Last summer I got a call from Lawdragon to shoot portraits of two lawyers here in Alabama for their journal. Lawdragon is a national portal listing of lawyers, evaluations and lawyer profiles and for this assignment they wanted to spotlight lawyers outside of their offices and not in suits. The direction was to place them in environments that matched up with something regarding their own hobbies or interests outside of the office. Jere Beasley and Ralph Cook were my two assignments. I have been wanting to release these for months but as it usually turns out the time between the shoot and when pictures are published sometimes stretches out further than one may expect.
Mr. Beasley lives in Montgomery and was Lt Governor during one of George Wallace’s terms as governor. In fact, Jere was acting governor for 30 days after George Wallace was shot. Mr. Beasley’s office was a short walk from the Montgomery Biscuits’ ball park. At this point I forgot the exact involvement Mr. Beasley has with the park itself and the land on which it sits now but I do remember that he loves to watch them play! That’s where we decided to go for our portraits.
Jere Beasley
Mr. Cook lives in Birmingham and is a lawyer with a firm downtown. I found out that he was the former Supreme Court Chief Justice of Alabama which is a big deal for such a humble and personable man. I called him to discuss the shoot and discover his hobbies and fishing came to the top. He gladly volunteered to bring his hat, vest, waders and fly rod to our shoot. We chose the lake at Oak Mountain to shoot and I waded (minus waders) into the water with him and my assistant positioned my strobe toward Mr. Cook (i.e. held the strobe to keep it from falling into the water).
Ralph Cook
2008-2009 UCP Annual Report
My friends at United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of Birmingham (follow them on Twitter) asked me to do specific portraits for their annual report using some of the participants in their program along with some of their contributors. Jennifer Ellison wanted something in black and white which we did and they turned out very nicely. Another goal was to try and get some natural and fun interactions between everyone in the subjects and at least one group was having a lot of fun dancing and showing off but they didn’t make the cut for obvious reasons….but there was fun in all these shots. In the shot on the right Daniel is an obvious Auburn fan (who knows why right?) and we had fun picking back and forth about Alabama vs Auburn and shouting “Roll Tide!”
One of the challenges of getting all the shots together of everyone was organizing everyone to be ready on the same day which didn’t happen. The shoot took place on 3 different days with the first day done by bring my mobile studio to their beautiful headquarters and the next two days were shot at my studio. There was one girl program participant who just wouldn’t smile for the camera – until I left to check out one of my lights that had stopped working when I heard everyone yelling at me, “Alan! She’s smiling get over here!” Thankfully we got the shot!
I will post one shot that didn’t make the Annual Report cut but gives some idea of the fun time we all had together.
The Ceci's of Huntsville, AL
On the left I included the page from the March 2010 edition of Family Circle Magazine and on the left included one of the family shots that I personally loved. We shot that at the The Davidson Center for Space Exploration next to US Space & Rocket Center. The story was to highlight the Ceci’s civic involvement as well as the city of Huntsville. I learned some cool things about Huntsville I didn’t know which was how much history exists there especially in the area of Twickenham Historic District which includes the oldest house in Alabama which was built in 1814. There I also found the childhood home of actress Tallulah Bankhead.
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Thanks to the good people at Southern Living I have the tear sheets from the Healthy Living Section from January’s edition. It is really cool to see talented designers put together a visually appealing layout of text and photos like they did here….unlike my feeble attempt here to show them! |
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The simplicity of a face is lost many times with a color portrait. Now, I know that sounds counter-intuitive but when you remove color and you’re left with black and white and shades of gray the drama comes out in portraits. Black and white can be formal or informal. I have had the pleasure of shooting many interesting people and have always had a love for black and white so I thought about merging the two. In the new digital world there is much attention to color and color management that the art of black and white seems lost somehow – and if we are honest b&w may seem a little too simple for many. With b&w there is still subject and composition to make it either interesting or not. I just love b&w portraits and I hope you do as well.
D. Watts was a pleasure to shoot with because she made it easy and a few other things made this shoot go well. 1) She has a striking appearance with her blond hair style and the dress she picked suited her well. She accessorized very well with bracelets and jewelry. She has spent some time in front of the camera which does help. 2) The time of day was great. It was 6PM and the evening sun was nice and warm. 3) The sunflowers was a very nice setting to match not only her style (personality and music) but the paisley dress also fit nicely. 4) Assistants. Jeff and Brad, helped a lot on this. If you will check out the napkin diagram below you will see how it worked. Brad held my scrim to filter the direct sun off of Denise while Jeff reflected the sun back on her using foam core essentially creating a “Denise Sandwich.” If you notice you can see the left side of her face you can see the foam core reflection. I shot with a 50mm prime opened pretty wide and the rest is a bit of Photoshop retouching with color and contrast. I added some design elements to it with brush swirls, etc.
Also check her tunes out on iTunes…
Mary Jo McCabe - Psychic (http://www.maryjomccabe.com/)
Bhrett McCabe (Psychologist)
When I got a call to shoot corporate shots for the McCabe’s I had no idea it a psychic was involved. We’ve all seen psychics on the internet or on TV and have our own predisposed opinions of them of course but the McCabe’s didn’t fit those stereotypes from my meeting with them yesterday. MaryJo doesn’t name-drop but her client list includes Fortune 500 CEO’s and some Hollywood actors/actresses. I can say she has heard every stupid psychic joke – so much for originality.
They both needed new photos for their websites and also for press packs to be sent out soon. We made an afternoon and evening of the shoot and (sorry MaryJo!) kept them from their Outback dinner….Bhrett wanted to portray his sports psychology as well as have new images for the radio show (http://www.thepsychicandthedoc.com).
Bhrett brought his daughters along for the shoot and with Grandma in tow we all had a great time. I even got some fun shots of the girls and some with grandma also.
I felt the results were great and the customer was happy which is what matters.
(Some lighting notes: Inside I did use my 300W strobe with softbox but I pointed it at the ceiling to have a softer look while I dragged the shutter to let more ambient lighting from the background stream in. I wanted to show context of sitting in the living room and not over power them with light making the background dark. I also shot mostly at 2.0 to really blur the background. In some shots behind MaryJo the lamps just have a nice golden glow which looks really nice)
Ok so it’s not Rolling Stone but it’s a start. I was called by someone out of Jacksonville, Fl which I remember answering when my cell phone rang. I typically do not answer many numbers I do not recognize. The gentleman was very nice as he explain precisely what he was looking for to go on the cover of The Successful Contractor trade periodical.
I had never heard of the Adkins brothers before that day but I enjoyed meeting them. My assignment was to shoot the owners of the local company Adkins Ontime Electric for the cover and inside spread. Both brothers were gracious as I took them out to the middle of a parking lot (at high noon) and set their van in the background shooting with a large octagon softbox and a silver relector. I won’t post the shots where I sent pain through their eyes with the sun reflector. I’ve learned better not to do that with subjects.
Since that day I hear Kerry Adkins on the radio advertising the business (not saying I had anything to do with their success because I know better) and sharing some scripture. It reminds me that this business is not about just taking great pictures but it’s about a fabric that is being weaved and created out of the stories and experiences of meeting people involved in creating great pictures.