It’s been a little while since I’ve posted on the status of The Big Project – not because there’s been no progress, of course. I’ve just been a bad blog friend. Sorry about that.

But here I am now to give you some of the scoop! First of all, branding. Maybe you caught my announcement of the new wedding portfolio site, where you can see the wedding version of my new logo in action. If not, let’s put a spotlight on the logo, because I for one have a hard time getting enough of it.

Man, I am so. . . stoked. . . about the job Andrew Voss has done so far on design. (And by the way, I never use the word stoked.) He hit it out of the park, as far as I’m concerned. It’s modern but authentic, sophisticated yet hand-hewn. I love it, and I feel like it speaks to my photographic style perfectly. Big props to Mr. Voss for the logo and the layouts he’s come up with for my print portfolio, postcards, letterhead, business cards. . . the whole works. I can’t wait to unleash the green side on the world in the coming weeks.

The wedding site was accompanied by a new print portfolio book, housed in a spectacular hand made slip cover and cover made by the immensely talented Scott Mullenberg. If you’re in the market for a custom book maker, you couldn’t do better than Scott. His product is absolutely top notch, he’s creative, responsive, and professional. I’ll be using him for my non-wedding portfolios, and for all high end wedding albums I produce.

Once the wedding site and book were wrapped up, I moved on to marketing my wedding business. Compared to last year in particular, the rate of bookings for 2010 has been gangbusters so far, and I think a lot of the credit for that should go to Andrew’s beautiful design and Selina Maytreya’s editing and sequencing of the images used. I’ve had nothing but fun working with these guys, and I feel like I’m projecting a much more true idea of my capabilities to the world, which feels great.

In other wedding news, I will be the preferred photographer for events at Solera Restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, which is particularly exciting because I have so much respect for the food they put out. I photographed a wedding there last June and had a great time using their bright colors and wide windows and views of Minneapolis as my backdrop. Hopefully I’ll be there lots more in the months to come.

Most recently, this week Selina and I have been at work editing my non-wedding work. They’re still in a bit of flux, but here are the sequences for the three galleries I’ll be relaunching my site and print portfolio with as they stand today.

Portraits

Foodies

Sun City

Having this new edit is super energizing; working on your own portfolio by yourself, it’s easy to get bogged down in your attachment to certain images and your own individual artistic sensibility. Working with another person you trust – especially someone like Selina, who has a ton of experience in the industry – clarifies the work you do, and how it holds together as a whole. I really like the way these images flow one to the next to lead a viewer through some of the best of what I’ve photographed so far. It’ll be fun to package it all up and throw it to the winds in 2010.

If you’ve poked around the rest of my site you may have noticed my Sun City, AZ series. After noticing, you may have asked yourself why a Minnesota boy would be spending time photographing in an Arizona retirement community.

Well, the first reason is that my grandparents lived there throughout the 1990s, and now my Mom lives there. That adds up to quite a few visits over the years, and quite a few walks around. And I’ve got to say that for about the first 17 years I walked around completely overwhelmed by the sheer sense of place: neighborhoods of practically identical cinder block houses laid out in concentric circles, decorated with cactus and gravel, jarring yard art, pinks and mint greens. Retired folks toodling around in golf carts. It’s crazy.

The second reason is that the place fascinates me. It would be one thing if all Sun City had going for it were the kitsch factor, but it’s so much more complicated than that. It’s a full-fledged planned community that started 50 years ago in the middle of the desert, that’s since been consumed by the Phoenix sprawl; it’s a place that tries hard to create a sense of community out of full-time and half-time residents, shut ins, energetic doers, and everybody in between; and it’s a place where end of life issues naturally collide with the end-of-the-rainbow feeling of a retirement community. It’s only been in the past few years that I’ve started getting out and doing portraits on my visits, and it’s been a blast, because Sun City residents have led – and continue to lead – really interesting lives. And they love where they live. They’re fun people to talk to.

My wife and I went for a visit last week, and we didn’t get a lot of time to shoot, but we did pay a visit to the Sun City Table Tennis club to talk to Dottie. Dottie is 86, and has been competing in the Senior Olympic Games for 20 years. She told us that on every Olympic trip she’s at least won some kind of medal, but this year she won gold in three events. How cool is that? She plays 3 – 6 times a week with the club, for a couple hours at a stretch. And these people play hard. They love to compete, and they know how to put the hurt on a ping pong ball for sure. In fact, Dottie told us that on her way out to San Francisco for this year’s Olympics, she was invited to a church get together with a table. She took on all comers of all ages – twenty people in all – and she beat ‘em all in games to 21. I have a lot of respect for Dottie.

Dottie, the Reigning Queen of Senior Table Tennis

My mom, Shari, and wife, Johanna, along with a few members of the Sun City Table Tennis Club

Across the hall at the Bell Rec Center: Shuffleboard

And a few suburban landscapes from the trip. . .

More of the Sun City experience available for viewing here.