Superman Flash Back

Yesterday I had the sad experience of making my only venture outside my dwelling be to watch the Orlando Magic lose their first playoff game to the Boston Celtics. Ughh and it was sooo close! They dug themselves a 20 point hole and then just couldn't quite make the comeback and lost by four. UGGGHHHH still maddening!!!

The Magic's star player is Dwight Howard, a physical freak who has muscle that previously were reserved only for action figures. Back in 2005 I got the chance to interview and photograph Dwight for Listen Magazine. At that time I think he had just turned 19 and I was 20. He turned out to be just a genuinely nice guy, one of the few professional athletes I've ever met where I left thinking they would be fun to be friends with regardless of their fame. 

For the piece I went to a game in Orlando and interviewed Howard and shot game photos. The next day I went to a practice and did the portraits. For the portraits I had my mom assist me. As you can see from her picture she was out of her mind excited to do it. Although, when I introduced her to Dwight he called her Mom and that won her over. She doesn't know a thing about him otherwise I don't think, but if we're watching him on TV she always points out, "He called me Mom!" 

I did the portraits in about 5 minutes with my mom holding up white foam core as the backdrop. Natural light and a basketball from my school's old P.E. closet. I ended up really liking the bottom one and at the time think it was one of the best pictures that had been taken of him for publication. Since then he has blown up nationally as a sports star and tons of great pictures have been taken. But, I can always say I knew him when...well when he was only the size of a truck...now he's more like a semi. 

Project Coffee; Firehouse Coffee Co.

I don't know if this is specific to a certain type of person or not, but I've noticed that more and more I miss words in signage. Or even better I add in imaginary words. I made the choice for this Project Coffee location and told Sean it was Coffee Co. Not sure how I missed the giant FIREHOUSE part above Coffee Co., or the smalled seemingly unneeded extra Firehouse above the giant FIREHOUSE, above Coffee Co.. (Do you end that with a double period? Tricky)

Somehow I assume this place at onetime had some relationship with a firehouse. Either that or the owners found a bunch of firehouse memorabilia at rock bottom prices somewhere. The Firehouse Coffee Co. is located in Canton square, a cool little place that somehow I didn't stumble upon until this past month. The FCC...ooooohhh how great are those initials, maybe they should have just gone with that, anyway the FCC has actually a pretty good website for a coffee shop. Got to say most of them suck expresso beans. They even have a blog, complete with three entries since January of 2009. 

The inside of the place is actually pretty cool, complete with a lamp with feathers, Blues Brother's statues, a barista who Sean decided was Daria and of course fire fighter paraphernalia. 

Sean and I both had some sort of peanut butter frappe. It was quite excellent. Oh and this marked the beginning of a new trend, biking to Project Coffee. Somehow I had gotten out of the habit of biking anywhere, but I have resurrected this. Things in Baltimore are surprisingly close by bike. And all my emissions are green...although hopefully not literally that would be a little too comic bookish.  

 

Random On The Way To The Beach Photos

I found these photos I took almost exactly a year ago and decided I liked them and should actually process them and share them with my cyber family. 

Project Coffee; One World Cafe

Project coffee still lives! 

I've been a little derelict in my duties to Project Coffee. Please forgive me coffee gods. We drank at the coffee temple known as One World Cafe which is in Charles Village right next to Johns Hopkins University. The place is part cafe, part bar and part veggie restaurant and ALLLLLL good. Turns out too that it's the rare cafe open on a Sunday morning. I went to two others and found them closed before going to OWC. You got to love a place that you can give initials like that. 

Met up with Sean there, actually after a few hours before meeting up with some friends from Silver Spring for breakfast. Still hungry though I got Chai Latte, which is becoming my staple, and a giant slab of coffee cake. Then I proceeded to eat Sean's nachos. As you can see from the pictures he was pretty upset. 

I've gone to the OWC quite a few times now and it's always fun. A cool group of people work there including the American version of Russel Brand. I also once met there Mackenzie Astin, the star of one of my favorite movies as a kid, Iron Will, which come to found out pretty much no one else ever saw. 

So hooray for One World Cafe. 

The Kings of DRU HILL

Well my Dru Hill shoot has finally run so thought I'd let you see some photos. You can see the article here at Baltimore Magazine's website. It was quite the fun shoot, the guys were actually a lot of fun to work with. I had been expecting the worse and was very pleasantly surprised and got nearly 5 hours from them. 

Lot's of props go out to Nunz, Jonathan Hanson, Kristin Putchinski and Michelle Johnson for all the help! Also to Wrightway Studios for being so kind to let us shoot at your beautiful facility! 

We shot this shot in Wrightway Studios here in Baltimore. From left to right we have Tao (who I unfortunately kept pronouncing like Tao of Buddhism, but is actually pronounced "tay-o"...I think I never felt confident on that) Nokio, Jazz and Sisqo. 

I think this has become my favorite shot, I just love the studio and I think the lighting turned out really well thanks to Johnny H on the lights.  

Shot this at an abandon row house right down from Druid Hill Park in the neighborhood that most of the guy grew up in. Nokio gave one of my favorite quotes, "Just give me a paper bag and I'd feel right at home here, don't even need to have booze...just the bag."

I didn't notice it until editing but I love the sign in the top left of the picture here. 

This was shot in Druid Hill park, the namesake of the band. Sisqo told me this was the first time the band had ever been photographed in the park. He said they did however film the Thong Song Remix video here...I appreciated that little factoid. 

The magazine used this as you can see from above as the features cover shot. 

We shot in Frederick Douglass High School where Jazz and Nokio went to school and first started performing and started forming the group. Dru Hill was actually a very organically started group...so Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, 98 Degree and all the rest of you can suck it. 

It was really fun to shoot a group of guys who were so comfortable in front of the camera. Told them I needed photos that looked like they were telling stories about high school and that's what I got! 

The Crew

This photo of me also doubles as my application for whitest man alive. 

Bob Hieronimus

A little over a week ago I got to shoot one of the nicest guys I have met in Baltimore! Bob Hieronimus is a local renaissance man. He has a radio show about conspiracies and signs, kind of Da Vinci Code stuff. He is a painter, painting murals, art cars, canvas and seemingly whatever other surface he wants. He has written several books. Back in the day he was a musician and friend of musicians like Jimi Hendrix, The Lovin Spoonful, Bob Marley and his sons and many others.

What mostly struck me about Bob and his wife Zoh was just how nice they were. I shot with Bob for 

two days for Baltimore Magazine. The first day at his house where he does his radio show. We did the 

photos of Bob and Zoh in the radio studio. It was a very small space and it was difficult to light but they were extremely patient and we spent much of the time laughing while I got all the lights right. 

After I was done Bob wanted to know what kind of music I was into. I named a few current bands that I was really liking and then told him I really loved Bob Dylan. As soon as I said that de asked me if I wanted a T-Shirt, I kind of thought it was a joke. Bob then disappeared and came back with a Dylan, Carlos Santana concert shirt from the early 90s. That wasn't enough though and he disappeared again and came back with a book on Dylan that he said he really loved and gave it to me. Somehow the Lovin Spoonful came up and I mention that I really liked their music too. Off went Bob again and this time came back 

with a photo he'd taken of the band and it was autographed by all the members!

Day 2 we met up at one of the murals he's done and took pictures of him in front of it. He drove there 

with his art car and afterwards we went up into Druid Hill Park and shot him with his car in the woods. 

It is rare that I get this kind of time with anyone, but Bob was so patient and nice through it all and 

willing to do whatever I wanted. I figured I'd see if he wanted to grab lunch so off we went to Bob's 

favorite hang the James Joycee Pub down in Harbor East where EVERYONE knew him. After a long 

lunch of chewing the fat we finally had to get on with our days, but not before Bob gave me a big hug 

and told me to keep in touch.

Shoots like that make it impossible to not love my job!