Violet Glaze

I met Violet Glaze in back in October when my good friend Henry Hong was helping her out with a piece she was writing for Baltimore City Paper about eating bugs. Specifically crickets and meal worms, which, I gotta say, really aren't too bad after all! Here's my favorite part of the article:

"But the final test would be in the eating. I met up with fellow City Paper foodie Henry Hong and his equally adventurous buddy Cory Donovan in the kitchen of Henry's restaurant..."

But that is another story, click here to read it.

Anyway, Violet eventually contacted me to shoot a head shot for her. She was interested in doing something fun and dramatic, something more like an environmental portrait rather than a just a head shot. The original idea was to shoot it outside, at night, near some sort of a neon light that would actually highlight part of her. Here's a sketch Violet sent me early on to give a sense of what she was looking for:



The original location we had in mind fell through (the neon lights weren't on), so instead we decided to shoot at The Charles Theater. The Charles Theater is a small but popular art house theater here in B-more known for it's hard-to-find documentaries, independent films, and foreign flicks, and Violet is well known for her movie reviews. We were given access to the second floor, which was a GREAT space with all kinds of awesome crap laying around- cool movie posters, old projection equipment, prints and negatives pinned to the walls, etc..

One thing I wanted to do was keep our original idea for the lighting - where part of Violet would be lit by the light glowing from a neon sign. Fortunately, the space we shot in at The Charles was funky and mysterious enough that it didn't look awkward. I used color gels on the strobes and loved the effect! Here's a few more of my favorite shots:











The same color gels are on for these as well, but with a little more subtlety...