If you get a chance, head over to the Profoto Blog where you can learn a little about how I got started in photography and some of the background info behind some of my favorite portraits. Big thanks to Fredrik at Profoto for reaching out to me!
Thought I would share a few new photographs of my friend, Steven Cole. Mr. Cole is an internationally acclaimed character tenor. He has traveled the world performing in different symphonies and operas. I met Mr. Cole at the 23rd and 8th street subway station when he asked me for directions. I had only lived in NYC for about 3 weeks, but felt confident enough to give him directions. I came to find out that he had been living in NYC for close to 30 years! Mr. Cole has never driven a car in his life… he rides his bike everywhere. He has bikes stored all around the world at different opera houses so whenever he is performing, there will be a bike waiting for him. The sign on his bike reads, “One less car”. We’ve stayed in touch ever since. Check out this great article about Mr. Cole.
A few weeks ago I flew down to Alabama to shoot an advertising campaign, while I was there I ended up getting a call from Inc. magazine to shoot Hartley Peavey. As you might know, Mr. Peavey is the founder and CEO of Peavey Electronics. We drove over to Meridian, MS where the Peavey headquarters are based. It was an honor to take his portrait and to hear some of his stories. As we talked, I learned a few interesting things about him. He used to sell his speakers out of a van, going shop to shop to see if they would carry his product and now he’s built an international company that’s recognized around the world – That’s inspirational! Big thanks to Travis at Inc. for giving me the opportunity to shoot this assignment. If you have any specific questions, feel free to leave them in the comment section. Enjoy!
Here’s an outtake, but one of my favorites.
Lori Marino, pictured above, is an expert on all things Dolphin. I flew down to Atlanta a couple of months ago to photograph her for Discover Magazine. She was incredibly sweet and willing to try a bunch of different setups. She is a professor/scientist at Emory University and that happened to be our location for the shoot. As you can imagine most college institutions can be some what dry/boring locations. We did a few shots against a seamless background and then moved into her office, which had no windows. There’s one quote I always remember from the famous photographer Arnold Newman, I believe it says,”Photography is 1% talent, and 99% moving furniture”. That’s exactly what we did! Her office was filled with stuff on the wall and desk, so we decided to remove everything and then place certain things in the frame that we thought enhanced the mood and photograph. In the end, I was pretty happy with the two photographs below. I made a conscious effort to lighten things up a bit and I think it worked.
Have you ever been scammed by a senior? Well, supposedly seniors are scamming other seniors these days! AARP decided to write an article about the issue and they chose me to photograph the sneaky seniors. We had an absolute blast! The man and woman pictured below were both models that we hired here in NYC to pose as a mischievous senior. We thought that it might be an interesting idea to have dollar bills falling in the background. My incredible assistant, Trevor Reid, did an amazing job of standing on a ladder with 300 $1 bills and making it rain for a straight 10 hours! Huge thanks to Caitlin Peters at AARP for entrusting me with this awesome assignment.
(behind the scenes iPhone pics below)
Wow! It’s been a while since I last blogged. Things have been absolutely crazy this summer, and I never thought that I would be traveling so much. It’s been a lot of work travel, but my wife and I managed to get some vacation time with our good friends from L.A.
This is our good friend, Charles Warren, who happens to be a fashion designer. As soon as I met him, I thought he had an interesting look, and I instantly knew I wanted to take his portrait. That time finally came a few weeks ago, and I’m really happy with the way these turned out. The bow tie was something that I just had to try…thought it would be a nice addition!
I can’t really decide which one is my favorite so I would love to hear what y’all think. If you have any questions about the lighting, etc, I will try my best to answer them in the comments below. Stay tuned, got a few more blog posts on the way!
-M
For those of you who asked… a lighting diagram for the first image.
It always fun shooting for Essence Magazine. The photo editor, Tracey Woods, is incredibly easy to work with and completely lets me do my thing! The shot above, which is my favorite from the shoot, was an outtake for a recent story, “Black Women: Redefined”, published by Essence. Shots like this make me fall in love with photography all over again! Hope you enjoy.
I feel like I have not been doing the best job of keeping the blog up to date with new work. Most of the work I’ve shot since I’ve been here in NYC has not been published yet. But nonetheless I will try to do a better job.
The photo below features Faye Novick, a woman who sometimes struggles to pay her power bills. She had just endured one of the coldest winters in NY and had received a disconnection notice in mid-January. She now has worked out a payment plan with her utility company, but the article says that 300,000 other New York households were cut off last year. Pretty shocking!
Faye was great to work with and totally was open to me shooting the story however I wanted. I always love subjects like her! Enjoy!
As most of you know my wife and I moved to New York only 3 months ago from Alabama. I was born and raised in Alabama and had lived there for 24 years. For 23 of those 24 years my time was spent in Tuscaloosa. I’m assuming you all have heard of the tornadoes that swept through Alabama destroying everything in sight and killing many. My wife and I sat at my computer in NYC for hours watching the live streaming broadcast of our state and hometown being destroyed. It was hard to say the least. Sitting in our comfortable apartment in NYC, while in the meantime chaos and destruction was erupting where I was born and raised. I still have not been able to make it home yet, but that’s all going to change tomorrow when my wife and I fly home for the first time.
We’ve been racking our brains on how we can make an impact for the 7 days that we will be home. I’ve thought about just getting down and dirty and doing some manual labor like removing trees, debris, etc. But, I’ve heard multiple people from the state say if you want to help come do what YOU do. I’ve been thinking about that and my only answer was to take photographs. I thought of all the people that have lost their homes and everything inside of them. I thought about the family photos that were lost or torn to pieces in the destruction. I want to replace those photos. I have to replace those photos. So with the help of a community, other photographers, and volunteers that’s what WE’RE going to do.
On Saturday, May 28, we will be holding an event in a local high school gym where myself and other photographers will be taking free family portraits for individuals and families that lost everything. There’s a lot more information on our facebook page where you can get specific details. I’m only able to do this event in Tuscaloosa, but if you’re a photographer reading this and you want to contribute there are plenty of other destroyed areas in Alabama. If you want to get involved please email jana@millermobley.com. We have been working the past 24 hours on getting everything coordinated and we already have some people that are going to be doing hair and makeup for the women in need and also a photo printing company that will be providing free 8×10 prints.
I know to some of you that this may seem like a lame way to give back, but there are so many families out there that have nothing to show anymore. They have no home, no car, no money, they may have even lost a loved one. So I’m going to do what I know how to do and provide these people with something, just a small little something, but hopefully these photographs will be something that they can cherish forever.
Again, if you would like to get involved please join our Facebook page or email jana@millermobley.com
Thank you
