These photographs are kinda special.  Are they great?  Unusual?  Better than I’ve done before.  Well, I like them a lot, but don’t know about the rest.  They are the last photographs I took before becoming a cancer patient.  This was a part of  a week long project for Washingtonian Magazine and Michael G.,  my design director,  gave me quite the cast of characters to photograph.  We were in a different location each day, meeting new and interesting people. My fave location being the old DC youth prison.  Filming a post apocalyptic zombie movie? Well, I have a location for you.  I also found out that state prisons don’t like you waiting in the parking lot, and shooting first and asking questions later is apparently an option.  Our best trick was making a storage facility a viable place to do a shoot.

Thanks to everybody that made this happen, drove all over DC, Maryland and NOVA, this project will always be special, because everything was still normal.

Some tear sheets, and outakes.

Meet Harvey Fry. Harvey likes and knows just about everything there is to know about whisky.  Scotch, Bourbon, Rye, you name it, he knows it.  He cannot however, drink it anymore.  Kinda of a shame for a person who maintains one of the larger collections of whisky in the country.  In fact some if it comes to his house unsolicited.  We wanted to see said collection, his house packed with boxes and bottles, for our shoot.  But you see Harvey is also kinda paranoid, and a bit obsessive, in a good way of course.  So no one but Harvey knows what he’s got and how much of it there is.  Shot for Washingtonian Magazine, on location at Jack Rose in Washington DC.  The opener is above, and the images below were part of the shoot but never ran.  I love this portrait, the beauty of daylight, even the shitty, crappy day that it was, and one speedlight.  Also, if you look closely at the bottles, there a few pre-prohibition whiskies in there.  Not sure how good it would taste, but for about $60 an ounce, I would imagine ok.  The goal of the original portrait was to make it not look like a bar, so we did the set-up seen below.  When we finished, Harvey sat down at the table, I banged out a few frames (5 to be exact) and bingo!  You got your opener.

Harvey's "funny face".

Well, another dining guide is in the books, and I might say that this was one of the more difficult I’ve photographed.  Why?  Well, often times doing the same thing over and over can be difficult, no matter how much of an acumen you think you have for it.  I tend to approach food betaking it out of it’s initial presentation and experimenting with what makes it special.  A color, a shape whatever.  Also, trying to keep the vibe of this guide, which of course is spring.  The cover was a re-shoot if a initial version I did on black, while the colors lept off the screen, it didn’t say spring.  I tried to talk my editors into running the chef portraits in black and white, again I thought it was great, but not very spring like.  If I’m lucky, maybe for the fall guide. You can see the online gallery here.

Thanks again to WP, my editor, and all places I photographed and especially Villa Mozart and Chef Andrea…I included the cover, the opener and a few rejects.

Thanks for reading.

This is a recent assignment for Washingtonian Magazine.  This place, The Packard complex, used to be a cold war bunker out in the sticks of Virginia.  It could hold abut 50 people for about 3 months and held 3 billion in cash to restore the US Treasury in case of a nuclear war.  Interesting to know that someone had these things in mind, even building it facing away from DC so as not see the blast.  Details details….

Now, the place stores, restores, collects and sorts virtually every piece of film, video and sound recording the country has produced.  What once held cash, food and water now holds millions of feet of film.  Every great movie, they got, every terrible movie, they got that too.  This was shot in the span of a really short day, virtually all natural light, or rather the existing light source.

Two things that stuck out to me.  1) How sparsely the place was staffed, think big rooms filled with film reels, one person working meticulously in the corner.  2) That there is a cable that goes from the server room all the way to the Library of Congress in DC.  Thats one long-ass hard wire.

Big thanks to everyone for tolerating me at the Packard complex in Culpeper, VA.

This assignment for Washingtonian Magazine was an opportunity to photograph someone who is not big on being in the public eye and was not really into this photo shoot. But David Addington, who was VP Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, turned out to be the exact opposite of everything I was told to expect.  Not difficult, easy to work with and I had to tell him not smile so much, “I’m sorry sir, but you’re supposed to be a pain in the ass.”  I guess my point is this, the photo business can put you in front of people who might never talk to, who might believe the exact opposite as you, but take them at face value and you might get some great work.

The opener is above and a couple extra from the shoot.

In the middle of one of our (and by our, I mean DC’s) last snowstorms, I was working on this project. It was an article about how  pathologists at the National Zoo had discovered a new disease that had killed one their elephants.   As one might imagine, handlers and scientists get pretty attached to these animals.  When something happens to them, outside of the “got old and died” realm, they get pretty upset.  They also go to lengths to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

Science is a great thing.  It’s also a great thing to photograph.  Scientists are like many people, they love to talk about their work, and show you all the goodies that help them do what they do.  When I think “pathologist”, I think “Bones” or “Quincy” (did I just age myself?) not winches and chainsaws, yet these are the tools of his trade.

The second portrait is of Marie Galloway, an Elephant handler/caretaker at the zoo.  She spoke and interacted with the elephants like they were her kids, sort of are in way.  Big thanks should go out to all at The National Zoo; Lindsay, Tim, Marie, and all who made this so easy.

The opener and portrait are included, plus a few I really liked.

The pathology lab, notice the winch on the left

A tool of the trade.

Tim gets some goodies for our shoot, plus look at the size of that door. Now THAT"S a cooler.

Yep, that's a brain.

Eyes, one of my favorites.

Styling parts, Photo by Dave Phillipich

I just thought this was funny.

A living room, a white seamless, 4-5 wardrobe changes, four pairs of shoes, two water bottles, two backpacks, and in the end one picture.  Shape Magazine.

Wayne Pacelle, CEO of the Humane Society of the US.  One of the more fun things I have done lately.  Surprisingly very easy, almost nothing a bag of treats wouldn’t fix.  The opener is above and the rest of the story is below.  No animals were harmed in the making these photographs

I shot I did this past summer in Fairfax, off the beaten path, near his home.  He was a cool guy, we chatted about Dallas since I had lived there for so long.  His cousin Jarvis, just asked “What do you do there?”  I told him “not a whole lot, eat and drink”. I love Dallas and it holds thousands of great memories for me, but it does not abound in culture.  I dug Caron because we shared a interest, bikes, but he was friendly, outgoing and willing to have fun with the shoot.  I know he’s hurt and out for the season. That blows.  Heal fast man, and thanks.

The article is above and here are two of my favorites.

Caron Butler, shot on location in Fairfax, Virginia

This is one if those assignments I get from the Post from time to time that is sort of a test.  A test to see what I can do, a test to see how I approach things, and honestly, it keeps me on my toes.  Sometimes a writer sees things much differently than there are. This project is a good example.  Donald Woodruff, a paraplegic, and shut in in the wintertime decided that his view sucked and he was going to do something about it. When he could, he painted himself a view.  Using hand made and custom tools to make painting about as easy as it was going to get, he planned and painted until almost every window had a view of his choosing.

Like  many stories the really cool stuff was in the details. His tools and his talent.  I was just documenting the efforts of a man who simply refused to say no.  I tend to think when I have a tough day that there are people doing much tougher shit all the time.  Well, Donald was one of them.

The tear sheet is above and a link to the article.  Some more of my favorites are below.

A few brushes.

The opposite ends. Notice the teeth marks, and rubber pieces that made holding the in his mouth easier

Every room was supposed to have a view. The is the unfinished section.