Holidays, Family, etc.

It can be tricky keeping busy this time of year, especially with so many familial obligations like getting presents and drinking heavily (a time honored Donovan family tradition). (Sorry, Mom). This year though, amidst so many holiday commitments, I brought some small lights and my camera to do some quick portraits of the family. Here's my dad:



Most of my memories of my dad at the house take place with him behind that counter in the kitchen. He's a great cook, and I love how the shot came out. The lighting is almost entirely artificial, but I set it up to look like the natural light usually does in the kitchen. There's a big window to the left where a lot of sunlight comes in, and this looks almost like what it does on bright, sunny days (only better, of course ;)

And here's my brother Kyle:




When we moved into the house, my brother got the biggest room. Although it's the second largest bedroom and somewhat conveniently tucked away in the house, my sister and I (13 and 14 years old, respectively) didn't want it as it was connected to my parents room. But that made it perfect for Kyle, 6 at the time. Over the years the room has taken on a life of it's own, one which no one seems to be able to control. The floor is littered with various toys from Kyle's childhood, but a few of my own, long thought to be exiled to the attic and/or lost over time, have somehow become hostages of the room. There are water bottles, clothes, easter baskets, video game controllers, a few board games, and a large gently used foosball table. You can see it here on the left, protected by layers of forgotten toys and junk that only the bedroom still cherishes. The television, still greedy for attention (typical), got smart and climbed the wall a few years ago, but it's only a matter of time before it too is devoured by the ravenous room.

DC Magazine, June 2008

Even though I had such a big assignment from Baltimore Magazine (Top Salons, see below), I was still able to squeeze in some assignments for DC Magazine. This month, I covered the Radar Art, Radar Culture, and Look Who's Talking features. Here's a couple of pages that included images in the table of contents:





Oh, almost forgot- here's the contributor page. See if you recognize anyone hahaha:



And here's the good stuff:



That's Mike Weber, a sort of art dealer/ art consultant, who is an artist himself. Here's a quote from an e-mail I got from Mike the week of our shoot:

"Two weeks ago, I broke my wrist and forearm while skateboarding. Had reconstructive surgery and now proudly sport 15 pins and two metal plates around my peanut brittle bones. Airport security will be more fun now. I have a removable splint so it won't be a problem for shooting."

Haha, sorry Mike, I couldn't resist. Anyway, as it turns out, he's good friends with Jason Wright, who I photographed for DC back in April (see the April postings below), and it was Jason who actually brought him to the hospital. In any case, he was great to photograph, had an amazing studio, and we were able to hide his wrist and forearm injury quite well. I like the one that the magazine chose to print, but this was my favorite shot:



Next, the Radar Culture piece:



which features the Echo Park Dance Company. I love photographing dancers! We had shot a bunch indoors, but there was this cool alley behind us that they had mentioned wanting to get a few shots in. They stepped outside to get ready, and by the time I made it out there, they had literally scaled and positioned themselves between these two buildings! They were only able to hold it for a short period of time, but there was all we needed to pull off this shot.

And here's the Look Who's Talking piece, the sort of signature feature of DC Mag:



featuring Grant Ginder. From the article:

"Simon & Schuster recently signed on to publish Ginder’s first novel,
This is How it Starts, which takes readers behind DC’s velvet ropes as it
tracks a new generation of trustafarian 20-somethings navigating
Washington’s elite nightlife scene."

We wanted to shoot in a popular nightlife location, and as it turns out, the place we managed to get is actually a crucial nightlife spot in his novel. Of course, when we shot it was 10am, but I think we did a great job of making it look later in the evening. Once again, I liked the shot the magazine printed, but here's another that has grown on me:

June 2008: Baltimore Magazine

This was a great month for me editorially! I was given the feature piece for Baltimore Magazine, "2008 Top Salons". The article featured 30 salons, of which 12 were to be photographed (Alpha Studio, Balance the Salon, Brian Bunce Barbers, Elizabeth Jacob Spa & Salon, K. Co Design Salon and Day Spa, Lluminaire Salon, Mt. Washington Spa, Quintessential Gentleman, ReNew Organic Day Spa, Scene 217, Sprout, and Uno Salon). The feature was also followed by a small "behind the scenes" type piece about Empire Beauty Schools, which I also was assigned to photographed.

Here's what it looks like in the magazine:









I love how the whole piece came out! All the salons were great fun to shoot, I'm thrilled with how the images came out, and I loved the layout!

Since a couple of these are too small to see in the tear sheets above, a few of my favorite shots were....

- the shot for Alpha Studio. The girl getting her hair done is Mary Alice Fallon Yeskey, from the T.V. show "Ace of Cakes" (which is shot here in B-more). She was a lot of fun to photograph, the shoot was a blast:



- the shot for Scene 217. My art director was looking for a shot of the front window, but that also somehow tied it in with Little Italy (where it is located). Debbie Ingrao, the owner, mentioned that her husband had a Vespa, and she had no problem dresssing up and modeling with it in front of the salon. She also had no problem with onlookers from the restaurant across the street, whose windows were being flooded by the flashes of my strobes outside...



- the shots for Brian Bunce Barbers and The Quintessential Gentleman. Normally only featuring specifically spa's and salons, it was cool to see these guys included. Brian Bunce is fairly new to the scene and was thrilled to be a part of it,



and the guy getting the shave from The Quintessential Gentleman is actually getting a real shave. So we're talking documentary style with the shot, and the guy giving him the shave was good, too - it was hard to keep up! :



Also in this issue was Rachel Rappaport, blogger of Coconut & Lime (coconutlime.blogspot.com). Her blog, with over 700 original recipes, gets 100,00 unique visitors every month. She was featured in the Lifestyle dept. of this issue, and they included one of the shots of her in the table of contents. Check it out:

May 2008: DC Magazine

Had a LOT of work in the May issue of DC Magazine. Here's just a selection of some of the best...




Rosana and Dinah, owners of the Circle Boutique on 14th street in DC. Very cool little shop. We had a blast shooting here, the girls were a lot of fun to work with and there were a ton of great shots. The curtains they're posing in front of are for the dressing rooms, which were very cool and prominent in the store.



Larry Incognito of Commonwealth and The Greater Good, sort of hip-hop, urban type fashion boutiques. I think they were on Florida Ave. Turns out Larry Incognito is in fact his real name, so I wanted to do something different and funky that could go well with his name. It was pretty bright outside, so there was a lot of reflection in the window. I toyed around with some wireless strobes on the inside while he was getting ready and found that I could light just enough of the inside to be visible, but still be able to see some of the outside reflected on the surface of the window. I loved the effect! He sort of blends into both inside the store and the street, which was all the more appropriate since the store, again, features hip, "street" type fashion. My editors loved it, especially with the caption they were able to use, which read: "Window Shopping: Larry Incognito reflects".



This is Barton Seaver, head chef of popular DC restaurant "Hook". This year, he started "Tackle Box", which "bundles and delivers ready-to-go lobster pots (loaded with mussels, clams, corn and Old Bay), spicy sausage and big shellfish dinners." If you order within Georgetown, the delivery is made with Seaver's white Vespa (pictured). They used the shot above, but I also really liked this shot:



Here are two other shots included in the same feature:



Grace Teng of "Grace's", "Grace's Fortune" (both in Bowie, MD) and "Grace's Mandarin" (National Harbor just outside of DC). This was a tough shoot because I had actually gotten lost on the way to "Grace's" and by the time I got there they were about to re-open the restaurant, so we only had about 15 mins to shoot. I hadn't expected to have to rush through it and was coming from another big shoot, so all I had was big, heavy, time consuming power packs and strobes. Somehow I managed to throw the lights up, get some exposures, and be packing up by the time they were sitting incoming customers. But the best part of this shoot? Grace sent me home with a HUGE box of food!



Chef Howsoon of Cafe Trope. He whipped up some mussels for the shoot - they're in the pan to his right - which I got to eat afterward. Which was awesome, not only because I LOVE mussels and these were extra good, but because it was only 10am haha!



AND, last but certainly not least, here's Anne Iyer:



Anne hosts exclusive "Hush Dinners" out of her Eastern Market home, complete with intricate, six course meals and guest chefs. Although I initially really liked the shot of her dog jumping through the hoop, I've since grown to really like this shot the best:

Something like an apology, or more like an excuse

Okay okay, so it's been awhile since the last update, but I have a really good excuse....

2008 has been an incredibly busy, exciting, and productive year! I would've loved to share more as things were happening, but we all know how it is - you skip an update because you've got a full day of shoots scheduled, and before you know it there's snow on the ground and the last image posted to your blog is a shot of Patterson Park on a spring morning that you just happened to catch because you were toying around with your cell phone camera and "mobile blogging". Sigh.

It's time to make up for lost time. Or perhaps, lost blog posts. So, to everyone who has accepted my response of "oh, I've just been so busy lately" at one time or another during the last, oh, 6 - 8 months, this one's for you.

I'm going to start posting the work I've done throughout 2008, starting with where I left off....