Help Portrait | Philadelphia, 2013 | This one's for you

On Saturday, December 7th, 2013 an amazing event called “Help Portrait” swept across the globe. I lead a group and assembled one of the Help Portrait events right here in Philadelphia.What is Help Portrait? In a word, it's the most awesome photographic, charitable, story-telling, story-giving, picture-creating, tear-jerking, perspective-gaining, thought-provoking, and fun events that one could conjure up.

Help Portrait happens when a group of photographers, hair stylists, makeup artists, and volunteers get together and spend a day giving portraits away to those in need. For free. The people we photographed were characters of every walk of life; fathers, mothers, families, and fun-loving kids.

Partnering up with a number of Philadelphia photographers and artists (credits later on in this post) we had an event that went off without a hitch! I owe a massive “thank you” to everyone involved for helping to make this what it was and what it will be in the future! Without the selfless giving of others, we could never have made this happen!

During the event the best moment I experienced was when one 79 year-old gentleman-who had never been photographed before-looked at me and told me that he now "had a photograph he could give to his granddaughters so they would always remember him”. How cool and incredible is that? That’s a moment that will not soon be lost on me. Perspective gained.

I’d be remiss if I didn't mention that this whole worldwide event was started several years ago by the fantastic Nashville photographer, Jeremy Cowart. (Jeremy hates being mentioned in these articles, but credit where credit is due. *bow* )

We had a great location, Old First Reformed United Church of Christ which the incredible Philly-based company ShareMySpace helped up find and schedule.

Here are a few of the photos I shot on that day:

One of our organizers/photographers for all the Philadelphia Help Portrait events, Jaleel King. This dude is hilarious.

Also, here is a rundown of the awesome people who came out and rocked this event with us!

Organizer & Lead Assistant Nathaniel Dodson (Me) Alex Cerrato

Photographers Chris Dawson & Susan Harner Victor C. Green Kyle Cassidy Max Grudzinski(Max also has a blog post on his experience with Help Portrait ») Stephanie DeFeo Jeffrey Sabotta Jaleel King

Makeup Artists Marissa Cordero Nina Wachuku

Hair Stylists Jessica Pineda Ivy Ji Han

Volunteers Steven Collins Mikey Ilagan Christopher Dodson Angelyn Dodson David and Lexi Moore

Fashion Model Katie Shea Walters | Philadelphia Photography

Daughter of local photographer, a film student, avid Star Wars fan, and budding young fashion model, Katie Shea Walters sure has her hands full modeling, walking in events such as the recent “Philadelphia Fashion Week”, oh, and-as mentioned-she’s a film student.

Katie and I first got together in January of 2013 and have worked together a couple times since then. These images are from our very first shoot together. This was very much a run-and-gun style shoot as we ran around a Philadelphia area town called Manayunk and captured images in several different areas of town. This shoot was a stylized, fashion-influenced, environmental portrait shoot to get Katie some unique and fun pictures that she could add to her portfolio.

The light source in these images was a single light, a 400W head with a 39” Rotalux Deep Octa bank (one of my personal favorite lighting modifiers!)

Check out a few of the images we captured below.

Kelly Franks – POP ROX Band Lead Singer Portraits

Kelly Franks – POP ROX Band Lead Singer Portraits

Yes, Virginia

I had the opportunity to photograph Kelly Franks, a local singer, for the cover of her newest album “Yes, Virginia” which debuted on November 25th, 2011.

Check the album and listen to the track “Yes, Virginia” here » Follow POP ROX band on Twitter » Like POP ROX on Facebook »

The lighting for this set of images was a 28” Westcott Apollo softbox as an overhead light and a light with 7” reflector camera-right. I used 200W Elinchrom strobes for the lighting and Elinchrom Sky-port triggers to fire the lights wirelessly.

For the majority of the headshots I broke out my Lastolite tri-flector and had some fun playing with the angles in an effort to get a nice triple reflection in her eyes. With the Lastolite tri-flector I’ve found that using a light directly overhead and keeping each individual reflector at a near 90 degree angle to the chin and sides of the face (per each reflector). Check out a shot of how I was using the tri-flector.

Below are a few of the shots we captured that evening including the shot that was used for the album cover.

Modern Retro Fashion Photography with Des

Modern Retro Fashion Photography with Des

I’ve been terribly deficient in posting regular updates to the blog, the only good thing about that is that there is only room to get better about blogging!

Des and I got together back in October of 2011 to shoot a shot series of photographs. The clothing and styling were provided and take care of for us by stylist Tiffany B out of Bethlehem, PA.

Below are some of my favorites from the shoot!

Musician Photography Bridgeport, PA: Brodi Valos & Gethin Lewis

Musician Photography Bridgeport, PA: Brodi Valos & Gethin Lewis

Relaxing in Nags Head

After spending some quality time relaxing and shooting some photos in the small coastal town of Nags Head in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina I hooked up with Brodi and Gethin on my drive home to shoot some photos for general purpose use and for promotional material for their music.

When driving for 7+ hours it is sweet relief to have a break worked into your driving plans. Mine came as I rolled into Bridgeport, PA. It was a brisk, cool evening and the light was amazing. All the photographs I shot using a single light on a stand an toyed with what I could using the ambient light (what little there was) in the scene.

Brodi Valos

Brodi Valos is a talented and perpetually hard working musician/recording artist who performs throughout the Mid-Atlantic region with Philadelphia-based group Dirty Electrick. Brodi, who himself hails from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is recognized for his roots rock sense of style in fashion, performance, and in his music videos.

Inspired by classic music icons such as AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, & Ray Charles, and even my all-time favorite group, Social Distortion, Brodi creates a wonderful blend of Rock and Country in his tracks that you’re sure to enjoy.

Did He Just Say 'Ron Paul'?

Brodi is a man after my own spirit and, like myself, views Dr. Ron Paul as the best of the candidates for presidential election in the upcoming 2012 Presidential election as we rapidly approach the conclusion of the Republican Natl. Primaries.

Check out and ‘Like’ Brodi’s Facebook Page.

Gethin Lewis is a musician and guitarist from Philadelphia, PA who, along with playing music with Brodi, creates his own Psychedelic brand of music. A great personality and a bunch of fun to photograph!

We had a great time hangin’ out and shooting these photos and spent some time chatting after we put the camera down. Check out some of my favorites below!

Creative, Commercial Style Portraits with Model Diana Di Bella

Creative, Commercial Style Portraits with Model Diana Di Bella

As we wrap up and finish out year 2011 I’ve thought back on some of the crazier/more difficult (i.e. fun!) shoots of 2011, one of which would have to be Diana.

It was cold, rainy, and mildly windy in the earlier part of the morning but the clouds broke for us just before we’d scheduled to start shooting.

Uh-Oh

Our location had been plowed under and a field of corn replaced what had been a nice park-area to photograph in. As far as I could tell there was no park left and no getting into what had replaced it and I didn’t have much of a “plan B”, but I managed to find two small locations to shoot in very nearby which turned out to work great!

The rain came back and pestered us throughout the shoot, I dropped my camera in the mud a couple times, got mildly wet, slipped a few more times, and risked life and limb (well… at least the ‘life’ of the lighting gear) to capture some photographs.

Big thanks to my assistant that day (Good friend and photographer, Joe Joyce) for his portable tent which kept our model dry during shooting!

Let’s check out a few of the photos we got from that shoot.

...and a little behind the scenes too!

Acoustic & Pop/Rock Singer Photography. Philadelphia/New Jersey

Southern Rock, Broadway Jason

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to photograph solo musician, Acoustic & Pop/Rock singer and guitar player, Jason Schocket out of Bordentown, New Jersey.

We used natural light for nearly the entire shoot and broke out some light towards the end of our shoot. Check out Jason’s work on his MySpace page!

Below are a few of the images we captured that day. Enjoy!

Clean Fashion Style with Nikki

Clean Fashion Style with Nikki

I am preparing for a series I want to shoot over the course of the winter which was inspired by a specific type of advertising (It's a secret!). In my preparation I had a model come in and shoot with me as I nailed down some of the final lighting tweaks, hair and make up issues, as well as worked the post-shoot, post production workflow to ensure a consistency in the looks produced by the various shoots for the series. Nikki came out and shot with me and was absolutely great!

If you're interested in modeling for me feel free to submit an application at http://www.endyphoto.com/models I'll consider anybody!

Check out a couple of the images we captured that day below...

Model Portfolio Building Photography in King of Prussia

Portfolio Building

Getting together and shooting for a couple hours in the late evening often yields some pretty awesome results. Here we have a young model I photographed a few weeks ago in King of Prussia to help him build his portfolio with a variety of looks (we had a few other looks, but these few images happened to be my favorite).

Twilight is Golden Light

We hung around in the park where we were shooting until the sun set below the horizon and took advantage of some electric color in the sky, that coupled with some passing storm clouds which further added to the amazing color we had that evening.

Check out a few of the photos we captured below and I threw in a happy mistake which I converted to black and white. Sometimes complete mistakes turn out great!

Gina the Actress

Gina the Actress

Film actress, stage actress, and model, there’s not much this girl can’t do. I had a great in-house photo shoot with Gina not very long ago. We played with a few different outfit changes and had some fun shooting some high impact, fitness style photos, worked a little post-production magic and created a flashy composition photo.

Below are a few of the photographs we took during our shoot.