Baltimore Gothic

One of my favorite photo shoots I've done to date is my Baltimore American Gothic shoot. Not only did I love the way the final image came out, but it was also one of those shoots where you spend half of your time laughing. 

I used to live in the Charles Village area of Baltimore and one of the big things there is to paint your house all funky colors. Something about that got me thinking about doing a Baltimore version of American Gothic. I wanted to do a humorous play on it and somehow this led me into getting a kid involved. 

One of my favorite models to have ever worked with is Claire Wright who is the wife in this picture. We hit it off from the very first time we shot together and continued doing shoots together. She was able to  introduce me to Jack, the boy in the picture who turned out to be great. Jack I think was not quite 4 when we took these photos. I really love shooting with kids, if for nothing else than the hilarious things they say and do and Jack didn't disappoint. He called me Mr. Daniel for the whole shoot, which every time he said it made me laugh.  

I was able to get Claire's dress and pin from Charlotte Elliott's, an antique store in Hampden. My stylist ended up not showing up and Jack's mom and I ended up getting Jack's shirt from Wal-Mart and his jacket from Marshall's along with Claire's sweater. The "pitchfork" was a Target special. Makeup was done by Michelle Johnson. 

The image above and to the right is the unedited version of what I did. I ended up re-shooting the house after the construction was done and to get the right angle. I got some much needed editing guidance from fellow photographers Jacqueline Schlossman and Howard Ehrenfeld

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I think this little collage does a pretty good job of showing why I love working with kids. Jack's mom had told him that for the photos he needed to look angry. Well as soon as I got ready to shoot he gave me his angry face and it was adorable, but WAY too much. I asked him if he could give me a half angry face. He thought about it for a moment and then gave me the face in the first picture...with one side of his face angry and one not...half angry. It was pretty hilarious.

In fact Jack was pretty hilarious all around and much of the time was spent trying to get Claire to not crack up. Claire had informed me that Jack had told people that she was his girlfriend. I think it's pretty clear in the last picture Jack is well aware that he's the man and Claire is going to be his girl.

Oh, forgot to mention it was the power of Skittles that got me 20 plus minutes of modeling out of Jack...well that and the power of his love for Claire.