So I had a photo shoot at CrossFit 215 last week for a small brochure they are creating.  The shoot itself was relatively simple but, like most things at CrossFit gyms seem to go, once a camera was there guys wanted to outdo each other.

This time around handstands were the activity of choice.

After a few adjustments we started to come up with some really cool ideas. Check out a few:

Might be redoing this first one as an advertisement for them.

The “much easier” style with both hands…

To make things harder you can also do them on parallettes:

So there is this place on Main Street in Manayunk called The Little Apple that has only been there for about a year. It is kind of a higher-end gift shop that carries some really cool stuff. I’ve had the pleasure of going in a few times (for work and for fun) and always seem to find something new!

Most recently I was in there because they’re hosting the Golden Key Boutique which is basically a shopping event that will benefit some local charities. It’s this Saturday (November 13th) from 1 to 6 p.m. at their shop (4353 Main Street). A few other stores on that stretch are going to be offering  deals as well.

Molly Cygan is the owner and was gracious enough to let us photograph her for the story we were doing on the event:

It was just a simple one-light setup but I thought the photo came out really nice. It helped that she seemed extremely comfortable in front of the camera considering there were people walking by only a few feet behind me!

So my friends Shaun and Joe made a movie that is close to being ready for the festival circuit. The movie is called Swooped and they asked me to do some promo photos for the DVD and movie poster. Being interested in movies myself I gladly accepted the invitation.

The setup was pretty straightforward but the main image needed to have seven people in it. I had seen an early cut of the movie but was a bit nervous with that many people needing to show such a range of emotions.

Then I realized I was working with actors, who are used to taking cues, and everything worked out extremely well.

This is the image I believe they are using for the poster:

The shoot was hardly as serious as this photo may portray.

Whitney and Krista are good friends.

Joe and Whitney wanted to retake their prom picture.

To be honest, I can’t remember what inspired this but I’m thinking something along the lines of “Godzilla!”

Shaun and Krista acting like they were in Titanic.

As if things weren’t weird enough, when Greg finally showed up he took it to another level.

Everything wasn’t all jokes though.

Shaun and Joe play two best friends who accidentally hook up with the other one’s dream girl.

Here, Shaun is with (from left) Whitney (Joe’s dream girl) and Krista (his dream girl).

Nervous Joe with Sultry Krista.

This was the first frame I took after turning the lights on…I knew it was going to be a good shoot when I saw this on my screen.

Stay tuned for more to come, I just wanted to get some of these out there ASAP.

I first was introduced to CrossFit when I was helping select the movies for the second annual Philadelphia Independent Film Festival last year. When I was watching “Every Second Counts” I kind of thought that these guys were people I would never meet…boy was I wrong.

A few weeks ago I was introduced to what my new CrossFit trainers call their “firebreathers”, the group of really intense, really fit and strong athletes that workout at the same gym I do.

All CrossFit 215 workouts (like most CrossFit workouts) begin with a stretch/warmup and go into a strength section before getting into the actual WOD (Workout Of the Day) begins. Below, Z shows off how to do a Clean with a ridiculous amount of weight…

As explained in my previous post, (from left) Matt, Jay and Z do muscle ups.

One of the things that I think is really the coolest parts about CrossFit is that everyone is treated equally. Workouts are made for everyone…not specifically for guys or for girls. Weights will vary per person but they are varied based on strength…period.

Trust me, I am lifting less than a lot of the athletes at this gym – no matter if they are guys or girls.

Now, CrossFit is hard.

Most lifting routines that base themselves off of people pushing themselves hard enough to risk vomiting during each and every workout screams to me of people not wanting their picture taken.

Not here.

During this workout people weren’t really paying attention to me but there were points where someone will say something that reminds me they are indeed happy (albeit hurting) during their workout. Both Micah and Jay, the trainers at CrossFit 215, have talked about the positive energy they feed off of at the gym…I can completely attest to this.

After doing a pretty intense workout that would’ve undoubtedly made me join the Boot Camp (the vomit team), these guys wanted to keep going because there was a camera around.

Z does an ‘upside down rope climb’ which is exactly what you think it is.

Apparently doing this is common amongst the firebreathers….

The other day I got to meet and photograph Abe Haupt. He is a Philadelphia-based realtor who really knows what he is talking about. Also, he is an extremely funny guy. He had me in stitches for the whole shoot!

So my buddy Colin M. Lenton here asked me to do a headshot of him for a magazine that was including him as their selected ‘contributing photographer’ for this month’s issue. I’ve always thought it was funny doing portraits of photographers because they are normally hanging out behind the camera because they hate being in front of it.

For anyone who knows Colin, you know he isn’t a shy dude. In fact, he actually was did some facial hair grooming specifically for this photo:

As I’d expected I was basically just a button-pusher on this one as he knew exactly what he wanted and he essentially just needed someone to hold the camera.

So I recently started doing Crossfit and I thought after a while the workouts they did would become more understandable to me. Well, I was really wrong. I’ve since started bringing my camera along and these guys have gone nuts. They love showing off, especially when they are going against each other. Here are a few of the photos I got from my first time in with the camera.

This is one of the gym’s owners, Jay Ross.

Apparently, unlike most human beings, these guys can do iron crosses at will. Crossfit is big on not isolating any muscle but using all your muscles in every workout…that’s why they do things like this…

This is Micah, the other owner.

As if doing deadlifts and cleans weren’t hard enough, these guys went out and bought chains to add a higher level of difficulty to the lifts. Since the chains lay on the ground the bar actually gets heavier the higher off the ground it gets (because the weight of the chains starts adding to the bar.)

Kettlebell swings. I brought my lights along and broke them out because I was having so much fun. When I showed them this one they immediately said they thought it was a postcard for Crossfit!

In order to make kettlebells even harder they do one-handed swings as well.

They were telling me that the sort of benchmark in Crossfit is being able to do a move called a ‘Muscle-Up’. A Muscle-Up begins by hanging from gymnastics rings that are set above your head and ends with you being fully extended above the rings. Here are the basic moves:

They are tough, to say the least, but during a recent workout I watched a handful of Crossfit athletes doing them at will. All of it just makes me more and more nervous for my workouts when.

So for anyone in Philadelphia the dates June 4th to 13th means it’s time for Philly Beer Week! In preparation for PBW I was asked to photograph Yards Brewing Company owner Tom Kehoe. I’ve done a bunch of work at the brewery over the last year-and-a-half but hadn’t been in for the last six or eight months. In that time they’d build a whole bar and tasting room that just blew my mind.

Anyway, this is what I got:

Yards Brewing founder Tom Kehoe

I wrote a story last week for my newspaper and, being the main photographer, I also had to do the photo that went along with it. The basic gist was that these two novelists were hosting a Novel Writing Workshop at a local bookstore named Port Richmond Books.

Not to gush about the bookstore but it is THE BEST used bookstore around. They have over 100,000 books all housed in an old movie theater right on Richmond Street in Port Richmond.

Anyway, the photo below was a quickie. We deadline on Tuesday so most stuff is supposed to be in on Monday morning. Only problem was that these two weren’t going to be in the same place until late Monday night. BUT, I was able to meet them for a bit late Monday and was able to pull this off with just one light.

(It was hard to find a spot that wasn’t overrun by stacks of books. I think we did a good job, though.)

They are both extremely cool people. Tenaya Darlington (left) and Joe Samuel Starnes are their names.

I only normally write stories about things that interest me (we have staff writers that do the heavy lifting) and I’m so glad I asked to write this. Sadly I wasn’t able to make the actual workshop but I hear that it might start being a regular thing, which I think would be awesome. I would love to write a book someday!