MilliOnAir Magazine December 2017 | Page 77

At the age of 21 you got to work with one of the best photographers in the world. The one and only Bruce Weber, tell us how that came about and how was that experience?

Oh man! That was crazy. I was waiting tables during my undergraduate, and this photographer came in with his crew, had a light meter around his neck, scarf around his head, I didn't really know essentially how famous Bruce was, and my manager was like "hey, you are studying photography, that's the best fashion photographer in the world, and I was like no shit!", so I went up to him and they were getting really to leave, I was right in the middle of lunch so it's a busy restaurant but I left my tables, I went up to him and I'm like " hey, my name is Zack, it's nice to meet you, I'd love to do anything , I'll shine your shoes whilst you take pictures", and he proceeded to ask me where I was from, we are both from Pennsylvania, so we hit it off, and I told him “hey, I'm going to be waiting for your phone call, so even if you call to tell me to go fuck myself, I still want you to call me because I'm waiting for your phone call”

And he called me back!, 2 weeks later and he said “hey, Abercrombie summer season, you ready? We got you a hotel suite, we'll pay you this much” And off I go, not knowing absolutely nothing about fashion photography and assisting Bruce Weber on his photo shoot for Abercrombie.

Fast forward through that relationship, I watched a master do photography, his sense of composition, he used to talk about him and Diane Arbus, who was a master in photography, their conversations and he said you know photographers only want to photograph certain things and he said when I was younger we all photographed everything! Weddings, the whole thing, and he asked why don't you do that?

I was like nahhh, I don't want to do that. But he said you have to say yes to everything, if somebody is going to pay you to take pictures, just say yes and see what happens.

So, I think that is really the seed he planted in addition to going back to school. He said, “this is my dream Zack, you need to go do your dream”... and I'll never forget it.

Bruce Weber