From Photographing the Art to Photographing the Artist
It was great working with Marlene last fall making photographs of her paintings in her studio. So when she called me about this time having a branding photography shoot, I was looking forward to returning to her studio for an entirely different shoot. She had plenty of artist props and settings to get a wide variety of branding shots, but she also wanted a couple of the photos we made to be able to be cropped to a more typical headshot style. The flexibility of my lighting setup and the high resolution of my mirrorless camera allowed me to get just what she wanted in terms of both a branding photo ,and one that could be cropped to a headshot. This provided max value “two in one” photos for Marlene to use on her website. I had one idea for the final shot if Marlene was game for it. I asked if she would be willing to lie on the floor and surround herself with brushes and tubes of paint for a straight down perspective branding photo. She said sure! I turned out to be my favorite photo of the shoot. Thank you Marlene for continuing to choose me as your photographer!
Driving up to Taos, New Mexico for a commercial portrait shoot on my second assignment (see the first) for an industry magazine, I had no idea that I would be photographing someone among his hundreds of accosting 12-string guitars. That is exactly the background I found myself in at the Larry Bell Studio photographing the famous Taos artist, Larry Bell. We went around to various places in his studio, including the 1950s sci-fi looking high vacuum device he has for creating his glassworks. He chose a special guitar from his collection for one of his commercial portraits. He bough the guitar decades ago for just a few dollars. He has subsequently spent thousands restoring it! Thank you Larry for showing me around your studio!
