Derrick Cartwright at Seattle Art Museum

I recently had the pleasure of photographing the new Executive Director of the Seattle Art Museum, Derrick Cartwright.  My contact at SAM called me up a couple days in advance and asked me to do a portrait but wouldn”t tell me who I would be photographing till the day of.  It was kind of fun to guess who it would be before hand and definitely added some spice to the preparation and setup. I couldn’t have been happier with the amiable Mr. Cartwright and I thought the photos came out great.

It turned out the mystery was because no one knew who the SAM board had chosen yet. I got to photograph him a day before the official public announcement of his appointment and we couldn’t take the chance of leaking the information. All very fun and super-secret-spy-agent-photographer!

After the announcement the photos showed up on line in news releases, and I’ve been having a great time googleing my own work.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/05/derrick-cartwright-to-lead-seattle-art-museum.html

Maddie

I got to practise my styling skills with this shoot with Maddie, a model from Heffner Management. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work to pull clothes for her but well worth it in the end. We headed out to Discovery park and got lucky with the weather. At the end of the shoot we were all happy and full of sunshine. Thanks to Heffner for organizing the model and to Horshoe  (ttp://www.horseshoeseattle.com/) and The Finerie (http://www.thefinerie.com/) for the great outfits.

Cherry trees and Spring fun

My beautiful mom came to visit me this last weekend and asked me to get a cereative portrait to put on her (eventual) web site.  This was a grand occasion because she doesn’t usually get her picture taken and isn’t too comfortable with the process. We did a ‘real’ indepth shoot though and had a great time. It helped that we wen’t out to the Arboretum at one of the best time of year and spent an hour and a half with the cherry trees. Here’s just a few photos from last weekend.

Isn’t she lovely!

Teaser

I did a beautiful portrait shoot this morning and only have one photo finished so far, but I thought I would throw it up for you to enjoy. Thanks Anne for making it down to Seattle and making the shoot happen so last minute!

A collection of highlights from the last 6 months

As a general rule, I don’t blog about weddings. They are their own separate entity, tons of fun, lots of work and really different from what this blog is trying to showcase. I did about 25 weddings in about four months and sadly failed to post any of my other work in my blog. There is so much delightful stuff I could show you from the last 7 months or so, so much to catch up on! I can’t unfortunately cover everything I’ve done in this modest blog, but I can give you some highlights

(perhaps one of the reasons I haven’t been posting is my inordinate obsession with tango…Way to much dancing in the last little while. These are my most recent pair of tango shoes, and I’m almost scared to wear them, they’re so pretty. This has become a favorite photo recently, inspiring jealous death threats, shoe fetish flavored teasing, and even a dance related photography job offer)

This is a photo I took for The Stranger, back before they stopped hiring contractors I thought this photo was so funny, both because of the difficulty of making chicken-fried-steak look appealing and also because of the lucky grab shot of the guy in the background. That guy is actually my dad, and he posed for fun, not intending me to actually take the picture. Beware! ye unsuspecting. For a week his photo was on the cover of the food section of the Stranger!

A friend and I organized a boudoir shoot just a couple months ago, mostly for fun and advertising material. We learned a huge amount and had a lot of fun.

We loved our models and felt blessed to get to photograph girls with so much personality and joy.

I also had a great time photographing Jasmyn, an aspiring model who introduced me to Point Defiance Park…

The shoot was fantastic, and we got some great stuff, but it was actually snowing on us the entire time we shot. Needless to say, we made frequent car ‘warm up’ trips throughout the afternoon.

And Finally, I spent on long summer day doing photos for Derby Salon http://www.derbysalon.com/  , getting to know their stylists and having fun with about 10 different models and looks.

The shoot reminded me how nice it is to have professional makeup and styling, and now I’m working on my own collection of makeup artists and stylists to work with. Thanks Derby!

Mayors Arts Awards 2008

I got the honor of photographing these award winning artists at the beginning of the season last year and I’m finally getting to put some of the photos up on line. These photos were taken for City Arts Seattle http://www.cityartsmagazine.com/ and the Mayors Office of arts and cultural affairs. It was a pleasure to see a couple of them used on Seattle Channel during the award ceremony but the best part of all was getting to meet the outstanding artists of 2008 that received recognition for their work in the community.  For more info on the artists, the awards, and to see the final photos that were picked, please visit http://www.seattle.gov/arts/community/arts_awards.asp

Cathryn Vandenbrink of ArtSpace;  http://www.artspace.org/

Hugo Ludeña, photographer extraordinaire and mentor for Latino youth

Beth Takekawa of Wing Luke Asian Museum; http://www.wingluke.org/

14/48 – the World’s Quickest Theater Festival

Coyote Central and Marybeth Satterlee; http://www.coyotecentral.org/

Steve Peter, Nonsequitur; http://nseq.blogspot.com/1990/01/brief-history-of-nonsequitur.html

Chris Sharp For City Arts Tacoma

Chris Sharp is a professional artist struggling to survive. I went down to Tacoma twice to photograph him for City Arts Tacoma and we took some great pictures. I was so happy with how the final layout turned out on the article that I asked the magazine to send me a digital copy so I could put it on my blog! Thank you staff at Encore (the owners of the magazine) for making my job so easy and interesting and thank you Chris for spending so much time with me taking great pictures. Check out the May/June edition of City Arts Tacoma the whole story on Chris and his art.

Anna

Anna and I had a great time on our shoot. She’s a glass artist extraordinaire and the presenting artist at my favorite Gala of the year. She’s also one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and won my undying loyalty by making me her special butter ginger tea. Visit her web site to see more of her amazing work

http://www.annaskibska.com/

La Côte Crêperie

I haven’t posted my stranger restaurant stuff before, but La Cote was so beautiful I couldn’t resist! I loved its previous incarnation St. Germain and I’m hopeful that La Cote will be just as good. I had fun in La Cote photographing the waitresses and the owner. Laurent Gabrel (the owner) is on the right track and I look forward to eating there in the future. See

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=526418

for the full article.

Tango!

I just finished this promo shoot for tango dancer extraordinaire Jaimes Friedgen (http://www.the8thstyle.com). I think the photos came out great and I had some fun playing with the post production.

We got lucky with the late afternoon sun, but boy was it cold! Thanks Jaimes and Christa for dancing in spite of the weather

Eventually we changed locations, but didn’t get to spend to much time there. I’m hoping to shoot more of these guys soon!