I hope your week is going well because it’s about to get a lot better after you check out the pics I made for my first Maryland Leaf assignment! We toured the grow operations at gLeaf Medical Cannabis in Frederick, Maryland for the February issue.
I recently had a fun shoot with Jill Vialet, the CEO and founder of Playworks. How could it not be when the founder’s organization partners with schools to promote exercise and social and emotional health through recess, and the shoot is on a school playground? Jill was game for just about anything and the location was perfect. Check out some outtakes and tearsheets below.
Jill Vialet, founder and CEO of Playworks, a nonprofit that partners with schools to promote exercise and social and emotional health through recess.
Jill Vialet, founder and CEO of Playworks, a nonprofit that partners with schools to promote exercise and social and emotional health through recess.
Jill Vialet, founder and CEO of Playworks, a nonprofit that partners with schools to promote exercise and social and emotional health through recess.
Jill Vialet, founder and CEO of Playworks, a nonprofit that partners with schools to promote exercise and social and emotional health through recess.
Jill Vialet, founder and CEO of Playworks, a nonprofit that partners with schools to promote exercise and social and emotional health through recess.
A recent tear sheet from The Texas Observer, who last month published a couple of images from my bull riding school project.
AARP, one of my newest clients, sent me to Huntsville a couple of months ago to photograph Link Ermis, a military veteran whose social security benefits have been turned upside down. Ermis is "one of 1.5 million public employees nationwide, including teachers, firefighters and police, who face a big reduction in benefits because they worked jobs in which they and their employers did not pay into Social Security."
The editor asked for live photos as well as some portraits. Things were going to be tight. Ermis drove a school bus to school and had less than 10 minutes to sit for a portrait before he had to begin his first period history class. I used a small Quantum strobe for some outdoor portraits, then we hustled inside so he could start his class. He used my presence as a quick lesson to his class about what he was contending with personally with his social security benefits. I also got a refresher on the start of the First World War as he explained it to his students while I made pictures.
Digital tearsheet
Back in March, I got a message on my Blink app notifying me that a photo editor in Finland needed someone to shoot a cover photo for Ekonomi, a Finnish publication for economists. I had the pleasure of photographing Tuija Kalpala at Neste US, a company that produces bio-diesel. A pretty sweet gig, and all just for having an app on my phone.
I'm proud to have another great-looking tear sheet from an assignment I completed for MD Anderson Cancer Center's Conquest Magazine. Travis Arnold, a 17-year old from Spring, Texas, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia - a fast-growing cancer of the white blood cells. With the help of the doctors at MD Anderson Childrens Cancer Hospital, a half-match bone marrow transplant was performed. Travis recovered and is now a top-rated golfer on Klein High School's Bearkat golf team.
Page 28 and 29, Spring 2016 issue of Conquest magazine
In a former Nabisco cookie factory near the Texas Medical Center stands a futuristically decorated science and technology incubator called JLabs. The project, "part of Johnson & Johnson Innovation, LLC, is a network of incubators providing emerging companies with many of the advantages of being in a big company without the capital investment. Residents have access to turnkey, state-of-the-art infrastructure, including singular bench tops, modular wet lab units and office space on a short-term basis." - http://www.tmcinnovation.org/jlabs/
An assignment from Houstonia magazine that began as a request for interiors for a quarter page turned into a full-page portrait and multi-page display after ad pages were added to the magazine near the end of production. Working with the talented and versatile art director Tanyia Johnson, we turned out some tear sheets I'm quite proud of.
I was pretty happy with a photo I made of Dominican nun Sister Anna Nguyen for the Houston Chronicle. It ran on this morning's Sunday front page.
A couple of months ago, I was fortunate to complete my first assignment for Fortune Magazine. The assignment was to photograph Tom Bastian, who manages the Invesco Equity and Income Fund.
I had great backend support from a photo editor at Fortune, Michele Taylor. We discussed options and even location snaps I made before the shoot. It was great knowing that at least the background environments were approved before I even began. We shot in what is probably the biggest boardroom I've ever seen but in the end, went with a couch on the periphery that had a nice, mirrored grid as a background, courtesy of the building next door.
Tom Bastian in the Invesco Houston office.
Digital tear sheet from Fortune Magazine.
In the United States' fourth largest city, emergency management is crucial. Emergency Management magazine recently published a profile on Francisco Sanchez, the liaison for Harris County Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Having shot at the TranStar facility before, I already knew what the interior looked like and what to expect. Wanting to do something different, I suggested we go to the roof of the building. I saw a nice bank of clouds from an approaching cold front I knew would make a good foreboding background, and my gut was telling me the roof was likely filled with antennas, which it was. Having been photographed many times before, Francisco told me this was the first time anyone had suggested photographing on the roof. Once I knew I had a decent shot, I showed him the back of the camera and he was as pleased as I was.
Tearsheet from Emergency Management magazine
I've added a couple of out-takes in the end. One is of a 84 year-old barber who has been cutting hair in the same building since the mid-1950's. He was born next door. Despite being downwind from Gulf Chemical since it's inception, he is completely healthy and has no complaints. The guy repairing nets is Tom, who owns and operates Tom's Net Shop. He spends his days repairing nets used for shrimping. I found it amazing that his job hadn't been replaced by machines.[gallery link="file"]