Category Archives: Commercial

Featured: Elizabeth Anne Designs (& #marketing 2)

Some people I know in the wedding industry occasionally chide me for being so bad at marketing my own business. Aside from some of the practical matters involved — finding time to blog, editing and retouching images that sometimes might never otherwise see the light of day (in the case of personal posts), creating wedding slideshows, finding the perfect music, tracking down vendors for proper credits, etc., — you (or at least I) also have to deal with the strong aversion I have to being “sold”, to people who are always seem to have their sales hat on, and people who generally seem to have no problem with talking about themselves endlessly. And I mean END. LESS. LY.

Let’s face it, I’m a photographer because I love being the outsider looking in and experiencing the lives of others through the lens. I adore the idea that I can immortalize a moment and at the same time create a work of art. It’s just amazing that I can do that and at the same time remain relatively invisible. I like being invisible. I like it when people to look at me and see my work. Not me.

And that, my friends, is the problem. I don’t much like promoting “me” because I’m afraid I’ll come off like an attention grabbing narcissist. See, marketing in the photographic industry, with the help of the social media sphere, has rather swiftly morphed into the race to be the most liked, have the most fans and create the most buzz… and relatively little of that has anything to do with your work. In fact, a few of the photographer rockstars (the term “rockstar” is used in a derogatory way as much as it’s used in a complimentary way these days) have been to more workshops than they have shot weddings. Unfortunately the average bride would never know that.

So all that blabbering above is the reason I sometimes don’t like posting about my personal life and how great I am for shooting Usher, or Brian Littrell from the Back Street Boys and his wife, or this or that photoshoot. I love doing what I do and in the end I just want you to see the work. But I promise that I’ll try to do a little better in 2011.

All that said, this falls into the “stuff I never blogged” category…

Back in November we were featured on the Elizabeth Anne Designs blog for a photoshoot we did with a number of other vendors, all coordinated by Jeannine Kennedy with FAVOR Events. The shoot was at a private residence north of Atlanta and the blog featured a bunch of the images from the shoot…

In addition to a few larger images of ones that she featured on the blog, here are a number of my favorites they didn’t blog:

Here is a list of vendors that participated in the shoot:

Event design/styling: FAVOR Events
Florals: Tulip
Venue: Privately owned farm in North Georgia
Linens: BBJ Linens
Rentals: Classic Party Rentals
Invitations: Southern Fete
Jewelry: Anthropologie
Gowns: Chaviano Couture
Model: Angela Wolff with CLICK Models

Published: Occasions Magazine Fashion Feature, etc.

We’ve been very anxiously waiting the last few months for the stork to deliver this one! I’m super stoked about the latest issue of Occasions Magazine. We have 14 luscious pages of images captured at the beautiful Atlanta landmark, the Swan House, with florals by the A-MAY-ZING Danny from The Savage Garden and stunning hair/makeup by Raney O’Keefe.

I’ll be posting a bunch of images from the shoot in a few days, but for now take a look at the images Heather Vreeland chose for the magazine:

While you’re at it, check out the Catering spread starting on page 26 and Hayden’s birthday party photos they featured on page 130. Oh… and check out our back cover advertisement for Ben Vigil Photographers featuring Erika & Leroy atop the one an only Ventana’s rooftop venue styled/coordinated by Eliana from ellyB Events

How cool is that!!!

Usher’s New Look: World Leadership Awards 2010

Now for something totally different on this wedding blog…

Last month I was asked to do double duty for the Cobb Energy Center for the Performing Arts and for Occasions Magazine. Some guy named Usher (a.k.a. @UsherRaymondIV) was in town with Usher’s New Look, a youth mentoring program he founded, for the 1st Annual 2010 World Leadership Awards and they both needed it covered.

I spent the afternoon shooting decor and all the details that went into the VIP reception and the evening covering the red carpet, the VIP-only Reception, and finally Usher’s performance to cap the evening. During some downtime in the middle of the day I was able to get some of my favorite images during Usher’s rehearsal with Ciara…

Later in the evening Usher spent the better part of 45 minutes on the red carpet talking to every single media outlet there.

But in the end you probably came here to see Usher, and Ciara and Justin Bieber performing… there was a fair amount of media there and we all had our designated spots to shoot from. I managed to get mine changed at the last minute for a better vantage point. You’ll notice that there aren’t any images of Bieber below. As he was getting ready to perform we were told that no pictures of him were allowed to be taken whatsoever. In fact, I had a PR guard behind me during his entire performance to ensure I didn’t take any pictures. Sorry all you Justin fans! :(

But here are a bunch of Usher… :)

Here’s Ciara looking MUCH more dashing…

Did I mention that former President Clinton was on hand to receive an award?

Occasions Magazine: Covers & Sneak Peek

This is three blog posts in one… Heather Vreeland (follow on twitter) has been busy over on the Occasions Magazine website with a few posts about our recent cover photoshoot at the beautiful new 200 Peachtree for the next issue of Occasions Magazine.

A couple weeks ago she posted a quick behind the scene’s post followed by a preview of the covers she selected for the next issue of the magazine. Here they are…

I can’t wait to show off the images we published as well as many more from the shoot and from behind the scenes over the next few weeks.

Today she posted a sneak peak from my friends Danny and David over at Optimum Productions, a quick behind the scenes video teaser… I can’t wait to see the entire behind the scene’s video!

Cover Shoot: The Bachelor’s Corrie Adamson

I’ve been quite the pathetic blogger that past month or two, so much so that I have a huge backlog of blog items to get to. They run the gamut of topics from my personal life, to weddings, to commercial photoshoots, to my [high school] senior business, to industry events, to magazine covers… which brings us to the topic of this post.

I was excited to shoot the cover for the May issue of Date Night Magazine featuring 24 year old Corrie Adamson, one of the women on the most recent season of The Bachelor on ABC. We shot the cover in the swank bar of the fabulous new Loews Hotel in Atlanta which had just opened a couple weeks earlier. You can read the interview with Corrie on the online magazine’s website.

Here’s the cover:

Here are two more of my favorite images… this one was used in the article:

After meeting and getting to know Corrie just a little bit, I have to conclude that Jake isn’t so bright. Corrie (twitter) owns her own wardrobe consulting and personal shopper business called Dandy, and became known as the only contestant on Bachelor that wanted to save herself for marriage, which is always a commendable endeavor in face of an increasingly incredulous society. Props for that!

I’ve started to get in the habit of capturing (or having my assistants capture) behind the scenes imagery, not just for myself, but we often get some really great images. Here’s the rather small crew of folks onsite to make the shoot happen. Getting ready to roll…

Here is Corrie hamming it up as our two stylists, Kelli Cunningham and Meghan “Riley” Baumann from Bob Steele Salon, put some final touches on her while we were shooting at the bar.

The illustrious me pretending to know what I’m doing as I explain the “look” we are going after…

I just HAD to include this image of Jaime Luckey, the Editor of Date Night Magazine (follow on twitter). Given the subject of our shoot, and that she was recently in the running for Jezebel Magazine’s Most Eligible Atlantans for 2010, I thought this image was particularly appropriate. Hope she doesn’t kill me.

The whole gang:

(L-R) Meghan “Riley” Baumann and Kelli Cunningham from Bob Steele Salon, me, Corrie Adamson, Kelly Ducray, Jaime Luckey, Matthew Thomas our “Bachelor”.

Not pictured above is the fabulous Raney O’Keefe, who did Corrie’s makeup before I arrived on site. As you can tell from the images above she did an amazing job as she always does!!