The First Time I Photographed The All-American Rejects:

Sometimes it’s fun to participate in the notion of Throwback Thursday.  This time let’s take a trip back to October 7, 2006, the first time I photographed AAR or as some other folks remember it, my 23rd birthday.  This show was at Seton Hall University in South Orange, NJ.  The guys were on the Verizon Wireless Campus Crawl tour.  It was a lovely night wherein I made friends that I still have today.  

The shot of Nick and Mike toward the end here has particular memories for me.  I was standing stage right backstage when I saw them move toward one another.  I ran back around into the photo pit, fully hurdled a folding chair that had arrived from campus security, landed and got my shot.  Like a ninja swan I had soared over portable furniture to achieve my goal.  Upon walking back to my original post backstage I walked into the base of the light stand and hit it so hard that I instantly had a bump in my shin the size of a grapefruit.  I am the definition of grace.  Happy Thursday!

Photos of Jon Danovic : Director, Editor, Visual Awesome Creator

In the continued pursuit of the project I’m telling you as little about as possible (until it’s finished), I photographed Jon Danovic.  Here are some outtakes from that shoot.  He’s a master of his craft with a phenomenal eye for the moving image.  If you’re a fan of The All-American Rejects you’ve already seen his work as he’s done the videos that populated their YouTube channel during 2012.  He also directed the music videos for Someday’s Gone, Kids in the Street, Walk Over Me, and Heartbeat Slowing Down (lyric video).  The latter on this list is one of the the most visually stunning moving images I’ve ever seen set to music.  More from this when the project is completed.

Get to know his eye here:  http://www.jondanovic.com and http://www.youtube.com/AMRMusic1

2012: A Year in Photos

This year was a wonderful journey in art for me.  This collection of photographs by no means covers everything that I shot.  It certainly doesn’t do justice to everyone who did me the honor of allowing me to take their photograph.  Some things I’ve shot can’t be posted yet because of their role in album artwork, or were never intended for mass consumption, etc.  What is here is a sample of some of my favorite shots of the year.

This year definitely had some nostalgic tones to it photographically.  I hadn’t shot the All-American Rejects in a few years till March, but it was wonderful to get back to doing so regularly.  They’re such wonderful people and so very much fun to shoot.  Obviously I’ve photographed Alex Carpenter quite a bit this year as well, which again, it had been a while since I’d done so.  Working with friends is more fun than I can have anywhere, except Disneyland.  I haven’t shot Daughtry since April 2010, what a wonderful way to cap off the live concert element of my photos for the year.  I am so fortunate for having had the opportunity to travel with them as much as I did.

In February Porcelain Black and I did a shoot which we’re finally starting to let out into the world in small portions.  Here’s two more of those shots, probably our second most fun shoot to date (I’d say the white trash roof top shoot in New Orleans was the most fun - but that was 2011).  

The very talented wAx is here as well.  We shot new promo shots - which are here, and his new album package, which is not.  Next year you’ll get to see those photos when his new album Continue comes out.

I started working on a few new series, two of which are represented here, sort of.  The Disneyland project isn’t going to be posted until I’ve finished it, however other photos of the park are here.  They include a couple photos of my friend’s son on his first trip to the park.  Watching him discover the magic was so incredible, I was flattered to be asked to a part of such a special day with someone I’ve known and loved my whole life, she’s like a sister to me.  Neighboring Forestation, the accidental series of my closest friends.  This has been so much fun and I can’t wait to continue it in the new year, but those that have graced this blog already, Philippe, Ryan, Alex, and Colleen are represented in that collection image.

I’ve been photographing people I shoot on stage with their pets at home for a while now.  The shoot I did with Nick Wheeler and his dog Dexter was so much fun.  It was great because we’d been talking about it for over a year and finally got to do so.  The timing on that was fortunate because the All-American Rejects are teaming up with Petfinder.com to help animals like Dex find their forever homes.  So here are a few shots from the day as well as the ads for Petfinder.

Included here as well are photos of the very talented Matt Palmer, my friend Pfc Sanchez on his Harley - newly returned safely from Afghanistan, Hyla (Host of The Daily Buzz), and my friend Shawn.

Looking back over this entry, and at these photographs I am overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude that this is my life and my work.  Thank you, because anyone who cares even the slightest about the work I do makes it possible for me to do it.  What a wonderful year in photography, thanks for those of you on the ride with me and who support me year after year.  Here’s to the next one!

The All-American Rejects at the Grove Photos: Part 2

Another photo set of wonderfully talented friends.  It just doesn’t get old.  It was a really great day and night of great people I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by.  The caliber of each of these human beings is well above average.  I’m talking about everyone in the photos, not just the four guys you see on a poster.  Dexter’s a people too, so that statement applies to him as well.  :)

The All-American Rejects at The Grove of Anaheim

Thursday November 1 I shot my lovely friends The All-American Rejects in Anaheim.  It was, as always, the right kind of photographic fun.  The kind that reminds me how much I love using my camera in the right musical setting.  Hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed shooting them.  This is the first of a couple photo sets from this show coming your way.  There will be some kind of video component at some point as well.  Mutual artistry among friends is what makes my world go round.

My Creative Neverland : A Rant.

Lately my brain seems to be moving at about 10,000 miles per minute.  It’s as though it has lay dormant for some time and has been awoken by some mysterious force.  Something happened and I went through a creative drought.  I know what happened, I don’t know that the details are important so much as it is that I felt a kind of emotional pain for some time best not shared with the world at large.  

My brain, my heart, my spirit - they’re awake.  They are in concert with one another, and they are on fire.  It’s been some time since I’ve felt this way.  Energized and alive.  I’m ready to or already have shed the past that desperately needed shedding and I look toward the future with excitement and vigor, rather than dread and fear.  I look at a new challenge and I can’t wait to be sleep deprived.  

It may sound ludicrous (oh how I love that word) but some of my best work has happened in that little twilight zone my brain enters when I’ve not slept enough and have been fueled solely on caffeine for just past the right amount of time.  This is where I find my creative Neverland.  Second brainwave to the right and straight on to insanity.  This isn’t about the final product, it doesn’t matter if the lagoon is full of mermaids when I get there - it’s about the flight, about the journey, about what comes between those little hours of “How the hell am I still awake?” and “I’ll see you next Tuesday.”

That’s where my brain absolutely eats.  For the last few years every time I picked up my camera it was to either earn a paycheck or because I felt obligated to document something.  I lost my inspiration.  It wasn’t fun anymore.  I lost sight of the fact that when I was 14 years old I said to myself, “When I grow up, I want to take photos for a living.  I want to take photos of rock stars for a living.  I want to be the visual translation of their music.  I want people to see a show - the way I see a show.  I want to learn how to light a studio shot from David LaChappelle.  I want to shoot Green Day.  I want the New Kids on the Block to get back together so I can shoot them.  I want to shoot No Doubt.  I want to shoot living legends like Bon Jovi.  I want to see that no dream is too big and have that be my reality.”

ALL of those things have happened to me, for me, as a part of me.  Guess what?  For a while there, I forgot that.  I forgot that 14 year old girl with her cheap camera in the bowels of the Atlanta music scene.  I forgot that she was around for the death rattle of legendary clubs there.  I forgot.  I got tired, and I got jaded.  I got sick of award shows, airplanes, not knowing what day it was or where I was, I got sick of my dream.  Instead of continuing to evolve I got stagnant.  

Then, I fell in love.  I fell in love in a way I didn’t even know was possible.  I found myself so connected on a level I didn’t know existed, linked to another human being.  I found my opposite half to make me whole.  Something I was told by stories would happen someday but I had grown to believe would never happen.  It was real, I had found my prince.  

Then, I got my heart ripped out.  Who cared what photos I had to take.  Who cared what I wanted to do to make film.  I didn’t know how to feel anymore.  I didn’t know what to feel.  I did the bare minimum to make sure I stayed afloat, I wandered around like a lost puppy who’d given up looking for their family.  

Something happened a few months ago.  I picked up my camera for the sake of shooting again.  I did a photo shoot I’d been talking about doing for more than a year.  I didn’t do it to pay the rent, I didn’t do it to buy anything, I did it because it’s what I do.  I interpret what I see in front of me.  I create a version of the reality I’m seeing and I preserve it.  That’s what I do.  I had forgotten that.

Now I’m sleep deprived, and I have to make more hours in the day to get everything done.  I have the work that pays the bills and I’m bending over backward to get more, but I have a few other things.  I have three ongoing projects in the works at the moment.  Three individual projects of photography and a fourth that’s film, and they don’t bring home the bacon.  They simply feed my soul.  There are trying times ahead of me and all around me.  I haven’t felt this alive since I don’t know when.  

I have cast off the layers that kept me down creatively and I CAN fly.  This is happening and it will happen.  I can journey through time and see the world the way my mother did at six years old in 1960.  I can channel my frustration and physical health related pain into something that brings awareness to a cause that desperately needs it.  I take the innocence that is the foundation of love and document it and put it on display.  I can document my journey in these things.  I can look at the environments and the people that inspire me and I can say, yeah I’ll see your dream and raise you mine - and I can make these things happen.

How do I know I can?  Because I’m a nobody from Atlanta, GA who has only ever had ONE dream die, and that was because the subject of said dream died before I got to him with my camera in an arena.  Because I live my dreams every day.  Because nothing is beyond my reach.  Because I am grateful for the things have happened in my professional and artistic life, and because life doesn’t end just before 30.

Ok, I think I can sleep now.

**The photos in this set are a collection of the shoots that have inspired me and re-invigorated me in the last six months.