Entertainment

Whipper snapper

On a recent sunny Saturday in Williamsburg, 17-year-old model Olivia Zimmerman struck a pose against a rusty chain-link fence while fashion photographer David Urbanke took her picture, sidestepping a discarded mattress sprayed with obscene graffiti.

“Williamsburg’s quiet, it’s empty, no one bothers you,” said Urbanke of the location, his favorite place to shoot photos. “If you want to catch an essence, it’s good.” He then displayed some of the results on his camera’s digital screen. They looked great.

“See? We’re just free-spirited teenagers!” he exclaimed to Zimmerman.

SEE HIS PHOTOS

Teenagers is right — Urbanke is a year younger than his high-fashion subject.

This fresh-faced 16-year-old leads a double life — separated by the Lincoln Tunnel. While most of his peers from New Jersey’s Governor Livingston HS in suburban Berkeley Heights are watching (and emulating) “Jersey Shore” or carousing around the Short Hills Mall after school, Urbanke treks to Manhattan and Brooklyn, where he shoots models contracted by some of the world’s most prestigious modeling agencies, including Ford, Elite, Next and RED.

His growing legion of subjects has included Krista White and Amanda Ware — winners of “America’s” and “Australia’s Next Top Models,” respectively — and buzzy newcomer Allaire Heisig, who closed the Marc by Marc Jacobs show at New York Fashion Week in the fall. Next month, Urbanke will launch an online fashion magazine, Youth & Freedom (yf-magazine.com), with fellow snapper Shirley Yu.

It’s no small feat for anyone — let alone a high school junior. “David’s super-talented, especially for his age,” says Aly Wilensky, an agent at Elite.

“When he first came in, we were completely blown away to see he was a 16-year-old. He has super potential in the industry, and the girls love working with him. He knows what we’re looking for and how to capture a girl.”

Damien Neva, who runs Ford’s blog and social-media operation, even regards Urbanke’s youthful age as an asset, since it affords a rare and authentic “relatability” in his sessions.

“A lot of the girls he [shoots] are around 16 or 17,” says Neva. “I’ve asked them, what’s it like with David versus a 60-year-old man, and with all due respect to 60-year-old men, they prefer David. He could be a brother or friend. There isn’t that wall between them. And a lot of what he shoots is outdoors, so it’s a clean, fresh perspective on the subject.”

The only child of an insurance agent and housewife, Urbanke was given his first camera, a Canon Rebel XTi, at age 13. He began snapping photos of wide-eyed Blythe dolls — “as opposed to practicing on people; if the shots don’t come out good, there’s no pressure,” Urbanke says — and uploaded them to photo-sharing Web site Flickr. Encouraged by viewers’ positive comments and an increasing number of followers, Urbanke shifted his lens to his school friends.

“Before I knew it, I was going from 100 views to 10 [thousand] or 11,000 on a shot,” he recalls.

“Some photos are, like, at 40,000 views now.”

Hungry for more experience, especially in studio settings, Urbanke reached out to NYC photographer Eric Hason through the Web site Model Mayhem. Hason, impressed by Urbanke’s age and promising work, invited him — with his parents’ permission — to intern on a shoot in the city. Via the Internet, Urbanke also contacted and submitted photos to Manhattan’s modeling agencies, landing his first professional “testing” gigs: shoots designed to develop new looks and techniques and fill out the portfolios of both the model and photographer.

Free time once spent with his school’s theater clique was soon replaced by regular pilgrimages to the city, camera in tow (he upgraded to a Mark II, an industry favorite, this past Christmas), to mix and shoot with models, agents and other industry folk.

Initially protective, Urbanke’s parents accompanied him to these first professional meets in Manhattan, but are now fully supportive of his career, life and social circles on the other side of the Hudson.

“We’re incredibly impressed,” says his mother, Wendy Hahn.

“It’s just fascinating day to day, the people he meets and things he’s doing. People complain about kids on the Internet, yet none of this would be possible without it.”

However, a recent two-week bout with the flu ate up his reserve of sick/absentee days at school, and the SATs, for which he hasn’t yet studied, loom large — meaning he’ll be spending more time hunkering down in New Jersey for a while.

As for his plans beyond that? Say, 10 years from now, when his two lives finally fuse into one?

“I’d really love to be shooting editorials for magazines,” he muses. “Hopefully shooting portraits of celebrities. I love capturing character, so that would be exciting. I’d like to experiment and do different things.”