Los Angeles-based photographer Dana Gluckstein has made a living off commercial photography for clients like Apple Inc. and Toyota Motor Corp. In fact, her portraiture work has appeared in print advertising campaigns for many companies.

But the other half of Gluckstein’s work includes documenting the indigenous peoples of Africa and other far-off places. Those works have been displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.

It might seem that shooting big business ad campaigns would be a hollow pursuit when compared to Gluckstein’s photographic studies of African tribal cultures, but the photographer says that the ad campaigns are rewarding, too.

“At the end of the day it is about sourcing the soul, really reinventing portraiture of the soul and being able to extract that whether it is a corporate CEO or a tribal chief,” said Gluckstein, who added that an Apple ad campaign she shot, which features disabled people who were helped by computers, was particularly gratifying.

A collection of Gluckstein’s photographs documenting tribes from Namibia and Zambia will be on display this spring at the VIRTU gallery in West Hollywood.

Beverly Hills Cowpoke

Steve Freed, an industrial real estate developer and investor from Beverly Hills, has an atypical hobby for his neighborhood: He’s a competitive cattle roper.

Freed got turned on to the rodeo lifestyle when he was a teen and worked at a summer camp where campers tended to horses. As a younger man, Freed, 50, was a competitive bronc and bull rider.

Six years ago, when enough aches and pains kept him from continuing to ride bucking bulls, Freed got into competitive roping. Freed routinely wins professional roping events. In the events, he works with a teammate to rope mature steers while riding a horse.

The hobby always seems to catch his Beverly Hills associates off guard. Once, Freed and his wife took their young son for a routine physical examination, and afterwards the doctor grimly told them that their son needed to see a psychiatrist because he was delusional. The Freeds asked him to explain.

“And the doctor said, ‘Your son is confused he thinks that you, Steve, are a rodeo cowboy. Knowing you are middle-aged and from Beverly Hills, I know that can’t be true.’ ”

This year, Freed has won about $4,000 at roping events and is donating the winnings to the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles for cancer research.

Treasures Honor

The Central City Association, a downtown Los Angeles booster group, has honored longtime public relations guru and political strategist Joe Cerrell of Cerrell Associates Inc. as one of its “Treasures of L.A.”

For the past 14 years, the group has annually honored a group of Angelenos who make a difference. Cerrell and other honorees will be recognized at a luncheon next month.

“I am so surprised and yet so deeply touched by this great honor,” Cerrell said.

Daniel Miller can be reached at

[email protected]

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