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Local entrepreneurs (and good friends) needed to update their product shots. Owners Christian and Kelly Nye produce delicious treats they aptly dubbed Nye’s Cream Sandwiches. Homemade ice cream nestled between two homemade cookies with delicious flavor combinations makes for an awesome dessert or snack. Kelly did a great job securing several props and Christian kept his babies cold. We used a stand in for the pre-light and then worked a few ingredients into the shot. A nice mix of hard light for the cookies and soft fill for the ice cream was the recipe for these still life pics. If your mouth is watering, you can order some from this link – www.taigan.com/shops/nyescream  And yes, I brought home a few for our freezer!

My friends at the Gospel Music Channel in Atlanta called with another still-photography assignment. This time they needed stills of a full-length feature film. Starring Lynn Whitfield and Michael Jai White, “Somebody’s Child” is about a terminally ill mother whose son befriends an ex-con, played by Byron Minns. The scenes I covered took place in a hospital. Swirl Films secured an abandoned facility for the shoot. This obviously made being on set even more fun (and, honestly, sometimes a little creepy). Here are a few of my favorite images from the production, directed by Gary Wheeler. Check out GMC’s website for more family-friendly shows.

For Spring Break 2012, my wife and I decided to take our daughter, Lucy, on a little road trip to our nation’s capital. Despite growing up only a few hours from there, I had never been. So it was a blast walking (and walking and walking) around the city, seeing some of the places I had previously only seen on TV. Lucy and I often has the same looks of “Wow” on our faces. Before we arrived, I knew I wanted to capture a few of the sites in B&W. Here are a few of my favorite images from Washington, D.C.

In December, I was tapped to update photography of some emergency service teams and vehicles for New Hanover Regional Medical Center. Their shot list reminded me of a little boy’s wish list at Christmas: a four-wheeler, a helicopter, a bicycle and a few rescue trucks. For one photo, a cherry-picker provided a great vantage point to capture all of their “grown-up toys.” The lawn of the USS North Carolina battleship made for a great location, complete with downtown Wilmington as a backdrop. I scouted other locations that were New Hanover County-specific, and our two-day shoot concluded on the sands of Wrightsville Beach. The cooperative pilot of AirLink was even able to land right on my mark, not once but twice! My wish list for 2012?….More fun shoots just like this one!

Telly Award-winning Lighthouse Film Company was shooting on location in downtown Wilmington recently. The dance party scene was complete with live band Rio Bravo http://www.reverbnation.com/riobravo. My assignment was to capture some production stills and shots of the musicians. I really love being on set, especially big film shoots with all the gear and crew. Lots of energy! Knowing how (and when) to shoot production stills is pretty important. You definitely don’t want to get in the way, or interfere with their work, of course. Hope the guys at LFC like seeing themselves behind the camera as much as I like being behind mine.

 

I live in a small town, but we have a big church. It’s called Port City Community Church, or PC3 for short. Some people call it the “rock-and-roll church,” and we do have an awesome band. But that’s only one reason why approximately 6000 people come to one of the four services on Sundays. It’s for the message. Some folks may say, “the message is the boring part.” But not here. Surfer/pastor Mike Ashcraft brings the Word in a down-to-earth way with an open and honest heart. He’s real, and his messages are too. So I was very honored when the media department asked me to photograph him. Where would we go? Well, he’s a beach lover (like me), so that’s where we went. But I didn’t want to shoot just another beach portrait, so I decided to overexpose the images quite a bit. You could say the results are almost heavenly.

New Hanover Regional Medical Center needed a cover shot of triplets who were born 8 weeks premature in 2010 at their children’s hospital. The marketing department wanted to do a “follow up” on the trio for their newsletter. Now that the boys are 18 months old, they are quite mobile, to say the least. Getting this shot was truly a group effort! After working with little ones many many times in my carreer, I’m not as intimidated as I used to be. And with a bit of planning, you can get the shot faster than you can say 1,2,3. Special thanks to the McLambs for helping out!