I know it’s been a bit since I last updated, but I have been super busy for the last few weeks. The new house keeps throwing us surprises and fun. I will be posting photos of our rehab once it is all finished. We had a party and that was a blast, although quite a bit of work getting everything ready. After the party I had 3 days of 3-4 shoot days, then it was off to Montauk, which could be my new favorite place on earth. In Montauk I shot the wedding of a great friend of mine, Willis, with another great friend Cary Conover as a second shooter. The wedding was awesome and I hope that Willis and Emily had a great time in South America on their honeymoon. After the wedding, Lesley and I spent a couple of days in NY staying at the Cooper Square Hotel, which I have to say was pretty awesome! It is one of those funky boutique hotels with an awesome view of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building looking uptown. NY was fun, I’ll talk some more about that in the next post. We finished our trip with stops in Freehold, NJ, Philly, Harrisburg, PA and Harpers Ferry, WV. We then got home and I was super sick for about 5 days, then better for 2, then massive ear/jaw ache for 5. That could have been a disaster as we thought it was tooth related, but a trip to Miami, where I am tonight, and a visit to the endodontist has ruled that out. For now.

So, what about all the work I’ve been doing? Well, I can finally show some! I’ve been working the last 3 months for Charlotte Magazine and Our State Magazine, both NC based publications. I’ve done some work thru the assignment division of Getty Images, including one gig for GQ Magazine and Bombay Sapphire Gin for their best bartender contest. I’ve done some local work in Charlotte for a restaurant called Mez with an awesome art director, Jeff Moss. There is even more work, including a cover shot, upcoming and I will post that work when I can. But until then here are some layouts from Our State and some images form the other shoots!

From Our State, this is an awesome German restaurant in Hickory, NC, the Old German Schnitzel Haus.

Shooting at the Hampton Farms Peanut plant was one of the best and most fun assignments I’ve had in a long time!

This is bartender Stefan Huebner of Cosmos Café in Ballantyne, NC

These are some of the ads that Jeff put together with my shots from Mez, in the Epi Center in uptown Charlotte.

This is a shot of one of Mez’s most awesome dishes, Prawns stuffed with Goat Cheese.

A shot of the WXYZ bar for Charlotte Magazine

These were shot for a review of the NODA restaurant the Crepe Cellar, I have not seen the printed piece yet so I picked a few of my favorite shots.

There is so much going on these days I can hardly get any sleep. We got engaged, closed on the house, moved into the new house, tried to unpack, started some re-modeling, prepped the old house for sale, shot some gigs, went to Montana, etc, etc, etc. I have some new work that I can show and some more coming! I managed to book 4 gigs while I was in Montana for 8 days. Guess I need to go away more often. This post will be about the Montana trip. I will be making posts with the new work, the house remodeling, etc as soon as I can. Right now it is working late every night on photos and up at 7 with the contractors and the trades. In fact, I’ve been so busy that my suitcase is still sitting in the front entry way!

So, we went to Montana. West Yellowstone to be exact. It was primarily a fishing trip but we took some time to see the sights and oh, what sights they are. If you’ve never been to Yellowstone National Park, I highly suggest you put it on the list. It is really all that and then some. Everything is just oversized, the sky, the mountains, the valley’s, the animals, the views, the speed limits, the fish, the prices! You can’t drive anywhere without seeing s jaw dropping view and a drive through the park is unparalleled. We stayed in Island Park Idaho, about 12 miles from the West entrance to the park. This put us with in 1 hours of so much blue ribbon fishing that it was impossible for us to get to it all. We hit mostly the big names, Madison, Gallatin, Taylor’s Creek, Slough Creek, Soda Butte, Henry’s Fork, etc. We hit these rivers in a few different spots, between the lakes, in the park, mm53, 3 - mile bridge, harriman, the gravel pits, box canyon, etc. The fishing was pretty tough as it is the first time you hit a new place, but we managed to catch quite a few fish, wild rainbows, cutthroats, browns, brookies, and even MT whitefish! Many times we had to remind ourselves to just stop and look around or we’d miss the awesome environment. The bug hatches were amazing, I mean we would just get covered in caddis, and not catch a rising fish! One of the highlights of our trip was a float trip we took down the Lower Madison River. Four of us went, Lesley, Jeff, Paul and I. We had 2 guides and 2 rafts. It was a crazy awesome trip. We floated 15 miles of river that day. The sun was hot and we all got sunburned. We all caught big fish with Lesley catching the biggest, a 21 inch rainbow. I had about a dozen over 16 inches. Our guides Mike Spence and Hank were awesome and I would recommend them to anyone fishing in Montana, just ask me for a number and I’ll pass it on. One of the best things was the dinner afterwards.We stopped at a local restaurant, the Land of Magic, that featured local MT steaks. Jeff had the 26 oz rib eye, lesley had the filet, Paul got a NY strip and I had a 22 oz porterhouse! They were so good, maybe the best steak I ever had.

Yellowstone was quite a trip. It is so beautiful but can be so awful at the same time. We would enter in the West Entrance and about 4 miles in there is a bald eagles nest. Well, every time we drove in there was a huge traffic jam as everyone wanted to stop and look at the nest, even though there are signs that say no stopping! The first time we went it was about a 45 minute back up! Part of the awesome is all the animals we saw, Eagles, Osprey’s, sand hill cranes, elk, moose, black bear, bison, coyote, fox, river otter, pikas and probably a couple of others I am forgetting. Part of the awful was when we tried to go catch Old Faithful. We turned into the parking lot and got immediately disgusted. We hit the gift store for a couple of fridge magnets and a pint glass and hit the road again, never saw the geyser. But that was ok, we saw plenty of other things, other geysers, the Lamar Valley ( all I can say is WOW! ) There is a funny story about when we saw a Bison near the road and pulled over so that I could get a shot. We pulled over on the opposite side and I got out to get a clear shot. I took a look and the Bison was gone! I called out ‘hey Jeff ( our friend who was driving that day ) where is the buffalo’ and he checks the mirror and looks around and says ‘I don’t know!’ Then I see it, it had been in the blind spot on the other side of the car and was now right in front of me! Well I turned and dove into the car as fast as I could! It gave everyone a good laugh.

So here are some pix! Enjoy!

the view from the cabin of Henry’s Lake.

Mr. Coyote.

the Lamar Valley

The open road and the big sky

Big buffalo

I think this is going on the wall in a large size!

Lesley laying out some line on the Henry’s Fork

Some geo thermal activity

This water was BOILING as it came out of the ground!

A double rainbow along Hwy. 287

Another candidate for the wall.

We watched this lightning storm for over an hour.

The stars were crazy every night.

3 dollar bridge and the Madison River.

my first cutthroat and a dumb look on my face

Jeff waiting for the hatch at Harriman Park.

Lesley and one of her big fish! Notice the ‘bling’!

another really nice rainbow

Lesley and our guide Mike Spence with her big fish

one of our pretty ‘bows underwater.

a panoramic view of Harriman Park. We heard 3 coyotes ‘talking to each other while we were there. awesome.

Ok I am so busy these days it is crazy! A good crazy to be sure. Been shooting some jobs, been packing up the house, been sick in bed. We get our new house this Friday and we couldn’t be more excited! There will be lotsa work to be done for sure, in fact, more and more things pop up every time we go to the house. We just keep getting more ideas! So that will keep me pretty busy forever for the next couple of years! So look for a new category to show up here, a home improvement one! I’ve also been shooting quite a bit and being asked to bid on some great gigs. Did an assignment for Charlotte magazine, two assignments for Our State magazine and shot a quick ad for a local restaurant, Mez. I will try to post some of these shots as soon as they are cleared or published. I have a few more gigs on the books also.

For the 4th of July, my aunt and cousin, who live in Minnesota, came in for a visit. They stayed up at the compound with my parents and we had a bbq. It was great to see them. My aunt Anita is pretty close to my age and while I was growing up and when we lived in MN, we spent quite a bit of time together. She helped me learn how to color! we would spend time in the summer at our great grandmothers farm and that was always some kind of trip! We often share memories from those times. Things like how my grandmother would always always make hamburger steak for dinner with fried potatoes. How grandpa would sit in his chair and watch wrestling and not talk to us. They lived on an 80 acre dairy farm that they bought around 1915 or so. They still had some cattle when I would go, but it was not at full production. Good times, good times! Erica is my cousin. She is 24. I didn’t really know Erica growing up as we lived in NJ, or where ever I was, and they lived in MN. Erica went to UM and has a degree in some kind of outdoors stuff. She has a huge love for the outdoors as I do and she loves snakes and frogs and turtles and all kinds of other forest creatures. She has a great job doing studies for the state on habitat and animal  populations. While at the compound my parents farm, she poked around and found some toads, some frogs and a few snakes. She knows where to look. She just finished a turtle study where she got to spend 5 days in a canoe setting traps ( no kill traps! ) and counting the turtles. I was quite jealous. She has a huge tattoo of a bull snake on her shoulder and I wanted to get some shots of her and the rest of the family who were there. It was a fun time.

Here are some portraits:

Erica

Erica

Erica

Mr. Toad, I think she called it a Fuller’s Toad. correction - it is a Fowler’s Toad!

Aunty Anita

Jake tearing up the country road!

Regan smiling for the camera.

Mom

Lesley

Uncle Terry

Bella!

Way back in 2002 I was living in Los Angeles and decided I wanted to move back East. My roommate Laura and I gave up our awesome Echo Park house and the kicking pool. She found a great little guest house in another part of the city and I was planning on heading back east. Then a strange thing happened, I got busy, really busy. My last month in LA I worked like 12 jobs! My great friend Jason lived in Phoenix, about 3 hours from LA, and he offered for me to stay with him and see if the rush would continue. The plan was to stay in Phoenix, working in LA whenever a gig came up, and then if the work continued, move back to LA full time. If the work didn’t continue, I was gonna head east right before the holidays. The work kept up a little and then slowed down.

Then a wrinkle was added. Jason heard from some photographer friends of his about a unique opening at the newspaper, the Arizona Republic. They were getting ready to start a new, bold, daring, weekly stand alone, 24 page, fashion magazine. They were looking for a studio photographer who could handle doing all the  in studio shots of make-up, housewares, clothes and the occasional portrait. I applied for the gig and got it. My plan was to stay for a while, maybe a year, and save up some money to get back east. Well, we all know what happens to  plans………

The job was great! I had a studio basically to myself, 3 days a week, to shoot a pile of stuff and pretty much no limits on what we could do - all ideas were welcomed. The staff on the magazine, called YES, were all super talented. We all were very motivated and super excited to be a part of this product. We held weekly meetings and everyone was involved with coming up with ideas. The newspaper staff photogs started out shooting the fashion spreads, but after December I was pretty much the main photog, shooting the whole section most weeks. The magazine was well received by the community. It become an instant success! Yes has been copied many times and we even trained some of the other newspapers staff! Our staff was very close, we all went out and socialized together, held dinner parties, and worked very hard. We all became good friends. Our work and the magazine became very well known, we were often recognized and we could have almost any location we wanted to shoot in. We used models from the local modeling agencies and real people. We had real people in every issue. The whole experience was a blast. I ended up staying 2.5 years.

It was a good 2.5 years. I not only was working on the YES magazine, but, I was doing a TON of freelance work. I worked on local magazines, for ad agencies and on TV shows. I taught an advanced photojournalism course at Arizona State University. I was very busy, but I knew I didn’t want to stay and make my life in AZ. So, I made a decision to leave. It wasn’t easy, but I  knew I’d be happier back east. I decided to head to NYC. So I packed up, sold my cars and headed east. That, my friends, is another story…

Here are some photos from that time in my career.