to include the infamous moving pyramid image in the slideshow, published by National Geographic magazine on its February 1982 cover.

Time, however, had no problem including the covers of TV Guide and Newsweek in the slideshow for similar, yet less egregious, transgressions. I think Time is selling itself short because the OJ cover is certainly in my, and most photojournalists’, top five.

In this video interview at Livebooks.com, photographer/author/lighting shaman, Joe McNally, talks about the role of his blog and the difference it makes in attracting new clients. Great information here for photographers from an outstanding photojournalist/teacher. Check out Joe’s blog.

Tim Oren, managing director and co-founder of the Pacifica Fund, shared his thoughts on the future of reporting via his blog, Tim Oren’s Due Diligence: Letters From an Inhabited Dataspace.

As Yahoo and AOL morph into media companies that employ both reporters and editors, Oren makes some interesting points on the opportunities and the pitfalls of picking up where MSM is leaving off.

50 years ago this week, Miles Davis’ landmark album Kind of Blue was released. Fred Kaplan at Slate has written an excellent piece on the significance of Davis’ seminal work.

In 1959 I was a mere four years old and it would be 15 more years before I’d hear the recording for the first time, while working nights as a photographer for the Arlington Citizen-Journal. Those were late nights that involved shooting countless handshake and check-presentation photos with the occasional Texas Rangers game thrown in. It was the Rangers games and the lure of a lifestyle assignment from one of the greats of local journalism, Margaret Galloway, that kept me coming to work. Those handshake photos that the publisher and his brother, the editor, craved were mind-numbing. Suffice to say that anyone who worked for a small daily still has recurring nightmares about the “grip-and-grin” assignment.

But once the evening’s shooting was done I could wrap myself in the cool black womb of the darkroom and make prints. It was there that I heard Kind of Blue for the first time. Local PBS station, KERA, had a late-night jazz program called “Flight Time” and it was all classic jazz and little talk. Jean Fugett, the dj and a Dallas Cowboys tight end, had an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and a velvet-smooth voice and delivery that oozed cool. Fugett, an Amherst grad, went on to become a hugely successful attorney and head of TLC Beatrice International Foods. I started my jazz education under his tutelage.

I still recall the moment I heard All Blues for the first time. I stopped printing and stood motionless for the entire 11:33-minute track. I haven’t had a religious experience, but if I ever do, it’s gonna be a close second to that first listen. I was at the local Peaches Records store the next morning to buy the album and the cassette tape.

In the ensuing 34 years, I’ve worn out countless versions: vinyl, cassette, CD and each day, seven days a week, here in the studio, I queue it up in the late afternoon as a segue to cocktail hour. But I enjoy it most when it’s late night and I’m here working on images in the wee hours. The ambulances and cop cars that race up and down Lancaster Avenue are mostly still and it’s just me and Miles.

Here in Texas it’s called, “Calling Bullshit,” and that’s what Malcolm Gladwell does so eloquently in his review in The New Yorker of Chris Anderson’s latest book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99).

Thank you, Malcolm, for stepping up. I’ll spare you my thoughts on Anderson’s premise, because Gladwell does such a brilliant job of shooting it full of holes.

However, I have emailed Chris Anderson and requested my free copy of “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” because I’m dying to see if this model works for Chris.

I’ll let everyone know when my copy arrives.

Or, I am for the time-being.

The high-sheriffs at his publisher may yet consign me to the composing room floor (do they still have composing rooms?). I received a release yesterday from David, which I signed, granting his publisher permission to use my words.

I think I’m one of a gazillion others included in the book but it’s compliment to have been invited.

I’m coming at this a month late, but it’s a little gem from the pages of Elle magazine written by my former Dallas Morning News colleague, Elizabeth Wurtzel, and it’s too good to pass up.

Wurtzel’s article, “Failure to Launch: When Beauty Fades,” is yet another homage to Wurtzel’s favorite celebrity: Elizabeth Wurtzel. A Harvard grad, and a graduate of Yale Law school, where, as of February 2009, she had yet to pass the bar, she’s made a career out of over-long introspection and exposing the ongoing train wreck that is her life. Her first book, Prozac Nation, a memoir published when she was 26, chronicles her struggle with depression.

In this article she mourns the loss of her looks at 41 and eulogizes the relationships that she either killed or let die through neglect. In typical Wurtzel-fashion, she’s brutally honest about her failings but her sincerity is always in question. It’s the curse of the self-absorbed to indulge in intense introspection and self-analysis only to conclude that, “Hey, I’m a mess, but I like me.”

As she rages against the ravages of time and gravity, she warns that ” . . . at some somber and sobering calendar date, most of us lose our looks and likewise one of our charms — and I will lose mine. At which time, for me at least, there won’t be much point to life anymore at all.” And I suppose that’s correct if you’ve lived your life chin-deep in self-obsession. By most standards, she’s still stunning, still brilliant and still remarkable but that’s not enough for Wurtzel.

Ultimately, Wurtzel’s tragedy isn’t her depression or her fading looks — it’s her absolute inability to get over herself.

David Simon was bought out at his newspaper, The Baltimore Sun, in 1995 when the newspaper was booking profits of 37 percent. His testimony this week before the Senate Commerce Committee during a hearing on the future of journalism is spot on.

Greed, pure and simple, fueled the industry’s demise. Newspaper publishers had a great ride and experienced phenomenal profits during their heyday, all the while, spending less on research-and-development than any other major industry.

Those wingbeats you hear are the sound of chickens coming home to roost. Read Simon’s full testimony.