The Golden Hour

Puerto Rico, Dark and Light

Melissa Golden — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:42:32 +0000

There are rainbows around the moon in Puerto Rico. There are many fences and gates and dogs. There is much diffuse golden light and soft coral sand. It is a place between places and I went there for my birthday last month with my man and a camera. I stayed up all night with cans of Medalla and bottles of Don Q and wonderful friends. When the sun came up, I ran into the ocean and celebrated my life and my love. There were no pictures of that, though. I’ve learned to respect the futility in shooting while trying to feel everything.

DC Sports for ESPN

Melissa Golden — Mon, 06 May 2013 17:20:56 +0000

Here are some pictures I took last September from a story that got shelved by the NHL lockout. I spent a long weekend with a reporter from ESPN Magazine wandering the streets of the metro area, photographing hockey fans who had something to say about star Capitals player Alex Ovechkin. The story was supposed to culminate with an interview and portrait session with the man himself, but his people informed us he had seen fit to fly back to Russia to celebrate his birthday during our proposed time. I was also told to look out for all things DC sports as the issue was about DC as a sports-loving city. I’d never immersed myself in DC sports culture before and I found it fairly reflective of the city’s “personality.” That is to say, fairly wonky and button-down with a few unexpected quirks.

Bill Gates for Fast Company

Melissa Golden — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:01:54 +0000

The phone call- whoa. Could I possibly fly to Austin, TX last-minute to photograph Bill Gates? It’s the start of SXSW, so there are no affordable hotels and flights are insanely expensive, but is this do-able? Oh yeah. It’s doable. And I did it. I even re-arranged 3 conflicting shoots to make this one happen. How often does one get the opportunity to photograph someone like this? Tech politics aside, he revolutionized computing and then poured his vast wealth into global philanthropic efforts, the results of which are likely to have their own impact on human history. I mean, I guess I’m in a line of work where I meet and photograph world-changers all the time, but Gates is kinda next-level. The first part of the shoot involved getting awesome shots of him delivering a keynote address at the educational portion of SXSW. I like to shoot people at podiums in the moments between words, but I’ll be damned if this man does not pause AT ALL. Seriously. There is no downtime between words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs. He is a word-talkin’ machine. The only time I got him not talking was when he was interviewing guest speakers post-keynote. The second portion of the shoot was an interview with a Fast Company writer at the Driskill Hotel in downtown Austin. I showed up about two hours early to scope out our room. I was told that Gates does not like flash photography and I wouldn’t do that during an interview anyway. I figured I’d just have him sit by a window and, you know, problem solved. I had a freaking heart attack when I found the room. No windows to the outside. Dark. Yellow. OH GOD NO. (The above photo shows what this room is like without any light mods.)So with plenty of time to spare, I solved my problems by enlisting the help of AV department of the fancy hotel and getting a big-ass LED panel to shine on my esteemed subject. I placed him in a corner with some architectural interest (I was told bold, graphic lines, foreground elements, color!) and I got to work making it happen.We knew going in that there might not be time for portraits at all- that I was going to be lucky to get any one-on-one time at all. Thankfully, Mr. Gates obliged me after the interview. Thanks to Billy G. for taking some time, to my favorite folks at Fast Company for trusting me with this one, to my friends who let me sleep on their couches because the cheapest hotel was $500/night, to the Driskill Hotel for hooking it up, and to Austin for being an awesome and delicious city.

Kevin Rose for Fast Company

Melissa Golden — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:57:07 +0000

I did a day (and a half) in the life of Kevin Rose for dream-client Fast Company. This involved flying to San Francisco and hanging out with the Digg founder and current Google Ventures guru who leads a delightful life filled with meetings in coffee houses and tea lounges and a snuggly dog and beautiful fiancee. Toaster the labradoodle likes to curl up in Kevin’s lap while he’s working in his home office. He’s got a James Bond car (not an exaggeration) but he can and does walk to one of his favorite coffee shops for a great cuppa joe and meetings. Coffee at Blue Bottle. Very, very tasty. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but now I see that Kevin has the Triforce from Zelda on his laptop. I was a big pc gamer as a kid, so I missed out on the Zelda franchise. My boyfriend, however, considers it to be the greatest thing in the universe, so I have learned about things like the Triforce and that Zelda is the chick, not the little elf dude. I’ll play it someday. The next round of meetings took place at the Samovar Tea Lounge, which was totally, ahem, my cup of tea. I have at least 20 varieties of loose-leaf tea in my designated tea cabinet at home and I was really excited to try some new varieties at Samovar, including this neon Green Ecstasy. Kevin’s tea collection puts mine to shame. He has giant blocks of rare teas from China that smell like 100-year-old socks, which is just the coolest. I was painfully wired by the end of this shoot. Kevin’s tolerance to caffeine has got to be nearing toxic levels. Kevin’s fiancee, Darya Pino is a food and health writer. The following day, Kevin Rose interviewed Kevin Systrom (of Instagram) at a Google Ventures event. Thanks to Fast Company for the wonderful assignment and also to Kevin for letting me tag along.

Geico CMO Ted Ward Cover Shoot for Advertising Age

Melissa Golden — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:30:13 +0000

Geico is of one of the nation’s most recognizable brands and producers of so many simultaneous ad campaigns that it’s hard to keep track of them all. That a trade magazine about the advertising industry would ask me to photograph Geico’s CMO is actually pretty rad for me. That’s because I LOVE ADS. When I was a child, I used to keep a special journal in which I would write down ideas for commercials and campaigns. I always thought trailers were the best part of going to the movies. In high school, I secretly saved up money for a washing machine with “calypso action” because the commercial was so compelling. I don’t own a tv so I don’t watch very many ads these days, but who doesn’t know the Geico Gecko and the Cavemen and the googly-eyed money stack and the pig and so on and so forth? I mean, I guess Geico sells insurance (I’m quite happy with the exclusive and excellent USAA and never look at other insurance companies) but for years, they have been entertaining me with silly commercials. Of course, when you pull back the curtain, it’s all business and metrics and science. That’s why we photographed CMO Ted Ward in a server room. It’s about the data, people. This was a fun, albeit challenging shoot given the itty bitty space we had to work with. As always, I made sure to provide a variety of options because, y’know, it’s the cover! In the end, Ad Age went with a trio for the cover. I think the original plan was just a solo shot of Mr. Ward, but I’ve learned that original plans must be flexible on-set. Things change.

A Baltimore Trauma Center Shift for the Wall Street Journal

Melissa Golden — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:48:32 +0000

I shoot a pretty wide variety of subjects, mostly features or portraits. I love to shoot features, and portraits pay the bills- but it’s rare I get commissioned to shoot anything in the hard news category let alone investigative journalism. When one of my editors at the Wall Street Journal called me up to ask how I felt about documenting a shift at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, I said I felt like I was born to do this shoot. My mother has an unusual fascination with hospitals and medicine, so I grew up watching a lot of Rescue-911 and E.R. shows. No, not scripted medical dramas- actual E.R. documentary shows where they leave little to the imagination. Also, we would sometimes watch surgery programs during dinner. I was all about this shoot. When I learned about the story that prompted it, I was even more excited. You see, homicide rates have gone down in America, but if you think that’s fine and dandy and the country is becoming a better place, you’d be pretty damn wrong. Turns out stabbings and shootings are up. Dramatically. Reporter Gary Fields did what any good investigative journalist would do and he got to investigating. Signs point to improved emergency medical practices saving more lives and skewing the numbers. Gary and I made our way to this shock trauma center in inner city Baltimore on a Friday night in the fall to witness the role that these centers play in the violence game. Please read the article and watch the video. Understand what’s going on in America.The shift started off peacefully enough, but it was the calm before the storm. This is a view of the hospital complex from the helipad. Learn more about he TRU, or Trauma Resuscitation Unit here.This is the board and it is the nerve center of the TRU in many ways. When this phone rings, someone is hurt and likely dying. This isn’t a normal ER. They see the worst of the worst here- major traumas. The EMS teams on the ground from all over Maryland will call this phone if they think an injury is severe enough. The folks at the TRU make the decision whether or not to accept the patient (there are a limited number of bays and other resources like medical personnel) and when they do, they write down pertinent details on this board and then they wait… While the story was about violence, the non-violence-related injuries were also relevant to the story. Each case allows the doctors to improve how they practice emergency medicine. We observed many very sad and disturbing cases, such as this middle aged woman who jumped off a one story building. She came in as a Jane Doe and was one of the most critical patients from the entire shift. It is so easy to hurt yourself so badly. My heart ached when her family showed up later in the evening. I kept asking myself why she would do a thing like jump off a building with such a caring family. So many things you can’t tell about people just by looking at them…Her pelvis was severely damaged.This is Dr. Thomas M. Scalea, the Physician-in-Chief at the Shock Trauma Center. This is the central bay for support staff and it is where the medical team gathers when they are not responding to a patient. The individual patient bays are arrayed around this. I keep seeing the splayed arms of the severely hurt. It seems to be something the human body just does. I wonder if it’s related in any way to the fencing response. Members of the medical team wait for a helicopter to come in. Patients arrive by air from all over the state. They tend to arrive by ambulance if injured within city limits. Making the rounds. The board with a description for a GSW, or gunshot wound. This was our first gunshot wound patient of the night. One of the surprising things about the night is how much nudity I saw (and consequently had to work around) because when the medical team starts working on your traumatized body, they quickly cut off all your clothes. There were so many desexualized breasts and penises- just body parts on frail frames. I don’t see nude strangers very often, so it was jarring at first- more so than the blood. As the night wore on the feeling wore off and I became inured to it. This is Stephanie, cleaning up the bay after the night’s first gunshot victim. He did not survive. Gunshot victim number two was shot a few times, most notably in the face. This young man did survive. Bad car accident. These were the cases that gave me chills. These people were so broken and from doing something we all do so casually every day. This man was stabbed. He also survived. The police came to interview him and take pictures for evidence. You don’t get through at shift at the TRU without a little help. Dr. Scalea is indeed the boss. Thank you to Matt Craig at the Wall Street Journal as well as the University of Maryland Medical Center for allowing such broad access. While I had to be very, very careful to not shoot patients’ faces for privacy purposes, our handlers for the evening were good about letting me roam about freely. Also thank you to Gary Fields for keeping me company during this long night and for writing this important story.

Paul Ryan and Dick Durbin for the Wall Street Journal

Melissa Golden — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:58:27 +0000

I’ve been photographing these breakfasts lately for the Wall Street Journal. Two prominent editors (Jerry Seib & David Wessel) invite national politicians to discuss matters of import with selected members of the DC political press corps. The first of these breakfasts featured Congressman and former Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan. It’s part of my job to try to shoehorn in a portrait of the invited politician, and Ryan was a tough one. I approached the amiable congressman prior to the breakfast and explained that I was with the WSJ and we were hoping to get a portrait- would be be so kind as to give 30 seconds of his time? Unfortunately, after an hour in the lion’s den, he was not in such a good mood, was running out the door,. and I had to execute my most obnoxious move ever. I told him I was the best photographer in the world and he definitely wanted me to take his picture and it would cost a mere 15 seconds of his time. So this is my attempt at being the world’s best photographer in a nasty interior hotel conference room, with no setup, a hand-held speedlite and 15 seconds with an ornery congressman who can turn on a smile with the flip of a switch whenever he so desires. I thanked him profusely for his time.Senator Dick Durbin and I had the opposite issue. I approached him prior to the breakfast to explain the portrait situation and he grumbled something along the lines of “Do we really have to do this?” But at the end of the breakfast, he was warm and cooperative and gave me about 3 minutes. This is what the breakfast setup looks like. Some of the country’s best political journalists are sitting in these chairs. It’s a challenge to get a clean shot of the politicians- there are people and pitchers and papers and microphones all over the damn place. But it can be done.

Holy Land Experience in GEO Magazine, France

Melissa Golden — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 04:51:03 +0000

GEO Magazine France ran a great spread of my Holy Land Experience pictures. It’s a personal project of mine that is very near and dear to my heart, so it’s quite nice to see so much real estate devoted to the photos. I only wish I could read the story.

Secretary Clinton in D Magazine, Italy

Melissa Golden — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 02:00:25 +0000

Italian publication D Magazine ran a marvelous spread of my Secretary Clinton pictures recently. Thanks to Redux and Contrasto for making that happen. It’s not often my pictures get to run alongside sexy fashion ads.

Love Hacker Amy Webb for the Wall Street Journal

Melissa Golden — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:18:33 +0000

Author Amy Webb met her husband Brian through the internet. Lots of people are doing that these days, but she took it to the next level, leveraging her background as a journalist and data analyst to deconstruct the system and reconstruct her profile. She even wrote a book about the proccess, “Data, A Love Story“, along with this WSJ article for which I shot these pictures. This scene was not for the camera- it was so classically “marriage” and made me smile to watch it. It reminded me of my parents, gesticulating wildly and bickering with smiles on their faces. Their home had so many stunning architectural features. So many beautifully lit alcoves. There’s a lot to be said for old construction. Amy has a giant whiteboard in her office. I need to get me one of those. Mystery stairs in the back yard. I’d like to add that Amy’s love-hackery may have scored her the perfect husband. When my assistant and I showed up, he had freshly baked chocolate chip cookies with sea salt waiting for us. Amy and Brian were just wonderful. Not a lot of photo subjects “host” their photographers. There’s certainly no need to, but I got the feeling that they would simply plotz if they didn’t treat everyone who showed up to their home as a welcome guest. It was my last shoot of 2012, and a great way to round out a good year.