A little monkying around with a young photographer

Being summertime and all sometimes Zoe has to come into the studio and hang for the day. Today she helped me set up to do a few quick shots on white and we nabbed a few shots of each other. I have to say it's pretty damn cool to see her holding a camera. Makes me smile almost every time. Ya know, except when I am asked to make my monkey face!

Zoe, 12 years old going on 33.

Me, 33 years old going on 12.

1, 2, 3, and now!

David Gessner: Globe Magazine

Whenever you get a subject, like David Gessner, who says "You want me to go stand in the middle of the river?" You know it's going to be an awesome shoot. It wasn't just any river but the Charles river. Which is not know for being the cleanest water around. David's a great guy and I had a blast photographing him. Go buy his book "My Green Manifesto". This has to be my favorite environmental portrait that I have taken to date. It was great for a few reasons: 1)I daring subject. 2)I didn't bring lights, it was just me and my camera bag. 3)It was used in the mag exactly how I envisioned it.

SUPER POST....and July 2011 Flew By

Sorry for the lack of posts. I know it has been a while. July flew by with a ton of fun projects and a week away with my family in Vermont. So here's a super post of what went on:

 The above shot of Holly Courville running through the sunflower field ran as a double page spread in Runner's World. I'm very proud of this shot. It was shot on one of those super ridiculously hot and humid days. I was sweating and poor Holly had to keep running back and forth while I dialed in my lighting and composition. Which I found to be a challenge since the sun was coming from behind but I wanted the front of the sunflowers in the shot. I had to light the runner with a portable strobe and then hold my camera upside down to cheat the shutter sync and shoot at 1/500th of a second to really freeze the action without blur. It took a while and a lot of sweat but we nailed it and I'm proud that it ran in the mag. I also just sent out a promo postcard with this image on it. (If you are a creative and didn't get one and want to be on the list please email me and I'll get one right out!)

I also had this feature in the Boston Globe Magazine on a blueberry farm up in New Hampshire. It was a last minute assignment that needed to be shot over the weekend of the 4th of July. I'm always psyched to shoot so that wasn't a big deal. Plus my parents used to own a blueberry farm in upstate NY so I knew a little about the operation and could talk the talk. Well I guess NH and Google haven't quite nailed down the map thing yet because the road it told me to take didn't exist and combined with no cell reception it took some exploring to arrive more than two hours late. Thankfully Duncan Geddes, pictured in the portrait outtakes above, was super nice and understanding. So we got to explore his property and create some beautiful images for the story. As I knew and Duncan reminded me it was too early for the berry's to be in full go mode and if we shot it a month later the fields would be completely blue, but the editors need the shots done early to fill the space in the mag so we worked our magic and pulled it off.

Then came the call, "Hey Josh, can you please go shoot this island in the harbor for us tomorrow? We need the images as soon as possible. The story closes this week." "Of coarse I can" I replied and began figuring out how to make my way out to Lovells Island. It was me, my camera bag, a sandwich, bottle of water and a swimsuit on a ferry out the next morning. It was super cool and I kept thinking of the show "Lost" as I was exploring these old war forts and looking for the "hatch" which I did find. (see the last outtake above) I can't wait to get back out there and camp for a night or two. One part of the island I had a whole beach to myself with no one around. I threw on my trunks and went for a swim all by myself. It was awesome.

Plus my wife, daughter and I went camping in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont in July too. We really enjoyed being in the mountains. We swam, read, toasted marshmallows, made smores and I even got a day in at the awesome mountain bike trail network called Kingdom Trails. It couldn't have been a better vacation!

I had some other really fun assignments that I can't show yet but July definitely flew by.