Stealing from an artist is nasty. But when an artist steals from another artist, that’s reprehensible. It seems that Rihanna is being accused of stealing from a 19-year-old Parisian fashion photographer, Philipp Paulus.

Check out the story on the Photo District News website.

My favorite quote from Paulus: “Why a worldwide celebrity is not able to afford a creative director…is incomprehensible to me.”

Here’s an excellent story from Rob Haggart’s APhotoEditor.com blog by photographer Bill Cramer on how he and Fast Company photo editor Lisa Parisi negotiated changes in the magazine’s contract that worked for both parties.

There’s also a brief interview with the magazine’s photo director, Leslie Dela Vega.

Location light wizards and photographers extraordinaire, Joe McNally and David Hobby, will roll into town aboard the Flash Bus for a one-day workshop at Dallas’ Hilton Anatole. Make plans to hop aboard the Flash Bus during the Dallas stop on March 24th.

I was a McNally student at the Santa Fe Photography Workshop in the summer of ’09 and I gotta tell you, Joe’s one of the finest instructors I’ve ever worked with. He does a total brain dump and literally makes everything he knows available to his students. He is a joy to learn from. I’ve been to some horrible workshops and seminars where “instructors” talk incessantly about themselves and do no teaching.

Joe and David are the real deal, real teachers dispensing useful, relevant instruction.

I photographed Texas Ballet Theater‘s dress rehearsal for Mixed Variations Thursday evening and during the rehearsal for Ben Stevenson’s Four Last Songs this dancer caught my eye.

Even standing still, dancers make beautiful photos.

Dance critic Margaret Putnam reviewed the performance for TheaterJones.com and the website published an 18-image slideshow of my work.

The Sunday, Feb. 20, performance is at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth and on March 4-6 at the AT&T Performance Hall in Dallas. Mixed Variations also features the world premiere of Peter Zweifel’s Love Always Remains and George Balanchine’s Themes and Variations.

This Thursday, Feb. 24, I’ll photograph Dallas Black Dance Theatre in performance at the Wyly Theatre in Dallas. I’ll post those images as soon as the slideshow is completed.

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

My client, The Dallas Morning News hired me to shoot a portrait of Texan of the Year nominee, Fort Worth city councilman, Joel Burns. Initially, I was to shoot the assignment at the Dallas Women’s Museum in Fair Park, but after arriving and talking with Burns we decided that shooting the photo in Fort Worth made more sense. It enabled us to select a location that was definitively Fort Worth.

Burns and I decided on the Fort Worth Water Gardens and met there in the early afternoon the following day to make the portrait. Burns, who is gay, was most recently in the news for speaking at an October 2010 council meeting about suicide among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender kids. As part of Dan Savage‘s It Gets Better campaign, Burns talked about his experiences as a gay youth in Crowley, Texas.

I sent the client three images, which did not include the horizontal photo posted here. I stepped away to retrieve a short telephoto lens and when I turned back toward Burns, he was busily texting–and had been most of the time we were together. Burns is a very busy man and I was grateful he took the hour out of his day to help with the portrait.

My favorite is the vertical.

Often, a subject is eager to get the photo over–largely because they, like many of us, hate being photographed and want to be done with it. This typically forces the photographer to make the best photo possible in three to five minutes. My all-time favorite news editor, Tom Gregory, of The Times-Picayune/States-Item, was fond of screaming at me on deadline saying “God dammit, Hart, where’s my photo? It only takes a 60th of a second to make a photograph.” I’d reply, “Yes Tom, but it takes at least twice that long to make a GOOD photograph.”

So when a subject actually engages and wants to help make a good photograph, it makes a huge difference. Burns was definitely the latter.

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

My cover assignment for Fort Worth Weekly‘s coverage of the independent film Ticked Off Trannies With Knives involved shooting two performers, one director and one protester. I was able to shoot the film’s antagonist, Tom Zembrod, and protester and transgender person, Kelli Busey, in my studio. But Krystal, star of the film, and my cover subject, and Israel Luna, the film’s writer/director, had to be shot on location in Dallas.

My assistant, Amber Roark, and I met Summers at S4 in Oak Lawn at 8 p.m. We had an hour to unload, schlep the lights up a flight of stairs, set up, shoot and tear down.

Summers met us at the back entrance of the club and ushered us to the stage where we set up lights while she vanished into her dressing room to get into costume and makeup.

Fort Worth Weekly art director, Andrea Brentz, and I had discussed a cover that would be evocative of the pulp fiction novel covers of the 50s. Beyond that, Brentz gave me free rein to do whatever I wanted with the subjects. The goal with Krystal, as heroine, Bubbles Clicquot, was to depict a powerful and angry woman.

We lit Krystal with one of the Profoto 600 monolights in a 36-inch softbox as our main light. We used two blue-gelled Nikon speedlights for a rim light on her hair and left side to separate her from the dark background.

Brentz photoshopped in the blood-stained knife clutched in Summers’ right hand.

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

I had a few minutes at the Meyerson this afternoon with Hamlisch who’s in town to promote the DSO’s pops series. Hamlisch will be conducting the series and intends to feature American composers. For Mark Lowry’s story on Hamlisch, go to TheaterJones.com.

Hamlisch, a child prodigy who attended Juilliard as a seven-year-old, is one of two humans to win The Oscar, The Emmy, The Grammy, The Tony and the Pulitzer Prize. The other is Oscar Hammerstein.

We shot in the Meyerson’s green room, which is your basic DARK space with rich mahogany-colored walls. This was going to be an interview session, which meant I’d shoot while my colleague, Mark Lowry of TheaterJones.com, asked questions. While 11 minutes might sound like a short time, anyone who works with celebrities knows it’s more than enough time to make a nice portrait.

I make it a point to arrive at least an hour early to every shoot. I like to see the space well ahead of time and set up lights, test, and correct early. Typically, I have an assistant with me to help but none of my favorites were available today, so I schlepped the gear myself–with Mark’s help.

I used a 48-inch softbox with a Profoto 600 monolight camera-right and a white tri-fold reflector camera-left, just an inch or two outside the frame. Hamlisch, 65, had been up and running since 5 a.m. and was grateful for a few minutes to sit before walking into the Mort’s foyer for a evening-long reception.

Hamlisch is ever the gentleman and a delight to work with. His face lit up when he talked about the master class he’ll teach later this month for students at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. Hamlisch, the teacher, can’t wait to get in front of those kids.

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

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:

Brooks and Dunn gave their final Dallas performance Saturday to a sold-out crowd at Superpages.com Center. While Ronnie Dunn and Kix Brooks put on one hell of a show, they don’t get that close together onstage–at least not during the first three songs, which is all the promoter will allow photographers to shoot.

My assignment was to photograph both performers in one vertical frame. That image didn’t blow my skirt up but this shot of Ronnie downstage was a nice moment.

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

NYC playwright, Zayd Dohrn’s, Long Way Go Down will premier tomorrow evening, May 28, 2010, at Kitchen Dog Theater in Dallas.

I photographed Dohrn for TheaterJones.com at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary gallery this morning. We made the photo in the gallery space because I wanted a photo of the playwright that had a bit of mood and mystery to it. The shadow behind him is cast by the sculpture “The Way Home” a foam sheet/mixed media piece by artist Kana Harada, whose work is currently on display in the gallery. Harada’s intricate piece dominates the space and it provided a perfect gobo for this shot.

To create the shadow, I lit the sculpture with an SB 600 and green gel off camera right. I wanted the shadow to spill across the white gallery wall behind the subject. Dohrn was lit with an SB 900 in a 15 x 15 softbox, camera left.

Dohrn, 33, is the son of William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, members of the ’70s radical movement Weather Underground.

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