Here's a couple random images of my buddy Chad from Texas School last week.  He's a police officer by day in Iowa, and a photographer with his sweet wife Janna by night.  Actualy, I think it's the other way around, but whatever... he's a great guy 24/7... despite the crazy bleached blonde mohawk he was sporting for Texas School.  That's Chad for ya... generally a little quiet and soft spoken and then BAM! He busts out something that seems competely crazy and out of character for him.  Guess that's the way they roll up there in Iowa.  Oh... and for a real show just ask Chad about Marvin the Martian. Both these images were taken at night (obviously using light from a street lamp above and a little Sunpack rechargeable video light behind him for a little rim light.

My mom recently went through and cleaned out an old storage unit, and tucked away in a little baggy was my first pair of shoes.  (Everyone say it with me now... awwwwwww!)  Not exactly Air Jordan's, no hip colors, and for the love of clowns they have bells on them (what was I, a cat toy?), but they're still my first pair of treads, and they made me just a little warm and fuzzy on the inside as soon as I saw them because I instantly remembered the [Olan Mills?] 8x10 photo of me wearing them 37 years ago. Another gem found from the storage unit was a baby blue knit cap I wore during that first year as well.  I don't have a photo of it (yet), but it's become my lucky editing hat over the last two days.  I feel more creative when it's on my head, even though the straps that once tied under my chin to keep it on now barely make it down to my ears.  I'm sure I look ultra masculine and generally fantastic in it, and somehow that makes working on photos in Photochop more pleasant.

Here's my super sophisticated, completely proprietary lighting set up for the above images.  The secret ingredient is the artist Pino coffee table book under the elegant aluminum foil sheet... sure you could use any book, but I like to think his amazing painting works help reflect just a little better light quality.  You know, through osmosis or something.

Last week I was at a photography session downtown in Deep Ellum during the middle of the day, and I was leaning up against a telephone pole to take an image.  Just before I moved on to the next spot I turned to catch a glimpse of said pole and my "cool image radar" went balistic.  There were thousands of staples near eye level in this pole where I'm guessing lots of band gigs, for sale items and lost puppy notices were once posted.  Life was announced around this pole.  And now that all the paper was removed, the way the bright sun revealed all the grit, texture and shadows was pretty sweet. Art is everywhere.

Here's a few images from last week at Texas School.  We did a shoot, oddly enough, at the same exact location I took Lauren and Ron's mock engagement images only a couple days earlier.  We had a few models to use to shoot whatever type of images we wanted, and I feel really drawn to the types of images below and want to create more of them...  not ballerina images, per se, but rather the idea of more fine art images.  Creatively this is where I feel most 'alive', and I could play in this space all. day. long. PArdon the sentimentality today... I'm feeling a bit in touch with my inner self, but I plan to be out of touch with myself and back to regularl scheduled programming again tomorrow.

This model had serisouly amazing eyes.  There is very little post-procesing done to the image below.  Ridiculous, right?

I was completely surprised and more than excited when Mary Hanson (photographer and creator of Blogs of Photogs) emailed me a little over a week ago to tell me that my blog was going to be featured as one of her top 10 favorites in an article she wrote for Professional Photographer Magazine.  In the article (read it here), Mary gives some fantastic tips on creating a great blog, and considering she has reviewed several hundred blogs and knows a thing or two about the subject.  It is truly an honor to be listed in the top 10, especially given the other 9 photogs in the list, several of which I have always been in awe of. On a side note, I had to laugh when the magazine showed up in the mail today, and as Kylie was reading it she pointed out a couple typos in the post of the screenshot of my blog that was shown in the article.  Bwahahaha... that's what I get for posting by moonlight.