Logan Franks for LAVA Magazine
Last January (2011) I had the great pleasure of photographing Logan Franks – a triathlete – for LAVA magazine.
Logan’s story is pretty awe inspiring: He’s a Marine – a turret gunner to be exact – and during his 2009 deployment in Iraq he found himself stationed at one of Saddam Hussein’s mansions. Logan never considered himself the strongest swimmer so he decided to spend some spare time training in Hussein’s pool. Apparently, he got very, very good at swimming, very fast.
Upon returning to the states, Logan became interested in triathlons, and entered to 2010 Lake Placid triathlon – it would be his first. Turns out, he finished 11th overall, immediately qualifying him for the World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. And when he got to Kona, he finished first among Americans.Good lord, this man is a machine.
But what I enjoyed most about my time with Logan was his attitude – he’s just one of the nicest, friendliest guys I’ve ever met. We met at a studio in Brooklyn on an incredibly wet, rainy day – I had asked him to bring everything with him – his $6000 bike, the training stand, his clothing, swim gear, everything. Considering how much gear he had, the terrible weather and the fact that he didn’t know Brooklyn very well, it could have been a very long day of shooting. Instead, he showed up with a huge smile, and by the end of the day we were getting burritos together.
The icing on the cake is that I got my first magazine cover from the shoot – all in all, an incredible assignment. A huge thanks to Logan for being such a great subject, lighting expert Drew Jordan, who was an assistant on the shoot, and of course, Brad Culp and Jenn Ward Barber at LAVA, who gave me the assignment.
