What’s It Like: Working with Alysha Grace Marko

When I first met Alysha Grace Marko, it was to hire talent off an ad placed on Model Mayhem. Model Mayhem is notoriously full of amateur models or models who are just starting. I was surprised to meet somebody as beautiful as Alysha is.

We got along really well.

The idea of Lazy Sunday, my first photo book, originally came from Alysha Grace Marko. We were shooting and she likes to tease when she’s posing and not get completely topless or naked. So we wrapped her in a sheet and did like a men’s formal dress shirt unbuttoned in the front to show off her middle cleavage and it looked amazing.

I remember turning to her at some point during the shoot, I said, maybe that’s the new idea Lazy Sunday . Almost like a question.

Alysha Grace Marko and I ended up shooting together eight or 10 times after that.

We had a very ambitious shoot on San Miguel Island that required a boat to get there.

We both got sick during the voyage, and after a short nap were able to bounce back  And still pulled off an amazing photo shoot.

I can definitively say that a lot of what we accomplished was because we were really nice to each other, had good, chemistry, and genuinely enjoyed hanging out. Alysha was the first “super beauty“ I worked with on a strictly professional basis.

She ended up being my personal trainer and tried to be a trainer for a friend of mine that worked at SpaceX at the time too.

 We also partied in New York once or twice, and I think, it’s possible, that my trip to Cuba inspired her later trip to Cuba.

Alysha famously made the tabloids and the Hollywood trade publications when Harvey Weinstein, who was out on bail, tried to pick her up in Manhattan.

In general, I think that my work with Alysha Grace Marko it was the true start to doing cool things with photographs, and working with much more interesting people.

To this day we remain friends and I’m impressed with her progress in the art world in New York.