What inspires you?

A couple of days before I left for my recent shoot for Va. Bride magazine in Richmond, VA. I started looking for things to inspire me, something to get me excited about the shoot and provide a catalyst for creating some great images. This time it was work by Mario Testino that did the trick. While looking at Mario Testino's work, some other photographers' work and even some art work, I started to think about what inspires me to create new images or even to get out there and shoot. Sometimes it's great work from another photographer, as was the case with this past shoot. It can give me an idea, spark that creativity that I need to be able to go out and create my own images.
Sometimes it's a location that gets the creative juices flowing. I see an incredible location and my mind will start to churn out all these different ideas about models, clothes, poses, angles, lighting etc.. It's a great feeling when something like that happens and then you get to go and shoot those images you were seeing in your head.
There have even been times when just a sentence from someone around me sparked an idea for a shoot.
I never know exactly where inspiration will come from or in what form, but I have realized that it can come from anywhere.

Where does your inspiration come from, what inspires you?
Even if you're not a photographer, artist, creative director, art director, photo editor, makeup artist or stylist. (was that list a little too long? I think I could have stopped sooner) Even if you have a 9-5 behind a desk, hopefully there's something out there that inspires you to go out and do something you love. If not, start looking around you. I'm sure something will take hold of you, and inspire you.

Virginia Bride Magazine

Here are some shots I did for Virginia Bride magazine. We actually shot these awhile ago at Lake O' the Woods Plantation in Warren, NC. www.lakeothewoodsplantation.com  It's a small little town just on the border of NC and VA. Nice Bed and Breakfast place, wonderful food. It turned out to be a really great place to shoot, I would have liked to have had another day there to shoot more than we did. We were actually scheduled to shoot at another location that I had seen pictures of that the magazine picked out, but when I arrived the day before the shoot, I really liked the feel and the surroundings of Lake O' the Woods and I convinced the Editor/Publisher of the magazine to shoot everything there. It actually didn't take a lot of convincing.
Here's some of what we shot that day.

 

 

 

Listen to the Professionals

This actually has nothing at all to do with Photography. I just felt like bitching for a minute.
My wife is Clinical Supervisor at an outpatient rehab. She deals a lot with young adults (mostly15-21) that have substance abuse problems with alcohol, illegal drugs, prescription pills, etc..And occasionally I hear stories about the parents of these kids. It amazes me how often, the parents refuse to listen to the professionals they are paying to help their child get better. So many parents deny the fact that their child is an addict, or think that certain rules don't apply to their kid." Those rules are just for the really sick kids, not mine"
So here's a word of advice for anyone with a child that is in a rehab center, in-patient or out-patient.
LISTEN TO THE COUNSELORS, they know what they are doing! YOU DO NOT! if you were so damn great, and knew what was best, you wouldn't be in the situation you are in. Listen to what they tell you, do what they tell you. Even if you don't think it will work, DO IT. You might be surprised at the outcome.

I know it has to be scary to be the parent of a child with an addiction. I get that you don't want to believe this is happening to you or your child. I understand you have lost control and you feel like you need to be the one who fixes this. The reality is, you can't, you need help to fix it. Your child has a disease and you need experts in that disease to help make things better. Leave your ego at the door, and let someone else help.

I apologize for the rant, but it's just hard for me to believe how many parents want to fight the rules and go against the grain when they know their child needs help. Oh, and those who don't think their kid needs help....Your kid wouldn't be anywhere near a rehab center if they didn't!

I'll lighten-up on my next post, promise.

Siempre Mujer magazine shoot

These are a couple of shots I recently did for Siempre Mujer magazine.

We spent the first 3/4 of the day shooting "real women", in other words, women who aren't professional models, for a fashion story about jeans. We were shooting in NYC on the corner of 4th and Jane St.Which I thought was great. We had a few stares, and it was fun just to watch some of the people watching us.

After we got those shots, we went across the street to Phoenix Roze, a very cool little jewelry store, to shoot  the Contents page and the Style page. We did have a professional model for those shots. It was a little dark in the jewelry store so I ended up shooting at an ISO of 2000 so I could use the natural light that was coming in from the windows. Thanks to my Nikon D3, the images came out very nice, very clean!

After the shoot we all went across the street for some drinks, and everyone agreed we had a great day and a great shoot!

My first attempt at blogging

Alright, so here I go, trying out this whole blogging thing. I don't really know why I decided to this other than I saw some other photographers were doing it and it looked like a good way to give clients, friends and anyone else who happened upon this a little more insight into me. I don't know how often I will update this, My goal is at least once a month. It could be more than that, but let's start out small and see if we can beat expectations.

You may have seen in the about me section that I mentioned having a wife and two daughters. You will probably see many pictures of them as I continue on this blogging journey. I thought I would go ahead and add a picture of them now so you would know who I'm talking about. Tammy is my wife, Alexa is my oldest daughter and Ashlyn is the youngest. They are all 3 blond hair , blue eyes and about as white as you can be (my wife puts sunscreen on them non-stop. She had melanoma, so she is very aware of what the sun can do to you), and I love them more than anything else in this world.

As I'm writing this, I'm coming up with more things I can write about, so that's good. Maybe I will be able to do this, and hopefully keep everyone interested and entertained. I plan on writing about my shoots, some behind the scenes type stuff, Travel, some family (if it's interesting or if I shoot some cool images) and whatever random, interesting things pop up along the way.

So stay tuned, and let me know what you think.