Portraits of Adam Varga that were completed during some downtime between productions. Simple and stylish was the perfect way to capture Adam in these images – I love reducing things to their simplest elements and creating images like these that both encapsulate the subject’s personality and make simple but profound statements about their style. Simplicity and a sense of minimalist style are very important to me in my work, especially now that I have been creating black and white images more often. There is something delightful I find in the reduction of extraneous information from an image that is much more satisfying than adding too much to a shot and diluting its impact.

Television personality Lydia Dominick has been in front of my camera many times over the years so much so that we have become regular creative collaborators on a variety of projects that she is involved with in her local community and good friends as well. When it came time for Lydia to update her personal portraits for her media and online needs I wanted to create something a little more refined and formal that the images we had created in the past. A selection of gorgeous gowns and a cameo appearance by model and actor Adam Varga were perfect compliments to Lydia’s always glamorous presence.

"Fandemonium," Block Club Magazine, Issue 27, Winter 2012. Images courtesy Block Club Magazine.

To live and die as a fan in a city whose sports history has earned inclusion on a Wikipedia page devoted to sports curses is no easy task, but vital fan dedication to the teams in Buffalo, NY  is palpable in the city, regardless of which sport you follow.  Most sport fanatics know the rundown  - four consecutive Superbowl losses for the Bills, zero Stanley Cup wins, and innumerable playoff letdowns for  Sabres fans. But if you look below the surface you see start to see the high points – Amazingly dedicated (often fanatical) fans, a city that is regularly in contention for the best tailgating city in the NFL, multiple championship wins by the Buffalo Bandits (and the only perfect season in NLL history), home of the best team in the WPS (The Western NY Flash) and a sports tradition that stretches far back into the city’s rich history. Fans in Buffalo are always chasing those championships, their emotions shifting with every goal, win, loss, and BS bad call.

This ebb and flow of emotions – hope, anger, joy, disappointment, elation, disbelief, shock, and every subtle variation in between – was a driving factor in telling the story of Buffalo’s sports for Block Club Magazine when they gave me the challenge of capturing what it means to be a fan in Buffalo for their Winter 2012 issue. It was a fascinating look at a community whose ravenous enthusiasm for sports has given it a resilient pride – not just in the triumphs of its team, but its failures as well. It was summed up well in the article itself with a quote from Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (One of my favorites, I love anything that quotes some Cormac McCarthy) ”Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real”

Go Sabres!

I shot these images right at the end of 2011, but I wanted to hold off on sharing them with you until today to kick off the new year with some style. I was introduced to Adam through my friend and client, WGRZ television host Lydia Dominick, when he was in Buffalo recently as part of a production I had been working with Lydia on. Adam is a fellow Canadian and one of those subjects that you develop a rapport with instantly (much like Lydia). After working with him on one project (which will debut in a couple of weeks) I ended up having him back in the studio later that same week to create this elegantly simple series of portraits.

And it looks like he broke out that fur hat just in time, as the first real winter storm might be rolling in tonight after weeks of mild winter weather. I am excited to get out and shoot in the snow soon.

Personal Record is an ongoing stream of the images I make outside of my professional career. The personal images, mobile images, outtakes, and random candid images that I take on whatever camera I happen to have handy at the time; a documentation of my day-to-day life and the things I come across that interest me visually. It’s a quick one this week as I gear up for the holidays, but I will be back next week with all sorts of interesting pictures from my weekend off. 

A small collection of images from my weekly dinner adventure with Erin, I have been drafted into service as her in-house food photographer.

Some holiday visitors to the studio who came dressed to impress.

A trip to party city somehow resulted in me leaving with an armful of miniature toys. I haven’t decided exactly who I will put them to use, but you can bet they will be making an appearance in the coming weeks.

Happy Holidays! See you next week!

The itch to work in black and white recently fell upon me  - the last few weeks of the year are often put aside for me to work on larger personal projects and to exorcise my artistic preoccupations a bit by working on those last few ideas that have rattled around in my head during the year. As I get ready to seclude myself for the week between the holidays and the new year to plan business and marketing strategy for the new year, I like to schedule a few solid days of working on projects like this so that I can move into the new year with an open mind for fresh ideas, new inspiration, and a more agile frame of mind.

The team from Block Club recently paid a visit to Victory Studios while I was working on creating some new images for an upcoming issue.  You will have to wait until the new year to see the finished results of the shoot, but in the meantime, Block Club magazine editor Ben Siegel was brave enough to jump in front of the lens for a few frames of his own.

Ben and the rest of the team at Block Club blow me away with how dedicated they are to what they do, and how passionate they are about their community and creativity. I love the ideas that they have been presenting on their website lately. Their “We Want Better!” campaign is inspiring – the refusal to accept mediocrity and actually take the initiative to craft something better is a philosophy that every creative can and should take to heart. It’s the kind of declarative statement that can become a cornerstone in the development of any new idea or project.

The past week has been embroiled in chaos as I packed up my belongings and embarked on that ritual rite of passage that touches us all when our primitive migratory instinct kicks in and we attempt, perhaps in spite of our own best judgment, to change our surroundings – That’s right. This week I moved.

The particular sorrows, laughs, trials, and tribulations of packing up my apartment and moving across town into a new townhouse will get some more attention in a post later this week, but in the meantime I wanted to share with you some images that were created right in the eye of the storm. Never one to let weather, illness, biblical plague, robot revolt, or the inevitable release of Drive on DVD keep me from working on assignments and personal projects (I’m pretty much a photography Terminator, only reducing me to my liquid metal form and strong magnetic fields can stop me from taking pictures) – I decided to take a break right in the middle of one of my packing days to work on some images of Emaleigh and experiment with some new ideas.

The image above is the result of one of my collaborations that day with this intriguing new talent. The goal was to create some very stripped down and simple images of her that really put her strong and unique features center stage.

The image below is what is left of an experiment gone awry. Experimentation and trial/error are a big part of how photographers grow, expand their repertoire, and sharpen their creative muscles, especially on personal projects such as this one. In fact, one of my favorite things about working on self-directed projects is that you have the freedom to fail, over and over again if need be. Failure is a great tool that lets you learn from your mistakes and refine new ideas. When those problems arise on a real assignment where your reputation, and more importantly a client’s, will be on the line – you know that through preparation and practice those mistakes will no longer be a problem. Just as importantly, you will be better at thinking on your feet and providing elegant solutions to those random problems that Murphy’s law likes to throw in your path. On this particular personal shoot I made an error in prop/product choice that didn’t quite yield the results that I wanted for the image – But you can bet that I will be revisiting the concept shortly to perfect it. At least I was left with this Instagram image of our pre-shoot prep that I am quite fond of.

I think failure is not just important but necessary to grow as an artist, as is the mindset needed to see failure as a tool of growth, and not a hinderance that discourages you from creating more and becoming better at what you do.