I was exited and couldn’t wait to meet her and see the dresses she was working on. Upon meeting her and looking at the dresses she had made, it look less than 5 minutes to realize we were EXACTLY on the same wavelength as far as how we each visualized these images. Vintage, long gloves, martini glasses…..Mad Men!

And so I assembled my team, some of whom I’ve worked with before, and some with whom I was itching to work with – finally, after being in New York for two years, I feel I have found a great group of people I can work with on commercial shoots and personal projects. Angela, who did Dariana’s hair and makeup in a shoot late last year was on set, as was stylist extraordinnaire Colby Milano, and the beautiful Kelsey Lear Lafferty who came in from Philadelphia for the photo shoot, and my friend Darcy Rogers assisted me.

I had been dreaming about this shoot for days on end and knew, in my gut, that this shoot was going to be a success……and indeed, I couldn’t have been happier.

Everyone was at the top of their game, Adrina’s dresses were simply beautiful, classic and elegant and I was able to shoot in my studio space on my very own 9′ white seamless with a new medium softbox as my source of light. It was amazing.

I wanted to shoot clean and simple and use a few props here and there. This is the kind of shoot that I would love to take on location, maybe find a cool hotel lobby or a place with some vintage furniture or a bar with character.

It was really great to have an energetic crew and create images this way. Feedback and suggestions were made, we tried different things – some worked and some didn’t – and I took away many lessons from this experience – some that one will read and say “duh!” while others that are not that obvious.

1 – Working with a stylist enriches your vision, which translates into images that might otherwise be just OK.

2 – Having an open mind and listening to suggestions from others on set who are also in this together is important. It’s important to listen, to try, to shoot it in a different way and see the outcomes on screen (I shot these tethered so we could all see and make adjustments as we went).

3 – Expect the unexpected – doing #2 led to a variety of images, many of which worked well.

4 – Pintrest ROCKS! It is serving as my mood boards and inspiration boards for work that I want to create – on set and on location. Sharing this board with everyone before the shoot and asking my team to share their ideas was important – this way we were all on the same page well before the shoot.

5 – Treating everyone with respect is kind of a big deal. I speak from personal experience from many many photo and video shoots. I’ve been yelled at, humiliated and treated badly on set by other people in the past (unrightfully so) and I don’t EVER want to make anyone feel that way…..feeling like you want to crawl into a hole or just run out of the room because someone  yelled at you just to show off…that’s not right…. SO,  I treat everyone the way that I want to be treated. Simple as that.

Posted here are some of my favorite images and thanks again to my wonderful team. You rocked!

simple.

These are the 2 words that constantly swim in my mind when I visualize the photograph that I am going to take, and also when I’m in the middle of making photos.

Clean and simple.

I think there’s a correlation to how I want to live my personal life and my professional life. You know – clean and simple.

We recently moved into a lovely apartment in Brooklyn and moved our photography, video and music gear into a studio in Long Island City.

Boy, moving further enforced my clean + simple mantra.

With each move, I realize how much crap I tend to hang to (mostly for the memories they have) and how much crap I DON’T need in my life. Things are just that – objects – and there’s a line between objects that are worth keeping and….yes, crap! I corresponded with a professional organizer for a few weeks and she gave me a great tip (as I slapped my head against my forehead saying “DUH!”) – why don’t you photograph the objects you don’t REALLY need but you want to keep in your memories….and so I did just that, and in doing so I got rid of some things that were taking up space and dust. What a relief to get rid of bags of items and know that by giving them to Goodwill//Salvation Army, they will end up in another home.

I digress…..I’ve analyzed over and over my clean + simple mantra and now that I take a step back and look at my more recent work, I can see how it’s translated into my photography.

Take Dariana, for example.

I photographed her in my new Long Island City studio and I am so happy with the results. One light, a white wall, a beautiful girl and clean and simple images.

We have a heck of a rooftop in our new studio – a nice 360 view of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, and going for this same mantra outdoors can be tricky, but alas, I feel I found a way to stick to clean + simple images.

Along with my this aesthetic, I was also ready to experiment with an old lens, my LensBaby 3G… and to even consider that I wanted to sell this thing, can you believe it! The last few shots were taken with this lens and I think in 2012 you’re going to see a lot more work with it. There’s something very beautiful, very organic and unexpected – I like knowing that each shot is going to be very different and unique with this lens.

I’ve been reading a lot more – books, blogs, etc – and I find that I haven’t been expressing my own voice very often when I blog – aside from the “and this is such and such and I shot them in such and such location” – i’m not really writing down my thoughts, my feelings and expressing MY VOICE, so I am going to make a point of doing more of that moving forward.

Very gladly, I am pleased to post images of Dariana. The way she moves, her legs, her elbows, I love all the angles she creates with her body. Her look and her movements flowed in front of the lens, and there was a level of comfort that we reached – one that I ALWAYS strive to reach, every time I photograph someone. Otherwise, if you can’t get the person comfortable in front of the camera, it becomes very evident in the photographs. If you can get someone relaxed, you can create some beautiful portraits.

Hair + Makeup: Angela Garcia

In finishing what I started last week, here are photos I took of Mike Alaska in action – performing in the Union Square subway platform.

Enjoy!

In this 2-part assignment, the first part was to create portraits of street bucket drummer Mike Alaska – whom, if you’ve been to NYC and seen him play in the subways – is a drumming force to be reckoned with.

The second part, which I will post in a few days, was to capture Mike, in action drumming in a subway station.

When I have ample time with a subject, I like to experiment and try different things and I did just that with Mike.

We started off in an alley way making some portraits and eventually ended up on a rooftop with a beautiful view of the Manhattan skyline.

Here are some images from that first session.

For the next shot, we tried a few different ways of throwing the drum sticks up in the air, and this was by far my favorite shot. Look at his eyeball!

I wanted to thank you all for visiting my site, for your feedback and for your referrals.

Because of you, because of your appreciation for my art and for my craft, I am able to grow and create the work that I love.

Thank you.

From my family to yours, here’s to an amazing 2012!

The most amazing part of my shoot?
Seeing two of my closest friends, Sam and Jon, become parents.

Words can’t describe the happiness I felt when I learned about Sam’s pregnancy, let alone this moment, when I finally meet their little bundle of joy.

Edwin, I can’t wait to watch you grow and become a wonderful, amazing and talented human being!

Congratulations Sam and Jon!

He says the most amazing things and has the most incredible, awesome, hard -working, superstar mother, Erika.

To celebrate his 3rd birthday while I was in Charlotte, NC, we went to a park and took some photos.

If I can sum up our session with just one image, it’s the one below.

It’s love. It’s a beautiful mamma and her beautiful son.

Erika and Jamison.