Happy New Year! Though you probably can’t tell from my posts, 2018 was an incredible and incredibly busy year for me. I shot and self-published a book, traveled around the country on numerous assignments and even bought a house. And if that weren’t enough, we’re expecting our first child in February! Yikes! But between a crammed schedule and waiting for numerous shoots to publish I’ve had very little to share other than photos of my pregnant wife taking down gross, old wallpaper. Which, you know… bad optics. Don’t worry, I helped too, but those are challenging selfies. Anyway, as the year begins life has slowed to a more manageable pace (at least for the now…) and various projects have finally published. So time to start sharing. I’ll kick it off with a couple of clips from two shoots I did late last year with financial publication Morningstar Magazine. Both featured prominent Southern Californians kicking butt in their respective fields. Neither shoot took place in a conference room! I shoot for a lot of financial publications and anytime we can avoid that cliche I consider a success.
The first shoot was with Tara Unverzagt, a financial planner based in Torrance, who also happens to be a competitive track cyclist. For the shoot we met her after work at the VELO Sports Center in Carson, where she trains. The idea was to show her in typical work attire in the cycling environment, so I wanted to show her with bikes whizzing by in the background. A big challenge was that there weren’t that many cyclists on the track at the time, so we had to wait for them to circle all the way around the 250 meter track and then hope that we nailed the timing on both the foreground and background. If not, we had to wait for them to come around again. Then they would take a break. Not too many chances to get it right! Fortunately Tara was a patient subject and could nail her expression on cue, so we had several good options to choose from in the end.
The second shoot featured Howard Gleicher and Greg Padilla of Los Angeles-based Aristotle Capital Management. This shoot was less concept-driven, but the building, in Santa Monica, had a beautiful courtyard with palm trees and a koi pond that provided a great setting. You’ve probably noticed that neither of those elements were in the final shot, but this wall worked pretty well too.
More new work coming soon. Next up, a motorcycle-riding librarian!