An athlete, a politician, and a strike.

Aside from moving into a new house and having a new office built, I was busy with some editorial work over the last few weeks:

Mentor, Ohio is home to Katie Spotz, a 22-yr-old woman that will attempt to row across the Atlantic Ocean from South America to Africa. I shot a portrait of her for the New York Times.

The story is here with the photo they ran.

This was my favorite shot of her from the shoot.



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Scene ran a story about Cuyahoga County's new government scheme and the restructuring involved. The head of that restructuring is Martin Zanotti.

See the full story here.



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The Cleveland Orchestra was in the news and I was there for the New York Times. The orchestra threatened to strike, and they did on Monday, January 18, 2010. A writer and I covered their concert on the preceding Thursday and had a good piece. Story is here.

These are the two photos they used in the paper the day of the strike. The web had additional images from the concert night and strike day.




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Norris Cole feature.

Today's Cleveland SCENE has this feature I shot on basketball player Norris Cole.

SCENE - Norris Cole Story

Scene "Best Of 2009" photos.

Shot a couple of the 2009 Scene 'Best Of' photos that published this past Wednesday. The idea behind the photos was to combine three of the best things into one photo. Kinda like a best person, best thing and a best place. There wasn't really a reason for putting together what was put together, and I think that made for some good photos. I did two of these out of the bunch. I think there was about 8? total.

First up was Uno Lady with cupcakes from A Cookie and A Cupcake at Ambiance. What we had was Best Female Vocalist, Best Adult Toy Store and Best Cupcakes. Christa was a great great model and really played it up well. Her playfulness made the photo work. The first image is what Scene ran and the second is one of my other favorites. Too bad we didn't catch a color page for this shot.





Next up was local politico Kent Smith and artist Derek Hess at Mahall's with Spudnuts donuts. Kent and Derek were noted as Best Lefty Rabble-Rousers for their book Please God Save Us, Mahall's was Best Bowling Alley and Spudnuts were Best Donuts. Simple enough. Kent was way into this shoot playing on the Superman Clark Kent idea. His name, the cape and the glasses along with the Scene logo looking like the Superman logo made this shot work. Not to discount Derek who played off his end just as well, complete with Jose the Caped Dog-Crusader...

The first image is what ran in Scene and the second os one of my favorites too. This shot ended up black and white as well, but it reproduced pretty well. Both images (this and Uno Lady) ran full page which was nice....

Repo Man

October 7th issue of Scene had a few images from me on the Repo business here in Ohio. The story focused on the differences in the industry as compared to the reality show that's currently out there. An interesting read and a fun assignment. Used some glam lighting to to contrast the feel of the repo shop that was on the front cover to the stereotype of the people and the business of Repo Men.

Story here:

Takin A Ride

Akron's Suicide Bridge.

Did a job for the New York Times a couple weeks ago about their proposed use of stimulus money to fence their Y-Bridge, also more commonly known as the Suicide Bridge. Was an interesting day learning about the city from the mayor and from both sides of the issue.

Akron's Suicide Bridge

A little urban fun.

Got out into the cold frigid weather for a story for Cleveland Scene last month about the pros and cons of Urban Farming. I was surprised to learn about the number of people with their own 'farms' inside the city limits. It was a fun shoot. Our farmers were quite gracious in letting us talk with them in the stifling cold. It was only about 20 degrees and Jocelyn and Meagen were total troopers sitting for the cover photo. At least the chickens didn't seem bothered by the cold. Many thanks to them and Josh and all the chickens for talking with me and Dan for the story.

Full story, with more photos, is here at the Scene website:
City Chicken