I’ve understood for a long time that my strongest images are usually made while documenting subjects that interest me. That’s why I headed downtown last week to document what I feel is the most compelling time of the day: lunch.

Nothing too tricky about these photos, just people accosted in public by a stranger with a camera while eating their midday meal. As you can tell, some were only too happy to share in their moment of respite, others not so much. I’d put my success rate (success being defined as allowing me to photograph them) at right around 50%, which I feel is a fairly good representation of the state of Minnesota Nice in the Minneapolis area these days.

Down the hatch!

When I first met Stefan Meyer it was late Spring and he was a few weeks away from kicking off the inaugural season of Growing Lots, a pretty unique urban farm located in my South Minneapolis neighborhood. Back then, Stefan told me the general premise of the farm – take an abandoned and unwanted parking lot in an industrial part of town and turn it in to a farm selling produce to local markets and restaurants, and CSA shares to neighborhood residents – and I knew I needed to photograph his progress. As often happens to start up businesses, Growing Lots has worked through some tweaks to their original idea in order to get the process rolling, but the result is a place that’s even more interesting that I had expected it to be, which is a testament to Stefan’s creativity and dedication to the concepts of urban farming.

I’d definitely recommend checking out the Growing Lots Blog for all the details about what Stefan is up to. It’s inspiring. The general gist goes like this: you hear ‘farm’ and ‘abandoned parking lot’ and you assume that the black top has been ripped out, right? Nope. Stefan is creating beds right over the top. The original concept of covering the whole plot with soil in one swoop didn’t work out, so he’s been going little by little, adding on to the main bed as he’s ready to plant more seedlings. He’s also experimenting with these ingenious planters (made of tomato cages, straw, and soil clocking in at about $1.75 each to construct) that hold an incredible number of plants for such a small footprint.

Mostly by chance, I stopped by on the morning of the farm’s first CSA share pick up day. Here’s Stefan harvesting some kale for one of the CSA boxes.

Hopefully I’ll have a chance to stop by in a month to check the farm’s progress. As the early season greens are harvested, late season things like brassicas and melons are just sprouting up, and I’m excited to see what the farm will look like as Stefan finds more ways to innovate and pull food from the urban landscape.

Portrait of a true urban farmer:

It’s been a little while since I’ve done any work on my snack series, so I was pretty excited when Stef emailed me a couple days after we met at a mutual friend’s birthday party a couple weeks ago.

From what I can gather, Stef eats a lot of cereal: for breakfast, as a comfort food after any kind of trip, and as a late night snack. Usually the snack is a mix of little bits of all the cereal varieties she has in the cupboard (five on my visit) in a glass or ramekin.

Something that I’ve noticed on these shoots is the beautiful release of tension that people get when they start eating a familiar, delicious piece of food. People can be a little apprehensive about having their picture taken, and then, once the first bite of snack hits the tongue, bam. A sigh, a low hum of contentment, a smile. Aaaaahhh.

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.