—We’ve changed the date from April 30 to April 29—
This week I opened the doors to my new studio, WestLight Studios. It’s a gorgeous space in Downtown Nashville with 5,600 square feet of shooting space. The photo above shows the outside. I have the whole bottom floor of the building. Next week I will update my web site with photos of the new studio and take down the ones of the old one.
More details to come, but in the meantime I want to announce a studio opening party Friday, April 29 at 7:00. Anyone reading this is invited to come out and celebrate the new space. This is not just for photographers, ALL are invited.
Bring your own drinks and we’ll have some light snacks, good music and a great vibe.
The address is 162 Rosa L Parks Blvd, Nashville 37203 On some map apps that address will take you somewhere else. I’ve yet to figure out why. Google Maps has it correct here.
So here are basic directions:
– Take Broadway to 8th Avenue
– The street is 8th Avenue to the south and it’s called Rosa L Parks to the north
– Head north on Rosa L Parks Blvd.
– Just past the first traffic light you will see the building on the right hand side
– The building has a giant painted ad for The Standard on the side of it
There are only 9 parking spaces for the studio and I’m sure me and a few others will fill them up. So parking is only $6 in the surrounding lots. Carpool if needed.
THE FOLLOWING WAS AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE that went over extremely well.
I’ve had a good run being a photographer. I’ve shot and worked with some amazing people, but an opportunity had arisen over the last year that has finally come to fruition. About a year ago I was contacted by a creative at an agency that handles all the talent/models for Abercrombie & Fitch. I drove up to Ohio at A&F’s request to meet with their team.
What they told me I wasn’t allowed to talk about until this week. They sat me down and told me that they were starting a new division of A&F aimed at an “older” crowd. Basically, they said they were starting a new store for 30-45 year olds. It would be the same A&F vibe but with slightly more sophisticated, but still edgy style.
A guy there named Charles proceeded to tell me that I had been referred to him by an art director I had shot for about 2 years ago in Florida. In a nut shell, they have been scouting for 30-45 year old models and I was on their short list of potential ones. I was approached over a year ago and have been biting my nails about this the whole time. This is the reason that I started weight lifting around that time. I have gained over 20 pounds of muscle and they feel I’ve arrived at my target goals just in time to do the first campaign this summer in Mexico.
So, to keep this short, as of this week I’m going to lay down the photography career I’ve built up for the last 5-6 years and do full-time modeling for this new A&F division. I say full-time, but It’s really a part-time thing that pays better than doing photography full-time.
I’ll get to travel more and go places my photography has never taken me. So stay tuned for more details!!! Oh, and April fools.
As promised, here is another video fresh out of the editing room. Goalrilla is a great brand with amazing products. I shot this for Goalrilla and Daniel Burton Dean. I used one camera for everything, the Canon 5D Mark II and Canon lenses.
The goal was to show how extremely versatile the Trainer is across multiple sports.
The shoot took place over 3 nights at two locations. Due to the operating hours at one location, we shot two of the nights from 8:30 PM until 5:30 AM.
This past Saturday night the Nashville chapter of the Advertising Federation of America held their annual Addy Awards. These awards recognize excellence in all forms of advertising media (print, design, interactive, film, etc.)
I took home two awards this year, both for the photos below. This series won silver by the judges and it also won what I consider to be the biggest award of the night, the Envy Award. The envy award is a people’s choice type award voted on by my fellow creatives in all fields.
These photos are from an ad campaign I shot for Goalrilla and Daniel Burton Dean. These were to help introduce a brand new product they will be announcing tomorrow.
Come back here tomorrow to watch the commercial I shot for this same product.
Several months ago I shot photos for the new packaging/rebranding of The Step. Most of you have probably heard of The Step and some of you have used one I’m sure. It’s a great product that’s been around as long as I can remember.
As great of a product as it is, it was time for a much needed visual overhaul, both in terms of packaging and the actual unit itself. The great folks at Daniel Burton Dean hired me to shoot for this new look. I took the photos of both the woman and the product.
I’m an exercise fanatic and it’s always great when you can shoot for something you know is beneficial to it’s users.
In the next few weeks I will be launching a video/motion section on my site. I have shot a few videos over the years, but have gotten quite serious about it in the last year.
More recent videos will be posted soon, but for now, here is a TV commercial I shot for Bear Archery In the Fall of 2010. It has been running on The Outdoor Channel, Versus Network and others.
Every year the Nashville chapter of the American Advertising Federation host the Addy Awards. These are awards given out to the best creative pieces in the advertising, marketing and communications fields. I had the privilege this year of shooting the photography for the promos.
The amazing creative team at DBD asked me to help dream up and shoot a concept they had created for the event. Their concept of “advertising addicts” was brilliant. They wanted to convey the extreme dedication and devotion people in various creative fields have towards their profession and craft.
What I loved most was the fact that they really wanted to push the creative envelope and not play it safe like so many people given this task before them.
So below are the advertising addicts in the form of: The Designer, The Copywriter, The Photographer (which is played by me), The Web Designer and The Printer. A big shout out to Tom Johnson for the retouching.
Enjoy and let these photos be a reminder that to be addicted to your creative pursuits is always worth the long hours, frustration and anything else that tries to stand in your way.
This blog post is a little late but it’s one that I’m very excited to post. A few months ago a good friend of mine, Kelli Trontell and I started a new venture. It called Tabor Jean and it’s a unique wedding photography business. The name comes from our middle names (Kelli’s is Jean and mine is Tabor.)
The aim of Tabor Jean is to approach wedding photography from a new, fresh lifestyle perspective. I am not stopping what I do with my normal photography and neither is Kelli. Tabor Jean is a separate entity independent of our other businesses.
We have a web site up with some select images from weddings we have done so far. Our goal is not to shoot 30-40 weddings a year like most wedding photography businesses, but rather a few select ones that makes sense for us and the couple.
I seriously hope you enjoy what you see, the best is yet to come.
I taught my Light & Commerce workshop last year and it went extremely well. The feedback was amazing. I’ve stopped them for now. I’m honestly tired of teaching the same thing over and over (it’s not you, it’s me.) I’ve thought about Light & Commerce 2.0 but I don’t really feel like it would be much different.
I absolutely love teaching. I do private one-on-one workshops for people all the time and I mentor in various other ways at my studio and online. I was even told by someone who came to both a L&C workshop and a private one, that he came from a family of educators and thought I had a real gift for it. That really, really inspired me that what I do does help people achieve their goals.
I mention all of this to say that I am really itching to do another day or two of educational learning, but I really want it to be something where the curriculum is driven by the people attending.
I don’t want to pretend to know what aspiring photographers need to learn. I have my clues but the industry is changing so fast, there seems to be a new thing to learn every day.
So with that in mind, I am introducing a yet-to-be-named workshop where you the attendees choose what gets taught. No photography-related subject is off-topic. Pre-production, post-production, workflow, lighting, business are all pretty vague.
Be specific about what you would like to learn. Do you want to go on location, be in the studio, both? Work with models, musicians? No idea is a bad one.
Leave comments below about anything you would like to see covered. If I can get a good curriculum that meets the needs of everyone and can be put together in a cohesive way, I will introduce one soon.
Everyone who submits an idea below will receive $50 off the price when it does launch.
