The first weekend was architecture, which was quite alot of fun to shoot. The 2nd was shooting the employees and we saved the modeling photo shoot until last. It was really a great change of pace from weddings and I really enjoyed every aspect of the shoot.

As always, here are a few photographs:

Fake snow along with a beautifully decorated campus completed the feeling (thanks to the cold weather as well) and made the event a HUGE success with over 1000 people attending which filled out almost the entire American Tobacco Campus.  Bay 7 housed a beautiful VIP reception where local brewers and a culinary school had suds & food for everyone.  Complete with Christmas decorations and Wull E. Bull made an appearance to try out the food and help celebrate the lighting of the tower.

Here are a few photos from the event!

So, go back a few months before that, when I had Amy & Rommi in my office for a consult on their photography.  I have the pleasure of shooting their wedding next month and, during our consult, they mentioned they were opening a new business and might need some food photography. Well, you can probably see where this is going…  turns out Tobacco Road is their new business and, you guessed it, they needed some food and interior photography for their website.

Here’s a few of my favorites from our photo shoot!

The event was very well done, as usual, by WakeMed and I would highly encourage anyone who is looking for kid friendly activities to keep an eye out for the next WakeMed event!

Here’s a few photographs from the event:

Now, I would normally name the dishes for you but I am afraid I would (warning, bad pun ahead) butcher them so badly that Chef Kellum would come after me.  So, you’ll just have to go in for yourself to sample these delightful courses.

The last photo is something I photographed for the Hotel.  I am unsure of its exact purpose but I believe it sits on the room service tray and will actually alert the staff once it’s set into the hallway.  This insures a prompt pickup of any meal items once outside the room…  ya, I thought it was pretty cool myself.

Here are a few photos from the session:

After I finished photographing Chef Phil and Chef Daniel, they brought out 9 plates of different types consisting of 6 appetizer/entrees and 3 desserts.  Trying to photograph the food and not eat it is certainly a challenge but, as you can see below, Heron’s really does such an amazing job I almost would feel bad to destroy it by eating.  After the food, we focused more on the restaurant furnishings, table settings and other various things around the Umstead Hotel.  Their wine cellar, for one, is quite impressive and knowing a little about wine myself, let’s just say I was VERY careful when walking around in there…  they really had some wonderful vintages that I would love to try.  Below are a few food photography and restaurant photos.

Back to the entry..  I got a call from John Moraites who is launching his consulting firm this week.  The F.I.R.M Consulting Group specializes in benefit packages for smaller companies to give them the same advantages larger companies have by bundling services.  I probably really bungled that explanation so, John, I welcome you to straighten me out.  Anyway, John needed some headshots for press releases and their website so we got together tonight and made the “magic” happen.  On a sidenote, go see John and ask him about giving a young Mr. Connick rides to his piano lessons in New Orleans…

Here’s a couple of my favorite shots:

By the way, this chair is bad to the bone. Absolutely a spectacular piece of furniture.

Being involved in magazine photography really pushes my artistic sensibilities with all of the photography disciplines you must learn.  Being a food photographer is really a very technically demanding discipline but when you get it right, the results are outstanding.  The food, obviously, looks wonderful but being able to translate that to a photograph is something altogether different.  The below photograph was my favorite from the session and I think Lucky 32 enjoyed it as well as they ended up using many of these on their website.

Since the shopping center was 3 sided, the photography had to be done at a specific time of day because the sun would be glaring off of at least one of the buildings making it inconsistent, so I took a chance and waited for twilight to even out the lighting.  Sitting on the roof of my explorer (who said commercial photography was easy) I shot well into the evening and got some beautiful evening skies over the property.  Here’s one of my favorites from the session.

Here’s a single shot of their makeup area, which has a great feeling as the tungsten and natural daylight combine to give a great warmth to the area.

Everything was, of course, color coordinated for NCSU and he 1st floor had floor to ceiling windows with doors going to outside box seats. Then I went up to the third floor where dessert was being served in the Chancellors box. WOW! I kept thinking to myself I need to find a way to hang out with these guys! Such a great facility and wonderful people to work with. To steal a phrase from a favorite movie of mine, “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.”.  Working as a commercial photographer in my hometown of Raleigh certainly has its perks and I really enjoyed getting access into Vaughn Towers and working with University Dining.  Here’s a shot of Chuck Norman modeling the “thumbs-up” plate. An ingenious idea that holds food and drink while the plate is secured with your thumb.

Cary Granite also had installed the counter tops for the master bathroom (not shown) so, in all, we photographed 2 different rooms to show the flexibility and beauty of their project.  Commercial photography certainly is different then magazine photography in a few different ways, one being the amount of time you have to get it right.  Generally magazine deadlines are fairly short so you have to work around conditions that if given a choice, you could wait for better ones (such as lighting, weather, etc).  Being able to set the times really helped make this a great photograph so we didn’t have to work around the sun coming thru the windows.

This was also my first time using an HDR photography technique in a commercial photography project.  HDR is a technique that combines multiple exposures into a single shot giving you a much higher dynamic range and allows you to control your shadow and highlight details.  I hope you enjoy the below photo!