About three weeks ago, I photographed a young couple who are expecting their first baby. This is a real couple, Jarrell and Ali. Over the years, Jarrell has assisted me and modeled for me. He is wonderful company and has great style. This shoot was the first time I met Ali, and she was wonderful too. She was 7 months pregnant in these photos! We kept things pretty simple, shooting at my house and then outside at a family member’s home. As you can see, Jarrell is black (African-American to be precise) and Ali is white. About a week after this shoot, my local paper ran a story with the headline, Virginia ranks highest in U.S. for black-white marriages. Who knew? Nationally, the rate of mixed-race or interracial marriages jumped from 3% of all marriages in 1980 to 8% in 2010. It’ll be interesting to see if advertisers use more mixed-race couples in their work. It seems like a no-brainer for youth brands. Most people under 30 don’t think twice about mixed-race couples. But I think a lot of adults over 60 don’t approve. Anyway, here are a few of my favorites from our photo shoot.

Back in February of 2012, I posted a photo of a business man on a cell phone at night. About a month later, I got a call from an Ad Agency in New York inquiring about licensing this image for global advertising use on behalf of a large tech company. The Art Buyer said they were trying to avoid the “boring images” at stock agencies like Getty. This is funny because the photo in question is available on Getty Images. I think the client was trying to get a better price than Getty charges for Global Usage. That same week, a greeting card company in California contacted me about using a photo in their summer collection. These two calls got me thinking about what kinds of images I post on my blog and how Art Buyers might stumble upon them eventually. Because the telecom industry is so big and mobile phones are such a big part of our lives, I am posting another mobile phone photo from my Thailand shoot. This time it’s of an Asian business man moving quickly through a train station in Bangkok. This photo was made in-camera. No fancy Photoshop compositing. Making the photo simply required a few takes at different shutter speeds.

If you have read past posts, you know that back in early March I was hired by NBC to shoot stills for the Ed Schultz show. I took photos in between takes of a commercial Spike Lee was directing in Norfolk, Virginia. Below is the final ad running in Newsweek, The New Yorker and a few other magazines this summer.

I ended 2010 with a flurry of promotional activity, and I’m excited to keep moving forward with this new piece in 2011. I’ll use it as a leave-behind at meetings and as a special mailer to targeted leads. Peter Clark designed the piece and posted about the collaboration on the Wonderful Machine blog. This animated GIF provided by WM is best viewed on a computer. As I learned recently, animated GIFs are not supported on Android 2.1 devices like my Samsung Fascinate. Come on Verizon! Update to 2.2 already.

I thought my next post would be about Haiti, but I am still trying to wrap my head around that experience and avoid posting a blabbering mess. The first week back was eventful. I was in a minor fender-bender at an intersection. Initially, this was a huge bummer, but it triggered an exciting development. The accident caused me to miss an ASMP meeting in Richmond about estimating jobs. It was put on by a group called Wonderful Machine that represents and promotes photographers. I e-mailed the rep to see if I could obtain the presentation via email, and he emailed back to say he reviewed my website and wanted to bring me in as a member of Wonderful Machine. Boom! My car accident leads to membership in Wonderful Machine. I was told they accept roughly 15% of the photographers they evaluate. True or not, flattery is the way to any artist’s heart! By the end of the week, they featured one of my Halloween Photos for the  holiday weekend. I’m eager to see what kind of work comes from this new relationship. Below, is how my profile looks on their site when searched by region. One can also search by specialty.

If you are a big Conan fan, you’ve probably been wondering, “who shot that amazing photo of the blimp?” You can now rest your curious mind. It was me. On it’s way to Philly, the blimp made a pit stop in North Carolina to have some publicity stills and video done. I did the stills. I think a few of the photos have been used by fans to make funny Photoshopped composites. I’m a big Conan fan, so I hope they find a way to work the Blimp photos into a “In the year 2000″ sketch once the show is running on TBS.

A stock photo I shot last September was recently used in an e-mail blast to Comcast customers. Funny enough, the father in the photo is a Comcast customer so he received the e-mail and forwarded it to me. Kind of nice that they chose my photo as an example of a photo a family would want to back up. I don’t always get to see how my stock photos are used, so this was a nice treat. Coincidentally, I did commissioned work for their competitor, Cox Communications, just a few months ago.

This is from a recent shoot in Virginia Beach. We shot around sunset and got some beautiful light. Emory, pictured here was a great sport taking quite a beating in the waves. Each time a wave came in I had to hold the camera above my head and jump up. Crazy! The camera did get a little wet despite my efforts. There are better photos we did on land but I’m posting this one because I risked my camera for it. Next time, I will have a case for the camera. All images are model released and available for licensing.

So, I just got an e-mail from Cox Communications pitching their phone service. It was a fun surprise because I photographed everything on it except for the cutout of the guy with the mic. He was shot in a studio somewhere else. If you live in Hampton Roads, you’ve probably seen similar billboards and mailers featuring these photos. This was a fun shoot that took us all over the area from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach.

I did a lifestyle shoot with this really nice family as I continue to build a library of images. Mom and the girls are all dancers who are used to performing. The kids showed me a few moves before moving into the kitchen for a little snack.  After a bit of cajoling, we got this really nice moment between mom and kids.