The past few days I’ve been feverishly addressing and stamping my first round of self promo postcards. It feels good to type a little bit instead of writing – I’ve been having flashbacks to college blue book final exams (do they still have those?). It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve written this much.

They’ll be going out every six weeks or so, with pinpoint targeted accuracy to magazine and agency folks who care about food in some way, and to a wider group in the Midwest. Thanks to Craig Johnson at Agency F for the design help, and to Franklin Press for the beautiful print job. And, of course, thanks also to Selina Maitreya for the ongoing strategic guidance. I’m lucky to have such a creative and intelligent group helping me – I’ve definitely learned that this kind of thing can’t be done solo.

Yesterday some very good friends of mine let me borrow their car. With their kids in it. Then we had a little snack time photo shoot with some of the girls’ favorite drive time snacks: Annie’s Bunny Crackers, and grapes. As you can see from the photos here, the bunny crackers were the clear winner.

Enjoy!

A couple months ago I got a call to photograph James Damian for Shopper Marketing magazine. Each year they give an award to executives pushing to innovate the in-store shopping experience, and James is this year’s recipient. For the past twelve years he’s been the Vice President of Best Buy’s Experience Development Group – in other words, he’s behind how Best Buy’s stores look and feel. Thinking about how Best Buy has changed over that time period (from a largely character-less box store to one that values the shopping experience), it’s interesting to me to think about the cultural shifts he must have needed to coax in order to get to where the store is today.

When photographing executives – or any busy person, really – you never know how receptive they will be to the photographic process. My magazine contact had asked for a fairly ambitious list of images: a group shot of James working with his team, and environmental portraits in three or four locations. Which is great, as long as the subject is willing and able to give a couple hours of time and attention to the process. Luckily, James was up for it, and I’m really thrilled with the photos. In particular, the shot above is one of my favorites in recent memory, in large part because it tells much of the story of James’s origins, as well as where he is today. It’s a personal image, and it’s not every subject that allows me in to create truly personal portraits.

Thanks again to James for his generosity of time and spirit. And more thanks to his assistant Angela for showing me around on my pre-shoot scouting trip and coordinating logistics.

Yesterday I got my copy of the lastest Seward Coop Sprout! magazine in the mail, which means I can show you some photos that I took not too long ago. Pretty fun stuff – over the fall and winter most of the work I did for the coop was in the store, but they got me out in the neighborhood for some really fun stories. Namely,

The cover story was shot at the Seward Child Care Center. They’ve received a neighborhood grant from the coop to teach their kids about food. One of the teaching tools is a compost bucket, which they keep underneath the fish tank. They feed it their lunch scraps, and leaves, and keep it watered, checking in with the worms and keeping ‘em happy. If there’s one thing you want it’s happy worms. Ask any of these kids, they’ll tell you the same thing.

Next up was a house remodeled to Gold LEED certification a couple years ago – amazing and very personal in the way they used materials that in most remodel projects would’ve been chucked in the dumpster, to make a super livable and beautiful new home. Definitely check out the magazine for the whole story on this staircase and all the other sustainable touches. Pretty inspiring.

Lastly, we’re entering the inaugural year of Growing Lots, a new farm being created right on top of an old parking lot. It will operate on the community supported agriculture (CSA) model, which is a fairly cutting-edge idea for an urban core area not on one of the coasts. I got to photograph the team at Seward Redesign, an incredibly innovative real estate development firm who is sponsoring the project (among the many projects they’ve got going, all enhancing sustainability and livability in the Seward neighborhood).

How great a client is the Seward Coop, sending me to meet all these amazing folks?