Eyeworld

EW NEWS & OPINION 24 March 2015 next 8 months we ended up select- ing 1,083 images that fill a boxed 2-volume set with 830 total pages. Dr. Chang: What are you working on now? Dr. Schatz: I have almost 300 kids that I've been regularly photograph- ing since birth. Imagine—age 1 week, 1, 2, 3 years, and now they're all 20. When they were all in the second grade, I had them sit down and answer several biographical questions that we sealed in a time capsule, not to be reopened until they reached adulthood. It's going to be a daunting, major project to look at their life stories compared to what they said at age 7, along with their growth captured through these chronologic portraits. Of course there are some other projects that interest me, and we'll see if they come to fruition. Dr. Chang: Who have been your favorite portrait subjects? Dr. Schatz: I really bond with my subjects and I've always said that I fall in love with everybody. From the start, I tell my subjects that we're going to work together to make something special that the world hasn't ever seen and that will delight everyone. When we really care about the shoot this way and we both give it our all, it creates a very special bond. I've been blessed to have this connection with many famous and amazing people who have become very good friends in the process. Dr. Chang: Your photography books have celebrated athletes, models, actors, boxers, newborns, and even redheads. When will you produce a book featuring cataract surgeons? Dr. Schatz: A lot of my friends have asked, 'What about doing portraits of ophthalmologists?' To make a good portrait, there has to be something about the picture— the lighting, the atmosphere, the environment—that's so different and interesting that you can't take your eyes off of it. The person either has to be fascinating looking, phenomenally beautiful, famous, or incredibly idiosyncratic—a rare creature. And frankly David, as much as I'd like to, I just cannot fit a cataract surgeon into any of those criteria. EW Contact information Schatz: howardschatz@howardschatz.com Through the eyes continued from page 23 Zaire and Ariyan, born July 12, 1998. Little boys do not generally like standing next to girls. But in the case of twins, the boys are very comfortable near their twins. Amir Khan, junior welterweight, photographed in New York, Oct. 2011. Dr. Schatz threw clumps of sand and asked Khan to hit them so hard that some would hit the camera. He did. picture would often be great. I am constantly learning, and it makes what I do fascinating and exciting. I continually tear out images from magazines or take iPhone shots of photos that interest me and that I then try to duplicate in my studio and learn from. I can't get enough. Dr. Chang: Tell us about your new- est 2-volume book. Dr. Schatz: We've published 20 books in all, and one of our publish- ers, Glitterati Press, proposed doing a special retrospective collection. I was ambivalent about devoting my- self to past rather than new projects, but after several months I finally relented. My wife Beverly, who runs our studio, and I hired a world-re- nowned photo editor to help us go through 4 million images represent- ing 25 years of work. To be selected, every photo in the retrospective had to receive an A+ grade from each of the 3 of us. Over the course of the Chief medical editor's corner of the world

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