Last week I had two pretty cool assignments for the paper even though they were pretty basic.

First, I had to go on the “Ride the Ducks” for an assignment about a new cell phone tour about the Delaware riverfront. I’ve photographed cell phone tours a few times before but I’d always wanted to Ride the Ducks (always thought I’d get made fun of for it though!)

The second was a business feature on a new place in Manayunk called The Grape Room. It was started by this guy:

Scooter here actually helped build up the original Grape Street Pub back in its heyday. He’s a really cool guy but he wasn’t exactly comfortable in front of a camera. I was able to talk him into sitting down for a few minutes and was able to come up with this…I thought the story was cool, the photo is pretty basic but I was happy nonetheless.

So I had to photograph a relatively new gym in East Falls named CrossFit 215. For anyone who hasn’t heard of CrossFit before, you should check it out…it’s intense.

I was on a screening committee for a local film festival about a year ago and a movie called “Every Second Counts” was submitted and just blew us away. It was based around the CrossFit championships and basically was the cream of the crop amongst the crazy people that partake in CrossFit.

Anyway, I had about three minutes to photograph the owners/trainers at the gym Jay and Micah between training sessions so I had to be quick. They have what’s called a “Promise Wall” which is basically a black chalkboard with a bunch of motivational statements written on it that anyone who becomes one of their athletes essentially promises to abide by. I figured it would be a perfect background. It was…almost.

I only had two Canon flashes with me so I had to use one to light them and one to light the background. I umbrella’d both of them and was planning for Jay (the one sitting) to be where Micah (the one standing) was because Jay is a bit taller and he would block the troublesome reflection of the umbrella on the chalkboard.

They requested to be situated as is, which I obviously went with, and the reflection actually worked in my opinion to help separate Micah from the background. Only problem was there was no reflection behind Jay to do the same for him!

Oh well…lesson learned.

If you’re not in the Philly area then you don’t really get the gravity of the snow we’ve gotten in the past few days. I had to go out and photograph a few assignments for the paper so I took a couple of pictures to try and let you in.

Dozens of people flocked to the Art Museum steps to sled and snowboard. They even dug out a return area to the right if you look close.

This is the view from my front steps last night...still a few more hours of snow fell after this was taken.

So last month I photographed a few days on set of the new movie “Booted” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504353/) that filmed here in Philadelphia. Essentially it was just a documentary assignment but I came up with some really cool portraits that I liked.

The basic plot of the movie follows this guy Will who is a lovable deadbeat and picks up after his car gets booted for unpaid parking tickets. The story revolves around him trying to shake the deadbeat stigma so he can get his girlfriend back, which entails him turning his car into a food truck…I’d say it’s a must-see but no-one has seen it yet. The footage I’ve seen was pretty funny, though.

Brian Gallagher as 'The' Homeless Man

Joe Gariffo as 'Hot Dogs'

Matt von Siegel as one of the 'Homeless Person's

Jacqui Schneider as 'Fancy'

'Hot Dogs' and 'Fancy' kind of have a thing going on...

I have to admit I was impressed with the level of professionalism I saw on set. Most low budget films I’ve been able to check out during the filming stages in this city have reflected their budget in the way they handled themselves. Not so with this movie. They were extremely professional, didn’t seem to be shortcutting anything and even pulled in some more well known names, both locally and larger, to participate.

You should check this out when it comes out.

A few weeks back my buddy Colin (www.colinmlenton.com) passed my name on to the photo editor at the Harrisburg Patriot News for an assignment they needed shot in the Philadelphia area. It was fun because most times freelancing for newspapers means shooting the stuff they can’t get a staffer to take but this was a bit different.

There was a school in Harrisburg that was shut down and the students were all scattered around. The paper was doing a story just sort of catching up with some of the athletes and where they had landed. They asked me to shoot two football players that were starring at their new schools here in schools in Philadelphia.

This is Sean Christmas.

So my friend’s Shaun and Joe, the two guys on the couch from my previous post, are shooting a new movie. It’s called “Booted” and it’s really funny. It’s mostly locals but they do have a handful of bigger names in it including Marc Summers (from Double Dare fame) and Alan Ruck (better known as Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).

Anyway, they asked me to shoot one of the movie poster ideas they had, which I gladly accepted, but it has to be shot in parts and according to the principal actor’s availability. That pretty much means I have to set everything up and wait for proper gaps in time to shoot who I need.

The last day while I was hanging around one of the guys working on set decided to jump in front of my white seemless and joke around for a bit, so I made this out of it.

I will post some more later when I finish up the poster but it’s been a blast being on set with these guys. It’s mostly younger guys who are really enthusiastic to be there but it’s extraordinarily professional.

So my buddy John got married a little while ago. I know what you’re probably thinking but, no I didn’t photograph the wedding. Not because I don’t like him (I don’t!), but because I was going as an attendee (unfortunately!).

I did, however, do engagement photos with my friend Natalie (we have an event photo business, Fairmount Photography, together) prior to the actual wedding. It was my first time doing something like this and I was admittedly a bit apprehensive to do it. I was pretty happy (and I believe John and Rachael were, too) with the outcome.

We started at Rittenhouse Square and kind of just wandered around the streets and alleyways around the park. Here is my favorite from all of them:

I recently did a headshot of Sandy Hall from the North Ridge Music School for a new CD that she’s putting out (separate from the school). We played the music while we did the shoot, it helped Sandy get in the right mood (because she usually just smiles and laughs all the time). I really had a lot of fun, just used one light and had her move around that.