Corporate Headshots with Marloes

I was hired by a company representing the WTC Netherlands Alliance Magazine to photograph Marloes, a Dutch lawyer from Amsterdam, currently living in NYC and working for E&Y.  We took a variety of shots starting with these...

As I'm sure you can tell, we spent our time together in Time Square.  This felt like the best setting for her since she's showcasing her time in NYC and to non-New Yorker's, what's more characteristic of NYC than Time Square?

I was thrilled to see that a few of these images made it to the WTC Netherlands Magazine.  Thanks to Frank van Bergen from ASEGA Media for finding me for this gig and to Marloes for taking some time out of her busy day to capture the snapshot of what her life is like now in NYC.

World Trade Center Netherlands Alliance Magazine #6 - TOC

World Trade Center Netherlands Alliance Magazine #6 - Full Article

Corporate Headshots in lower Manhattan

A few weeks ago I was hired to shoot some corporate headshots for a small company called Mastiff LLC located in downtown Manhattan.  They are a property development and financial services firm.  In my consultation meeting with them, we were discussing what they wanted from the upcoming session and suddenly they stopped to ask, “Would you like some cereal?”  I felt like I immediately got their humor and personality.

My contact is Marissa and she told me about the desire for them to have headshots for the three of them and we also discussed some recent blogging that she’s started to do for the company.  She wanted to capture some lifestyle images for the blog. The topics focus on the work they do and how they split their time across a few locations where they have property.   

Once the formal shots were done we headed outside.  Fortunately, we had a beautiful day.  Their offices are near the South Street Seaport.  I haven’t been down there in a long time and was surprised to know there are still sections of that area that have been closed since Hurricane Sandy.

Such a fun group to work with.  We talked about some fun projects to do in the future so I'm looking forward to being a part of that soon.

Lifestyle stock video shoot

Recently, I helped put together a shoot for Tom, a friend I’ve worked with at Shutterstock, to shoot some lifestyle video to be sold as stock footage.  We started planning this in late summer and settled on a date when we could all get together.  Tom lives in a nice neighborhood in Manhattan so to keep it simple we shot in his apartment and just outside the building near the water.

The model on the shoot was Stephanie Damiano.  I worked with her 2 years ago when she was toward the beginning of her adult modeling career.  Since that time, she’s done very well for herself.  She’s currently in 3 films, had TV appearances and other exciting projects in addition to  being an NYU student.  Samantha Linn was the MUA that had worked with Stephanie in the past and joined us on set.  She was great to work with as well.  

Stephanie texting face-timing on camera

Anyway, onto the shoot.  I brought my Movi to the shoot to have Tom try it out.  We planned for some fairly static shots and some that included movement and the Movi gives you this fantastic, smooth feel to the shot.  While Tom was shooting the scene below, I was able to snap a few stills of Stephanie eating this fruit plate.  She did great in making it look like she was really enjoying it.   I’ll update this post once the final clips are posted for sale.

Stephanie enjoying "the best fruit ever"

Great crew and super fun shoot!

Update: Here's a link to the videos.

Central Park Senior Portraits: Ally & Katlynn

A couple months ago, I received an inquiry from Kim, Ally's mom to shoot a senior portrait session for her daughter while they visited NYC from Kentucky.  Ally was bringing a friend so we arranged to shoot with both of them.  Ally & Katlynn will be seniors in high school in the coming year and were taking a summer trip together.  

I scouted out a few locations, hired a trusted MUA (thanks Nicole), set a time to meet at 72nd Street & Central Park West and we're off.   Since Katlynn was ready first, we shot a few images a short walk from where we met.  Here are a few of my favorites... 

Next up was Ally. There are so many great places to shoot in Central Park and one of my favorites is  Bethesda Fountain.  There's an amazing set of stairs and some world famous arches that I really enjoying reinterpreting each time I shoot there.  We happen to find a musician playing which made it even more fun to shoot.

A quick step to the outside the arches and we're in front of the fountain.

A few more with outfit #2...

Switching back to Katlynn, she also had an outfit change and we stumbled upon a "bubble guy" (I'm sure he's got a more official title but I'm not aware of it) so we had a little fun with that.

Of course we had the bubble guy work his magic for both of them...

Finishing with a few more showing some of the cabs passing by.  I enjoyed the time with these girls and hope they had a memorable journey for their trip to NYC this summer.

Author Headshots & Video: Heather

In the first of a two-part series for my work with Heather, I'm publishing some bio shots I completed recently for her.  She's wrapping up her first publication about empowering women to be able to make their own choices regarding marriage and children, without blindly following the traditional path.  As of this writing, I don't believe the book has a title yet so once we can link to it on Amazon (or wherever it will be available) I'll add the link here.

On the day we shot these headshots, we did both video and stills.  Heather's sister came along as well to help with Heather's wardrobe changes and to be the supportive sister that I'm sure she is.  

This shoot was the first time I'd ever tried to do both photography and video on the same day.  Since we had already had several conversations about how we wanted the content to feel, it wasn't too hard switching between the material.  Preplanning is huge when it comes to something more than just grabbing some updated portraits!

We chose Dumbo, in Brooklyn, as our shooting location.  It really offers a lot of options for different types of setup's and with the right angling, you can get some pretty different environmental settings within a small area.

At this point, we don't know what the book cover and art for the cover will look like so we kept our options open with the feel of the shoot.

A funny coincidence in the vertical shot of Heather with the Brooklyn Bridge in the background is that since her book is about following a non-traditional path, we stumbled upon several brides while we were shooting.  One of them is very small in the far background of this image.

I would be remiss in not crediting the help I received from Theresa Keil.  She captured these last couple images while I was still setting up.  I look forward to the next set of material we capture for Heather which will be more video content.