I don't believe this has been posted but thought it was very interesting!
ETA: Below the link is the article....for some reason the italics won't work on it....
http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/pdn-online/e3idff59d66183db868d84704303244877f
Darren Modricker graduated from SVA in 1990 and spent several years as a successful location shooter in New York. Because of family demands and an illness that shifted his priorities, Modricker left New York to open a portrait studio in Reading, Pennsylvania in 2002, not far from where he grew up. In 2004, he got to photograph some newborn sextuplets in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and ended up following the family all the way to "Jon & Kate Plus 8" reality television fame and tabloid notoriety.
PDN: How did you get the Jon & Kate gig?
Darren Modricker: It came in 2004 through NBC. They had a show called Home Delivery. A client I had worked with commercially was part of that [show], and they recommended me. I started photographing [the Gosselin family] 48 hours after the last child left the intensive care unit. The location of the shoot was a long-stay hotel. Kate had gone through a very tough week, and I showed up at the door with a camera. We waited 6 or 8 hours for her to get ready. While I was waiting I spent time with Jon and the twins, and we developed a relationship. Then during the shoot Kate was giving ideas: "Try this, try that." From the beginning it was a really wonderful experience. My artwork was up on her walls by the time the family transitioned back to their house. The producers for Home Delivery had re-done her entire house—new appliances, new everything. But what captured Kate's attention were the portraits we created, and they [Home Delivery producers] had to keep pulling her away from the portraits on her wall.
PDN: Where did it go from there?
D.M.: We hit it off with the family. I was going to try to do family portraits every year or year and a half. After NBC hired me I photographed them once on my own. Then Discovery Health called and said they wanted to film me doing a family shoot. That happened at my studio. There were the parents, eight kids, a film crew and a lot of lights. We had beautiful images—and the steady cam guy right in the middle of them. A session like that isn't easy, and really tests you as an artist. You know you're getting filmed, and it's going to be on national TV. You don't know how they're going to show you. If I'd totally lost it and it didn't come together, I'm sure they would have shown some of that. It was like jumping off a ledge.
PDN: So this must be good for your business.
D.M.: It really has been. One of the images [from the Discovery Channel shoot] became part of the season opener for Jon & Kate Plus 8, and it's also going to be used on the cover of Kate's book. Then the show went over to TLC (The Learning Channel) and that's where they did a 30-minute episode of the photo shoot we had with them. Having left the city behind, it was an unplanned, welcome surprise that a project like this would come about. I gained a lot of respect, and it broadened [my] reputation.
PDN: Did that translate into more work?
D.M.: Yeah. We started getting calls [to photograph] triplets, quads…I never knew so many were around. And they travel. They come from all over the Northeast, which caught me by surprise.
PDN: So does this mean you can be more selective and expensive?
D.M.: Yeah, I would say I have a limited number of photo shoots for a select client base.
PDN: What are you charging for a session?
D.M.: We don't discuss specifics on our contracts, fees, or personal issues of our clients. What I can say is it's been an amazing project to be a part of and we are looking forward to continuing our relationship with the networks and the Gosselin family.
PDN: Did you foresee at the beginning that this would turn into such an opportunity for you?
D.M.: You could see the potential. There are a lot of reality shows. But I never saw that it would go as far as it did. The whole media frenzy, in the beginning I never saw that coming.
PDN: There are so many of your Jon & Kate pictures circulating. Do you have an issue with that?
D.M.: I would say that yeah, you can take issue with it, but it's a lot to take issue with. The images were provided to the family, and they had them on their Web site. They were self-managing their Web site, and then they handed that off to other parties, and things got a little bit out of control. Having reciprocal links, and having some good words said about you next to the photos is a positive thing. There was an upside to it from a business standpoint, but it's the Internet, you know?
PDN: So you didn't expect that images to be so widely published?
D.M.: I probably should have kept better tabs on how they presented it on the Internet, in hindsight. But I haven't lost sleep over it. It's a process that's good to go through, and learn from. You can't chase down every fan of Jon and Kate.
PDN: Are you licensing your Jon & Kate images to third parties?
D.M.: I decided not to get involved in that.
PDN: Why not?
D.M.: The folks who have reached out to us for licensing have been a lot of tabloids. It's mostly surrounding the recent issues the family is having, and it's not something I'm willing to involve myself or involve my artwork in. [editor's note: Modricker is referring to strain on the Gosselin's marriage caused by allegations of Jon Gosselin's infidelity that have appeared in several celebrity magazines]. At the worst economic times that [the photo industry has ever seen], you're sitting on this thing you could potentially make a lot of money from, and it comes down to an ethics thing. It's not why I created the images and it's not why I got into photography. It's a judgment call. Another photographer could see it completely differently and make a different call and I'm fine with that.
PDN: What are the tabloids offering?
D.M.: I would just say that we're not entertaining anything.
PDN: Do they dangle specific figures?
D.M.: I would say we're not entertaining anything. They must be doing something with the networks because footage from our episode is appearing on other networks relating to the issues that are happening. You may have gotten rewarded for certain aspects, but the down side is you're also aligned with a project that went in directions that don't shed the best light on things.
PDN: You're being so circumspect with your language. Which brings me to the question about what your relationship with the Gosselin's is now, and what your obligations are to them?
D.M.: No contract, no obligation. I think [my discretion] is out of respect for the clients I work with. It's their own personal life. That's the kind of relationship I create with my clients. They enter it because they want works of art.
PDN: So is the Jon & Kate gig over?
D.M.: The great comeback would be doing another family portrait down the road, or doing another couples portrait of [Jon & Kate] being happy together. I don't think the media will ever lose interest in this family. My hope is that the family pulls it together. They have a lot of children, and this is a family for them. It would be great to meet them again under different circumstances and create something that again she [Kate] cherishes.
PDN: Are you still riding the publicity wave, or has that diminished, too?
D.M.: If you're a rock star with a hit song—say, Elton John—maybe he didn't realize he'd have to sing "Philadelphia Freedom" for the rest of his life. This [work for Jon and Kate] is something that is a part of my business, and something that will forever be known for. It was created at a time that's sort of the wonder years, when everyone [in the Gosselin family] was happy. We have amazing portraits of these children. Nobody else has this type of work or had this type of access. We still exhibit the images, and now people say different things about them, so you have to dodge some bullets. I get flaming e-mails from people for exploiting [Jon and Kate's] kids. People tear into me. And all I've done is create family portraits.
ETA: Below the link is the article....for some reason the italics won't work on it....
http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/pdn-online/e3idff59d66183db868d84704303244877f
Darren Modricker graduated from SVA in 1990 and spent several years as a successful location shooter in New York. Because of family demands and an illness that shifted his priorities, Modricker left New York to open a portrait studio in Reading, Pennsylvania in 2002, not far from where he grew up. In 2004, he got to photograph some newborn sextuplets in Hershey, Pennsylvania, and ended up following the family all the way to "Jon & Kate Plus 8" reality television fame and tabloid notoriety.
PDN: How did you get the Jon & Kate gig?
Darren Modricker: It came in 2004 through NBC. They had a show called Home Delivery. A client I had worked with commercially was part of that [show], and they recommended me. I started photographing [the Gosselin family] 48 hours after the last child left the intensive care unit. The location of the shoot was a long-stay hotel. Kate had gone through a very tough week, and I showed up at the door with a camera. We waited 6 or 8 hours for her to get ready. While I was waiting I spent time with Jon and the twins, and we developed a relationship. Then during the shoot Kate was giving ideas: "Try this, try that." From the beginning it was a really wonderful experience. My artwork was up on her walls by the time the family transitioned back to their house. The producers for Home Delivery had re-done her entire house—new appliances, new everything. But what captured Kate's attention were the portraits we created, and they [Home Delivery producers] had to keep pulling her away from the portraits on her wall.
PDN: Where did it go from there?
D.M.: We hit it off with the family. I was going to try to do family portraits every year or year and a half. After NBC hired me I photographed them once on my own. Then Discovery Health called and said they wanted to film me doing a family shoot. That happened at my studio. There were the parents, eight kids, a film crew and a lot of lights. We had beautiful images—and the steady cam guy right in the middle of them. A session like that isn't easy, and really tests you as an artist. You know you're getting filmed, and it's going to be on national TV. You don't know how they're going to show you. If I'd totally lost it and it didn't come together, I'm sure they would have shown some of that. It was like jumping off a ledge.
PDN: So this must be good for your business.
D.M.: It really has been. One of the images [from the Discovery Channel shoot] became part of the season opener for Jon & Kate Plus 8, and it's also going to be used on the cover of Kate's book. Then the show went over to TLC (The Learning Channel) and that's where they did a 30-minute episode of the photo shoot we had with them. Having left the city behind, it was an unplanned, welcome surprise that a project like this would come about. I gained a lot of respect, and it broadened [my] reputation.
PDN: Did that translate into more work?
D.M.: Yeah. We started getting calls [to photograph] triplets, quads…I never knew so many were around. And they travel. They come from all over the Northeast, which caught me by surprise.
PDN: So does this mean you can be more selective and expensive?
D.M.: Yeah, I would say I have a limited number of photo shoots for a select client base.
PDN: What are you charging for a session?
D.M.: We don't discuss specifics on our contracts, fees, or personal issues of our clients. What I can say is it's been an amazing project to be a part of and we are looking forward to continuing our relationship with the networks and the Gosselin family.
PDN: Did you foresee at the beginning that this would turn into such an opportunity for you?
D.M.: You could see the potential. There are a lot of reality shows. But I never saw that it would go as far as it did. The whole media frenzy, in the beginning I never saw that coming.
PDN: There are so many of your Jon & Kate pictures circulating. Do you have an issue with that?
D.M.: I would say that yeah, you can take issue with it, but it's a lot to take issue with. The images were provided to the family, and they had them on their Web site. They were self-managing their Web site, and then they handed that off to other parties, and things got a little bit out of control. Having reciprocal links, and having some good words said about you next to the photos is a positive thing. There was an upside to it from a business standpoint, but it's the Internet, you know?
PDN: So you didn't expect that images to be so widely published?
D.M.: I probably should have kept better tabs on how they presented it on the Internet, in hindsight. But I haven't lost sleep over it. It's a process that's good to go through, and learn from. You can't chase down every fan of Jon and Kate.
PDN: Are you licensing your Jon & Kate images to third parties?
D.M.: I decided not to get involved in that.
PDN: Why not?
D.M.: The folks who have reached out to us for licensing have been a lot of tabloids. It's mostly surrounding the recent issues the family is having, and it's not something I'm willing to involve myself or involve my artwork in. [editor's note: Modricker is referring to strain on the Gosselin's marriage caused by allegations of Jon Gosselin's infidelity that have appeared in several celebrity magazines]. At the worst economic times that [the photo industry has ever seen], you're sitting on this thing you could potentially make a lot of money from, and it comes down to an ethics thing. It's not why I created the images and it's not why I got into photography. It's a judgment call. Another photographer could see it completely differently and make a different call and I'm fine with that.
PDN: What are the tabloids offering?
D.M.: I would just say that we're not entertaining anything.
PDN: Do they dangle specific figures?
D.M.: I would say we're not entertaining anything. They must be doing something with the networks because footage from our episode is appearing on other networks relating to the issues that are happening. You may have gotten rewarded for certain aspects, but the down side is you're also aligned with a project that went in directions that don't shed the best light on things.
PDN: You're being so circumspect with your language. Which brings me to the question about what your relationship with the Gosselin's is now, and what your obligations are to them?
D.M.: No contract, no obligation. I think [my discretion] is out of respect for the clients I work with. It's their own personal life. That's the kind of relationship I create with my clients. They enter it because they want works of art.
PDN: So is the Jon & Kate gig over?
D.M.: The great comeback would be doing another family portrait down the road, or doing another couples portrait of [Jon & Kate] being happy together. I don't think the media will ever lose interest in this family. My hope is that the family pulls it together. They have a lot of children, and this is a family for them. It would be great to meet them again under different circumstances and create something that again she [Kate] cherishes.
PDN: Are you still riding the publicity wave, or has that diminished, too?
D.M.: If you're a rock star with a hit song—say, Elton John—maybe he didn't realize he'd have to sing "Philadelphia Freedom" for the rest of his life. This [work for Jon and Kate] is something that is a part of my business, and something that will forever be known for. It was created at a time that's sort of the wonder years, when everyone [in the Gosselin family] was happy. We have amazing portraits of these children. Nobody else has this type of work or had this type of access. We still exhibit the images, and now people say different things about them, so you have to dodge some bullets. I get flaming e-mails from people for exploiting [Jon and Kate's] kids. People tear into me. And all I've done is create family portraits.
) 
) and it was kind of frustrating.
