A few weeks ago I was asked by a friend of ours if I would be interested in taking a family portrit of her and her husband with thier dogs. My first thought was hell no and run in the other direction. My second thought was can I get complete creative freedom. So I responded to her question with my own question. She said yes, I said yes and this is what we made.

I had a great time leading a workshop in Charlotte over the weekend for The Light Factory. TLF is a hidden jewel in North Carolina I wish more people new about. They have a great program and offer a ton of photo classes. You can find a schedule here.

We took to the streets on Saturday to create 10 different looks of one model.  With the Democratic National Convention coming to the Queen City later this fall, security is tight and photographers are getting hassled. We choose to stay close and worked within a block of the museum. That was our first challenge; working with Katya, our Russian model that spoke very little English was our second challenge.  Personally, I find that challenges like this keep photography interesting. No assistant, no make-up or hair artist and this was Katya's first time ever doing any type of photo shoot. Hit the jump to see the other nine images.

It’s not often I get asked to shoot children with guns.  So when Legal Community Against Violence hired me to shoot images for their new website Smart Gun Laws, I knew it was going to be a challenging assignment. For starters, this is the first time I’ve ever added a line item in a contract for a “gun-safety expert” to be on set while I work. But something about grabbing a few guns and handing them to a couple of kids didn’t feel right to me. Especially because I knew to make these images feel authentic, we needed to use real guns.

I’m not a gun guy. I never have been. I’ve shot guns, both big and small. I grew up around guns, my grandparents lived on a farm and my uncles loved guns.  Guns were always in our house and sometimes in the cars but they made me nervous.  I’ve never owned one, never had one in my home and other than teaching my son how to be safe around one, I have no real interest in one. That’s just me. I’ll keep doing my shooting with cameras. 

These images were created to help promote awareness for gun safty in the home. Hit the jump to see a few more images.

I shot this for the Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau last summer. They we’re looking for creative images of the drum circle that happens every week in Pritchard Park. I brought my assistant and had him sit in the middle of the circle holding an old Nikon SB-28 flash at half power with a full CTO gel tapped to the front.  I climbed the hill to shoot above the circle from about 50 feet away. I used a 24-120mm lens and zoomed out during the exposure to get that fast pace feel that you get when you’re standing in the middle of all those drums. You can also set your white balance for creative effects.  Here I set it to fluorescent which gave it a blue tint during the dusk hours everywhere the flash did not hit. The flash stops the action of the drummer’s that it hits and lights them with the complementary color to blue, which is orange. The blue and orange create a bit of vibration together coupled with the effect of a slow shutter speed and zooming the lens to give this image the mood I was looking for. See the below diagram for details.