Summer School

Education appears to be the theme this week. For starters, we are almost finished with a promotional video for Escuela del Sol Montessori school. We are still working on some intro graphics, but its live on YouTube so that makes it real:



The whole video was shot on two Canon 5D Mark II still DSLR, i.e. a still camera that shoots high quality HD video as well.

I also finished up three days of work for CNM last week.
This image from last years shoot is still up on billboards around town.



The marketing team there are super fun to work with, and are all about shooting real students, so its grabbing people on the fly and lots of different settings. This shot was from an anatomy class, and as the instructor was asking questions I actually remembered the answer from biology years ago, it was everything I could do to not raise my hand.

Naughty Blogger

Here is the view from where I fell off the blogging wagon.



Its been a very busy while since I have updated the blog, and there are a bunch of new clients and projects, here are a couple:



Fun with dogs and cats. I worked with local branding agency RIPE on a campaign for the Animal Humane. This shot didn’t make the cut, but it explains why I don’t have a cat.

Longtime client Mudhouse Advertising needed a nice “guy in a suit shot”, we did this on an almost raining evening.



And this for Mudhouse, and because its finally ice tea weather……



I worked with Kilmer and Kilmer on a re-brand for PNM. We started out shooting some studio stuff and did a location shoot too.



We cast the kids from friends and acquaintances, so its fun getting calls when parents see someone up on a billboard or a vehicle wrap, nothing like squealing mothers, and fathers, on a cell phone.

Hey Boo Boo

My good friend and designer Michael Quanci came up with a great book concept looking at modern yoga in America. There are no real publications looking at the history of yoga in this country, so Michael wants to interview and photograph a couple dozen influential yoga instructors.



He talked me into a road trip to Arizona where we met up with a couple of them, and photographed another in Santa Fe. We are still experimenting with the look and layout for the concept and pitch. These people are a bit like rock stars, albeit very enlightened and limber ones, being flown all over the world to teach and lecture for big bucks. There were all super nice and none of them chastised me for my usually tight hamstrings. I even watched one of them have sausage for breakfast. The Book is called American Yogi.

What I did Last Summer

Sailing from Hawaii to San Francisco sounds terribly fun and romantic, so I thought when, after thinking about it for 24 hours, I accepted an offer to help sail a friend’s brother’s boat back across the Pacific. Sailing in Hawaii and San Francisco is fun and romantic, in between there is a lot of water and 17 days on a small boat. I took fewer photos than I thought, it was rough and wet and the first couple days I didn’t want to get vomit on the lens.

The middle of the trip was calm and we motored for a few days, taking the above photo during an early morning watch.



I spent a few days in SF after we got back and ran across these guys, members of the Dolphin Swimming Club, heading into the bay for a swim.

State of the Fair

For the past few years I have been the State Fair photographer and have accumulated an extensive knowledge of fried food you can eat while walking. This week, as my cholesterol grudgingly slipped back to it’s normal level that makes pharmaceutical stocks such a good investment, I came across some employee portraits I had done a couple years back.





The Fair has a limited number of year-round employees, and hires an enormous crew of temporary laborers to work the 17-day event. Most are paid minimum wage, many traveling from other states, sometimes as groups or extended families. Its tough work, and they are great folks. I got to know a few of them and they were the highlight of that year’s fair, the fried Oreos weren’t even close.

Non-Smoking

This summer I shot a campaign for Austin TX based TKO Advertising and they wanted a range of locations and models that represented typical New Mexicans. Of course, when the casting was over we had an Australian in the mix. All together we did seven shots over two days. They wanted this de-saturated, edgy look, which we achieved with location lighting, makeup and post-production voodoo.

About a month before the shoot, I was mountain biking and ran across a set of abandoned corrals close to the mountains, and thought it would make a great location. I envisioned a gorgeous young model in Santa Fe Style, but ended up with this slightly softer, rounder version of the Marlboro Man, Dan Strakal.

See Food

A few years back, I visited the country of Mali with a friend who had served there in the Peace Corps. I think it was the longest I have ever gone without ice cream (three weeks). For much of our time there, we stayed with Africans, often eating with our hands out of a communal bowl of rice, corn meal or millet. It was a privilege to eat, and people were grateful to have a full belly. This really affected how I looked at food, and it was shocking to come home to so much colorful food so carefully arranged and prepared. I thought about how we have elevated food preparation and presentation to an art form, and this naturally lead me to want to hang food on a wall. This latest batch involves a tossed salad and live blue crab, which were exceptionally difficult to train, and generally cranky at hanging on a wall in the middle of the desert.

These two pieces will be on display as part of an art show at 105 Studios, the building that houses my studio. Opening reception is this Saturday, May 10th, from 5-8 PM. Address is 105 4th Street SW. Feel free to call me if you need directions.

Too Friendly Skies

At 7:30 on a recent Friday night my phone rang and instead of the telemarketer I expected, it was a design firm in Alaska. A quick geography primer in my head confirmed the workweek was just winding up there. Turns out they have a client who did the renovation of the Albuquerque Airport and they needed photos.

After two calls to the airport to let them know I was coming and that TSA could ignore the terrorist with the tripod, I headed down to shoot. They wanted interior shots showing movement of people. I was shooting with a tripod and off camera flash, when I spotted two friends moving down the escalator. They were just off the plane from Argentina, and their travel-fuddled minds couldn’t figure out why I was at the airport to take their photos.

Amazingly, not a single security person approached me, just a pilot wanting to talk cameras. I think the TSA people would have been easier to get rid of.

Fit for a Trailer

I was hired by Esparza advertising, http://www.esparzaadvertising.com/, to head up to the four corners area and photograph for San Juan Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in the area. We were shooting patients and employees for an annual report, and they also wanted a nice winter shot of the San Juan River. My assistant and I went up early and scouted a few stretches of the river before finding this spot.

The area is booming with oil and natural gas wells, and many of the roughnecks are fairly transient, living in trailers at campgrounds along the river. This particular unit, which my assistant dubbed “Trailer Pilates”, was the trip favorite, and about 100 yards from our photo site.

Holiday Spirit

Merry Christmas! The last few years I have created a Santa shot each Christmas. This year I had a biscotti baker in town ask me to shoot some product, and decided to give some twice-baked goodness to clients. I found a fireplace at a friend’s house in Corrales and talked my model into letting me paint his toenails. You haven’t lived till you have painted a chubby man’s toes red.

I have another friend in Corrales who lives in a trailer with loads of character, if your idea of character includes not having been cleaned since the first, and I do mean the first Bush administration. I figured if we were already in the neighborhood, we could squeeze in a second shot. I asked him not to clean a thing, because propping out a house like this would cost hundreds of dollars. He didn’t know how to take that, but agreed.

I have always seen Santa as a bit of a sell out, a used up exploited object, and this shot is a little reflection of that.