I recently had the pleasure of photographing Ryan Scott from season 3 of Top Chef for Blue Star stoves and cooktops.
We photographed him in his San Francisco home where he had just remodeled his kitchen to accommodate his brand new Blue Star professional range. My alter ego 'executive chef' was just a tiny bit jealous. Great recipes, amazing smells wafting throughout. Funny, charming and boy does this guy have great on camera presence. Altogether a great fun day with equally fun people.
I recently received a request from a Helsinki based agency looking to photograph a local business woman and educator, Kellie McElhaney, at Berkeley's Haas School of Business, for a Finnish business publication called Mandatum Life. They specifically wanted stark black and white images, as per their creative director Hugo D'alte. Heres a few of the shots with the final spread used in the Magazine.
I just returned from a 4 day trip to Colorado for GII (Goodwill Industries International) to create more compelling images for their national stock image library. The trip combined images and stories from Goodwill Colorado Springs and Goodwill Denver. Aside from the super dry heat, missing England's traumatic loss against Uruguay and the long shoot days. It was, as always, a fun, educational and memorable trip. Along the way we made some new friends, heard some inspiring stories both happy and sad, proved that laughter IS contagious, met and photographed a complete stranger called 'Cinnamon' and found out why Coloradans always carry lip balm.
I'm always surprised how accommodating people are when asked "Hey would you mind if I photograph you doing that?" and "Can you also sign this model release so we can use it?". Thats right...... its another all real people, 'on-the-fly' production with my awesome compatriot and client from Goodwill, 'Rachel Morales' . She a combination of producer, client, driver, enabler and sidekick. Its always a pleasure to work with someone who knows what needs to be achieved, what the Big Picture 'really' looks like and is always one step ahead of my shot list, and making sure it all happens in the face of a slowly crumbling preproduction schedule.
Rachel Morales in my latest fine art piece "Client with Banjo"
So after 2 flights, 3 hotel buffets and $350 in excess luggage fee's heres a small sample of what we came up with. Heres some of the real people, programs and the good that Goodwill does to embrace, empower and champion the people who need the extra little push, leg up, boost or specialized services that they otherwise wouldn't get.
