The Heart Gallery: Forever Families for Foster Children
About six months ago I volunteered for The Heart Gallery of America. It’s a “traveling photographic and audio exhibit created to find forever families for children in foster care.” I’d first heard of it a couple of years ago, and I knew I’d eventually sign up as a volunteer photographer. They don’t have a chapter in Ventura county, so it was suggested I sign up with the LA chapter. Only recently was I notified of an opportunity in my area, and it turned out to be within a mile of my house! So for the first time today I did a Heart Gallery portrait session.
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Client Session: Portraits in a Lush Back Yard
Recently I was hired by a client to take portraits of three generations: the client, her daughter and son-in-law, and her grandson. She wanted the images made in her backyard, and I love when people have me do that! I think it can be particularly meaningful to have family portraits made in a location that is important to the client. I always like to ‘scout’ the location first, if possible, so that I can get a sense of the lighting, backgrounds, best time of day etc. This backyard had a lot of shade in the afternoon, and shade is the photographer’s friend when shooting that time of day.
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Cover: LA Parent Magazine
My second cover shoot for LA Parent Magazine. Out now!
Client Session: Birthday Celebration
A few weeks ago I shot a birthday celebration at the Biltmore Hotel in Santa Barbara, California. This was a ‘milestone’ birthday for my client (I assume she just turned 30?), and she and a group of close friends were staying overnight to celebrate the event. I haven’t laughed so hard on a shoot in ages! Holy cow these people were funny, and FUN.
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High School Senior Session – Wildflowers!
A few weeks ago I took Kailee’s high school senior portraits. This is the third time I’ve worked with this family, and I always enjoy getting to know a family over time. I made her older brother’s high school senior portraits last year, which you can read about here. Kailee didn’t want to replicate what her brother did though, and instead wanted her images to be taken with lots of wildflowers around. And we got ‘em!
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LA Parent Magazine
My image is on the current cover of LA Parent magazine. And those are my two boys. 
Runway: Project Ethos ‘Incubator’ Fashion Show (part 2)
This is part 2 of a 3 part series:
Last Friday (March 19, 2010) I shot the Project Ethos ‘Incubator’ show, at the Music Box in Hollywood. This was part of LA Fashion Week. I was doing this for my friends over at Little Designer Book, the best little blog about up-and-coming designers on the net! Here are three more designers from the show, with four still to come.
First up, designer Michelle Liu with EMEL Fashion (above and below).
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Runway: Project Ethos ‘Incubator’ Fashion Show (part 1)
Last Friday (March 19, 2010) I shot the Project Ethos ‘Incubator’ show, at the Music Box in Hollywood. This was part of LA Fashion Week. I was doing this for my friends over at Little Designer Book, the best little blog about up-and-coming designers on the net! This edition of Project Ethos featured ten—TEN!—designers. I’m slowly moving through the 800+ images I shot that evening, bringing you the best of what was on offer. This, as you can imagine, is a multi-part blog installment.
As always, if you leave a comment on my blog, I donate a canned food item to FoodShare.
First up, above and below, are selected designs from Goga by Gordana. Gordana was on Project Runway Season 6.
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Katie (LA Models)
Shorts: American Apparel. Ring, vest: stylist's own.
A few weeks ago I worked with Katie from LA Models on a shoot. I had some very specific ideas about the final look of the images, based on some inspirational pages I’d pulled from magazines. Sometimes I start with visual references from other photographs, to give me some guidance on where I want to take the shoot. Other times, I have more of a conceptual story in mind, and the look of the shoot exists more in my mind than reality (you’ll see that in a post coming up in a week or two). It certainly is easier to translate my vision into something concrete when I can hand the stylist some pages and say “let’s do this, but not this part, and change this to that” etc. Otherwise I’m left trying to describe vague things I see in my head! But both styles of shoot design have their advantages.
For this shoot, the look was all about ‘boy shorts’, casual tops, and reclining on soft and furry blankets. The trick was to keep it fashion and not have it turn into something cheesy or “pin-up”. I thought long and hard about how I was going to achieve this. The key component for maintaining a fashion look was going to be facial expression. Wardrobe and posing would make their own statement, but if the model had a “come hither” look on her face, the results would be a disaster. Instead, I wanted the model conveying anything but sexy: anger, melancholy, even a hint of a smile as in the lead image. This would create subtle layers rather than just a one-dimensional image.
So I kept telling Katie to “give me stink eye”.
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Danneille
A few weeks ago I worked with Danneille, who is with the Elite and Q modeling agencies. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Desirée Durang, who has assisted me before and was also the assistant on this shoot. Danneille had recently moved to LA from the east coast, and needed to update her portfolio to make it more ‘California friendly’. High fashion with lighter, sunnier feel. We decided to go for a ‘resort’ look. The kind of clothing the well-to-do might wear while vacationing in Palm Springs or the south of France. And since we didn’t have the budget to rent a sailboat or take over a Malibu mansion for the day, we decided to head for the beach.
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