Palm Springs Photo Festival Podcast JEFF DUNAS

In our 27th podcast, 48th conversation we chat with photographer Steve McCurry - world famous author of 27 books and recipient of countless prestigious awards. Steve and host Jeff Dunas talk about what it's like to work in the streets with very little gear and only one translator or driver to rock his immediately identifiable images. He talks about how he started, being smuggled into Afghanistan early in his career, Magnum, how to avoid smiles, his teen years fascinated by cars, drugs and girls and most surprising of all, his big, outsized McCurry-esque plans for his work after he takes his last walk down an exotic street somewhere with his camera. Come hang with us.

For a serious photographer, listening to Howard Schatz is like reading a good book you can’t put down. He’s truly a one-off, one-of-a-kind, unique and inspiring individual. Listening to him is like a textbook in how to channel your passion into excellence, be productive, find motivation to create important work and get it out into the world. Intensely curious, knowledgeable and gifted to be sure.  In this podcast he demystifies how he arrived at his decision to go from highly respected ophthalmologic surgeon in his early fifties to become one of the most widely published & admired fine art and commercial photographers working over the past 30 years. With close to 25 books of photography to his credit and still counting, sometimes as many as two per year, he is a force to be reckoned with.  “Photography is a life of Play.”

Greg Heisler, one of the top commercial portrait photographers in the United States for over 35 years, has made over 70 covers for Time Magazine. In a very entertaining conversation, Greg talks about working for the one & only Arnold Newman as his second assistant job and how naivety and persistence, plus his one suit and tie got him the job; photographing both Mayor Guiliani (standing on the edge of a sky-scraper) and Mayor Bloomberg, standing in a tree); his keen observations about looking forward (analog) and backward (digital); a famous deli in NYC, his advice for keeping it real and how a framework is essential for editorial portraiture. A must listen.

Listen to Legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz talk about his life and career, friends Gary Winogrand, Tony Ray Jones and Lee Friedlander, looking at the street, the importance of the Bronx, his Robert Frank epiphany, how baseball trained him for street photography, getting away with murder on the streets, the importance of scale, his promise to his audience, it's not too late for fashion, the mystery of his 8x10 Deardorf, the best part of his days in Tuscany and more. 

Photographer  & Canon Explorer of Light Lindsay Adler “started her business” at 15 years-old in upstate New York. She talks about how she conquered NYC, taught herself myriad lighting techniques, thought she was a fashion photographer but came to see the world of beauty photography was more her thing, muses on what it means to be an outlier, why being active on multiple social media platforms seems completely natural,  why photography is her business as well as her profession and her new focussing spot light.

Doug Menuez, photojournalist, gonzo documentary photographer, epic raconteur, bluesman and educator talks about his career choices and the ideas and events that led him to document the birth through maturity of Silicon Valley including his breakthrough introduction to Steve Jobs and all the other first-generation founders of the digital age plus the million images he made there that now reside in the Library of Stanford University.