<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"    Photo: Selma Blair by Brian Bowen Smith for Marc Jacobs   Here&amp;#039;s another reason to hit the treadmill: You might get a job at Marc Jacobs. That&amp;#039;s what happened to photographer Brian Bowen Smith, according to Marc Jacobs&amp;#039;s president Robert Duffy. &amp;quot;When Brian was 18, he was a trainer at my gym. He was still in school, and it was when Marc and I were really poor, and I would have to recruit people to work at our fashion shows. So I would ask Brian to do anything\u2014seat people, build the runway, whatever. So that was his introduction to fashion.&amp;quot;   Years later, Smith still works with Duffy and Jacobs, albeit without the power tools and seating charts. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s really helped me a lot,&amp;quot; says Duffy. &amp;quot;He shoots a lot of our billboard and catalog ads, he shoots photos for our social media, and he works with me on my skin cancer charity. Brian&amp;#039;s photos are beautiful, and they&amp;#039;ve helped us raise millions of dollars.&amp;quot; Yesterday, Smith joined the Marc Jacobs team, along with models Carolyn Murphy and Jessica Stam to launch his new book, &amp;quot;Projects,&amp;quot; and a limited-edition T-shirt featuring Smith&amp;#039;s portrait of the actress Selma Blair. (Proceeds go to The Art of Elysium, which brings the arts to critically ill children.) ELLE.com spoke with Smith at New York&amp;#039;s Bookmarc store. Why did you choose Selma Blair to go on your Marc Jacobs shirt? She&amp;#039;s the first celebrity I ever shot. It was ten years ago, and I was very nervous. I&amp;#039;d met her on tour with her boyfriend&amp;#039;s band, Phantom Planet. They were on tour with Incubus, and I was doing a documentary on Incubus, so we were backstage together a lot. I said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m getting into photography and I really think we should do a shoot together.&amp;quot; She was like, &amp;quot;Okay!&amp;quot; and I was like, &amp;quot;Oh shit!&amp;quot; Did she come over to your house? No, she came into Herb Ritts&amp;#039;s studio. He let me use it because I was assisting him. I said, &amp;quot;I have a celebrity, please let me have your space!&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;d worked with him for three and a half years, but I still felt lucky he said &amp;quot;yes.&amp;quot; Did Ritts give you lots of feedback about your own photography? Unfortunately, he hasn&amp;#039;t seen a lot of my work because he passed away before a lot of it was shot. But in the beginning, when I showed him the picture of Selma and some other early pieces, he said, &amp;quot;You need to keep doing this. This is really exciting to me.&amp;quot; And that was huge. Besides fashion images, you also shoot lots of movie posters. What was it like being with Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston on the &amp;#039;Wanderlust&amp;#039; set? It was so much fun. We went to that little hippie compound where they did the movie; it&amp;#039;s a real place. We all went bowling. It was so cool, but I was the one who had to keep them focused. They were cracking up; they were talking to each other. I was like, &amp;quot;Guys, you&amp;#039;re all super cool people but we need to get this shot.&amp;quot; When did you take the cover image of your book with Cindy Crawford? This shot of Cindy is from 2 years ago. She walked out in that bathing suit, and it was like, &amp;quot;Are you kidding me?&amp;quot; She&amp;#039;s magic. She gets older and younger at the same time. Get Projects by Brian Bowen Smith for $60 at MarcJacobs.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a23255/brian-bowen-smith-marc-jacobs/>