Music Therapy at Amazing Place.

I recently worked on a great project that lifted my soul.

I got a call from  Karen Holland, a creative director at Richards/Carlberg (Chuck Carlberg’s venerable Houston advertising agency, Rives Carlberg, recently merged and became the Houston arm of The Richards Group). Karen was spearheading a project to rebrand an Alzheimer’s care facility known as The Senior’s Place into a new entity called Amazing Place.  The new Amazing Place is a non-profit memory-care center providing therapeutic programs for adults with mild to moderate memory loss.  The center is funded by donations and local churches.

The visual challenge in photographing the Amazing Place, was the fact that they were about to move to a new building at a new location. Karen had specific ideas about the look she wanted for the photographs…..high-key, hopeful, positive, and (whenever possible) with very little or no background detail that might identify the old building.

We found the solution in using very limited depth of field, and tilt-shift lenses to achieve very limited and selective focus on the subjects.  We used minimal lighting, mostly a Profoto 7b and some Canon speedlights to supplement the window light in the building, and to provide a very natural look.  It was a tight space to work in, but we managed to make some nice images.

I was able to shoot in a virtual documentary style throughout the project, and it was incredibly rewarding to work with the clients, families and staff at Amazing Place.  It was especially rewarding and meaningful for me since I’ve had experience with two close family members with dementia and/or Alzheimer’s.

Although the printed materials haven’t been finished yet, here’s a look at the newly redesigned website, featuring a great new logo and color scheme also designed by Karen Holland.

Do1Thing grew from that project, and on Feb. 14, professional photographers and award winning photojournalists around the country came together to produce documentary work, portraits, and multimedia to highlight teen homelessness.  

I was humbled to have been asked by Najlah to participate in the project.  There were ultimately over 114 photographers involved, including 31 Pulitzer winners, and some of the top commercial and magazine photographers around the country.

In Houston, I was fortunate to participate with Dave Einsel, Smiley Pool, and Todd Spoth, each of whom tackled a different aspect.  Our work is slated to be combined into a multimedia project featuring photographs and audio interviews with the kids at Covenant House.

To find out more about Do1Thing, check out the website here.

To donate locally to Covenant House in Houston follow the link here.

Some of my portraits from the Do1Thing Project

On April 17th, my colleague Brad Mangin and I will be presenting a slide show program of our work during the first annual “Photography Education Day” at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.  

My good friend Brad is an absolutely stellar action photographer who lives in the Bay Area, and shoots baseball for Sports Illustrated and MLB.  For over 20 years, Brad has been making iconic baseball images, and understands the game , players (and good light….) better than any photographer I know.  I’m honored to be presenting this program with him.

I, of course worked at The Sporting News from 1996-2006, shooting over 200 covers for them, including many cover portraits of baseball players.  I’ve had a couple of winning photos enshrined in the hall from the annual Baseball Hall of Fame Photo contest, so I’m looking forward to finally visiting their vast baseball archive in Cooperstown.

We were invited to give a joint photography presentation, with Brad handling the action photography, and me talking about portraiture.  We’ll both tell stories of some of the great games we covered and of course, some behind the scenes stories about the famous (and infamous…) players we’ve both dealt with over the years.

Baseball photography has a rich history, and we’ll also be producing and presenting a short educational program on the History of Photography in Baseball.

Here’s a link to our program on the Hall of Fame website. 

For more information, please call 888-HALL-OF-FAME