In today’s edition of the @wsj there’s an incredible article written by Susan R. Barry about eyesight. The piece focuses on Liam McCoy who, at the age of 15, underwent corrective surgery to give him the ability to see. As Barry articulates in the essay, when a blind person gains the ability to see later in life “the improvements [are] discombobulating. Surgery plunged Liam into a world of sharp lines and edges. While we all see lines at the boundaries of objects or shadows, we know where these lines belong. We recognize an object immediately—all of its parts combine together, instantly and effortlessly, into a single unit. But after a childhood of near-blindness, Liam did not recognize the lines as boundaries of known objects. Instead, he saw a tangled, fragmented world.”
This is where I enter the equation…
New Work for Angels and Airwaves Album Lifeforms
Last year I teamed up with Brandon Rike and the crew at Tension Division to shoot art for the upcoming Angels & Airwaves album, Lifeforms. Modeling by Shelby Stephens and hair by Christine Pointdexter.
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Photo Shoot with Ronnie Radke of Falling in Reverse
In March I set up a makeshift studio in @ronnieradke ‘s dining room and in 10 hours we shot 25 unique setups. It was just the two of us, improvising and playing with light. He ended picking one of the shots for the cover of his upcoming book. I love when the creative process is allowed to flow, unchecked.
Read MoreAmerican Lung Association: Keeping Student Bodies Healthy
Back in December I teamed up with the creative team at Fahlgren Mortine to shoot an anti-smoking campaign for the American Lung Association. Bill Fioritto, one of the creative director at Fahlgren, came up with the concept of a group of students (aka student body) all posing together to create the shape of lungs, to accompany the tagline: keeping student bodies healthy. Since we were in the middle of a pandemic I suggested that we shoot 8 different models in a range of poses and outfits that could be composited together later on. I thought that it’d be advantageous to book dancers as half of the roles since they could offer much more dynamic poses, giving us more options when it came to compositing the final image. Thanks to all the models for doing an amazing job, as well as to Ryan Wyss, the composite artist. Finally, thank you to Bill and the rest of the team at Fahlgren Mortine. This was a really cool project to work on.
Read MoreWhat Nightmares May Come: Exploring Prisms and Mylar
I’ve worked with prisms from time to time over the years and enjoyed the effects that they offer but never really fell in love with them. Last week I decided to see what would happen if I used a prism while photographing mylar. The beautiful nightmarish images that were produced are the closest visual representation of a panic attack that I’ve ever seen. Now I’m in love.
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Americana / Film Noir with Skrizzly Adams
One day last year (what is time) I worked with @alexhaldi of @pawncreative to create art for the new @skrizzlyadams album cycle. We shot a bunch of smoky images on location at a bar to match the classic Americana aesthetic of the artist. My assistant @sethmosesmiller helped me position a snooted speedlite up near the ceiling for the first setup, which created a shaft of light in the smoke. For the second setup we wanted to imply sunlight coming through the window blinds but since it was in fact a rainy morning we had to fake the light with a projector. Less is more, more or less.
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A Fixed Point in Space Over Time: Photo Shoot with Ballet Dancer Kristie Latham Zurmehly
In my art my go-to techniques all center around the passage of time. Take this shoot with Kristie, for example. I made long exposures and multiple exposures in order to observe how she moved through a fixed point in space over time, which I otherwise wouldn’t be able to see with my naked eye…
Read MoreWhatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Vesperteen Promo Shoot
My buddy Colin Rigsby has a music project called Vesperteen, and he reached out to me to do a shoot last month. Colin and I go way back. His wife was friends with my wife before I ever met her. I attended his wedding, did several shoots with his old band, House of Heroes, and shared many great moments over the past two decades. It was great to catch up, shared some laughs, and create some beautiful art. We created a wide range of vibrant, kinetic images in promotion of his new music…
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The Descent: Capturing Movement with Dancer Sophie Bolton
Whenever I am planning a shoot with a dancer I face the challenge of coming up with fresh ways to capture their movement. Sometimes I put my camera on a tripod and use a long exposure to capture their fluidity. Or I might have the dancer stand still while I move my camera, which creates a similar-yet-different effect. Or I might fire a strobe multiple times during an exposure in order to crisply capture how they move through a space. In this shoot with dancer Sophie Bolton I opted to do it all…
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Photo by Sean Quincy Munro
Owning My Scars
I was born with a condition called sagittal craniosynostosis. It basically means that part of my skull was prematurely fused and lacked the soft spot needed for head growth. It’s a fairly common defect but if it goes untreated it can cause deformity, seizures, or even death. Though I now know how lucky I was to be able to receive that surgery, I grew up ashamed of my scar. As many of you can likely identify with, anything that makes you stand out from other kids makes you a potential target to bullies. I was called so many names as a kid that I feared ever having my hair cut short…
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Mylar Skull
Another of my mylar explorations. This is a 7-image sequence shooting reflections on mylar. All in-camera effects.
Photographic Mimics: Diptychs of People and Nature
I love symmetry. And I don’t just mean in my compositions. One of my main goals when it comes to editing and laying out my photos is to find parallels between images so that there’s a symmetry (or mimicry) between the pairing. When I do make the connection between a pair of otherwise unrelated images (such as a portrait and an image of a plant) it soothes something deep in me.
Read MoreMy Story: A Short Documentary by Brandon Goodyear
Brandon Goodyear is a local videographer that has an ongoing series focusing on makers and what motivates them to do what they do. Over the span of a month he captured a couple of my photo shoots, me climbing at my home gym, and me watering my vast collection of plants. We also got deep and chatted about my journey through trauma and where I find inspiration as an artist. Check it out.
Read MoreThe Many Ways to Photograph a Dancer: Shoot with Ballerina Caitlin Valentine
I’ve been working with dancers for over a decade and I still struggle to come up with fresh ways of capturing their movement in a way that conveys their power and grace. But this challenge doesn’t keep me from trying…
Read MoreEvanescence: The Bitter Truth Photo Shoot
Back in November I drove down to Nashville to photograph @amylee for her upcoming @evanescenceofficial album, The Bitter Truth. I set up a makeshift studio in her dining room and knocked out a broad range of images for the album art, various magazine spreads, and images for streaming platforms…
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Tryzdin Grubbs (American Idol contestant) Photo Shoot
Tryzdin Grubbs is an uber-talented, 15-year old singer from Columbus. He also just happened to get accepted onto the latest season of American Idol. Before the episode had even aired, Tryzdin popped by my studio for a photo shoot. This was our third shoot in as many years and this one was the most dynamic yet. We’ve both grown quite a bit in our respective crafts and so it was cool to see what new things we were bringing to the shoot, from a personal and professional standpoint. Here are just a few of the different looks that we knocked out in the brief but efficient, one-hour shoot.
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From the Archives: Underoath, Erase Me Photoshoot (Behind the Scenes)
In January of 2018 I met up with the fellas from Underoath in Los Angeles to shoot photos for their yet-to-be-released album, Erase Me. My friends at Tension Division were designing the album and merch and basically every facet of the upcoming album cycle. Not only did I need to shoot individual photos of each member using several different in-camera techniques such as multiple exposure, shutter drag, and projector for the album art, but I also needed to shoot promo photos for Spotify and images for an upcoming issue of Alternative Press. The shot list was aggressive for a one-day shoot but I had the added challenge of shooting all this in the living room of an Airbnb while Brandon, the creative director, was remotely directing everything from their home in Ohio. It was a tall order but I was up for it…
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Kind of Blue: Exploring Black Masculinity with Khalil
Khalil and I had been planning this shoot for the better part of a year. He reached out to me last June and said he had an idea for a shoot that he wanted to explore. He knew that he wanted to use chains in the images as well as explore themes of black masculinity. When he arrived at my studio one morning last month and began to lay out the chains that he brought with him, I immediately recognized that we’d need much more to really make the images work. I suggested that we make a quick run to the hardware store, and he agreed. We ended up leaving the store with every inch of chain that they had…
Read MoreBehind the Scenes Photo Shoot with Ronnie Radke of Falling in Reverse
Last month I photographed Ronnie Radke of Falling in Reverse at his home in LA. I set up a makeshift studio in his dining room and we knocked out six scenarios in just under three hours…
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