Located in North County San Diego, Escondido’s hilly geography encompasses orchards, historic neighborhoods, iconic hiking trails, successful businesses, and sprawling parks. The City of Escondido Communications Department commissioned me to creative direct and photograph a content library of images that would point both residents and visitors toward a celebrated facet of Escondido with the purpose of promoting local economic development and tourism.
Shoot production spanned two morning and two afternoon sessions on back-to-back production days, incorporated fifteen volunteer models and over a dozen locations through Escondido, and heavily featured aerial drone photography in urban, agricultural, and open space settings.
A personal project shot in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
I had the pleasure of visiting the Wheeler District while in Oklahoma City for the 30th Congress for New Urbanism. Highlights of the neighborhood included a cluster of two and three-story work-live buildings, ubiquitous front porches in close proximity to one another, and walking and biking paths weaving between the homes.
The banks of the Oklahoma River bound the park at the northern edge of the neighborhood, with the icon at the park’s center being the Wheeler District Ferris Wheel (fun fact – the ferris wheel was purchased on Ebay and previously stood on the Santa Monica Pier). The green space features a collection of hammocks, a bocce ball court with French cafe music piping over the speakers, and market lights strung around the perimeter of the site.
A hospitality mainstay on California’s central coast since 1962, Santa Barbara Hotel Group comprises five beautiful hotel properties dotting Santa Barbara’s waterfront and commercial districts. I had the pleasure of shooting an extensive content library for the group over the course of three production days. Shooting began before sunset and ended after sunset each day to allow for six “blue hour” photo sessions at the start and end of each day. Creative direction was developed in tandem with marketing staff at Santa Barbara Hotel Group and encompassed lifestyle photography, property exteriors/interiors, and imagery of local landmarks and vistas to be utilized on the group’s social channels.
A personal project shot in Buena Vista, Colorado.
A 41 acre parcel transformed into a vibrant, walkable community along the Arkansas River in the Colorado Rockies. South Main features public access to the riverfront, commercial spaces within direct proximity to residential properties, porches and stoops that engage with the streetscape, and multiple public green spaces with bouldering features for children.
Development, Planning, & Design:
I was approached by the marketing manager of Harbor View Inn, a beachfront Four Diamond hotel in Santa Barbara, California, to develop a content library of several hundred images highlighting the hotel's amenities and gorgeous local surroundings. Shoot production began before sunrise to capture imagery of the Harbor View Inn’s newly-built North Wing at “blue hour” and consisted of executing a comprehensive shot list of photos throughout the hotel’s extensive grounds.
I had the pleasure of producing and photographing a third content library shoot for Hotel Santa Barbara. Shooting focused predominantly on Santa Barbara’s waterfront – captured from both the ground and from the air via drone – as well as photographing a recently renovated room, bathroom, and the hotel lobby.
A personal project consisting of landscapes, seascapes, and vignettes photographed in the Vancouver, British Columbia, vicinity.
Pairing the Mazda 3 with the music lover’s dream American South road trip, London agency Redwood BBDO commissioned me to photograph the sedan in Tennessee’s music hubs of Nashville and Memphis, as well as in iconic New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo and cinemagraph production spanned three days and featured not only the Mazda 3 but also several musicians in each city, weaving together both a travel and culture narrative to be featured in digital and print versions of Mazda’s customer magazine.
A personal project shot in Atlanta, Georgia.
Sitting on the former site of a recycling plant, Glenwood Park is the result of re-envisioning 28 acres into a sustainable, walkable traditional neighborhood. The community features 375 residential units varying from detached single-family homes to traditional townhomes, 20,000 square feet of office space, and 48,000 square feet of retail space, not to mention an impeccably designed park and central square.
I was commissioned a second time by Hotel Santa Barbara’s marketing director to photograph imagery for a content library intended for ongoing marketing use. Our shoot focused on developing aerial imagery of the hotel to convey the hotel’s proximity to both Downtown Santa Barbara shops and the waterfront, as well as highlighting a brewery and a restaurant both within a several minute walk of the hotel so marketing staff could use the food and beverage images in a cross-promotional manner across Hotel Santa Barbara’s social channels.
A personal project shot in Los Angeles, California, featuring lifestyle and drone photography of cyclists Joseph Sison and Jeff Altizer.
I was happy for another opportunity to work with Phillip Barlow, the art director at Pure Cycles, on a series of three shoots featuring six different product lines for web, social, and print use. We developed shoot concepts collaboratively, focusing on beachfront, small town, and city environments to encompass a variety of settings in which Pure Cycles' bikes are used. Shooting took place over three shoot days spread out over the course of a month, starting in Manhattan Beach, then moving on to South Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles, and finally ending up the coast in Santa Barbara.
The marketing director of XLAB, a long-standing leader in the cycling hydration market, approached me to develop brand imagery for XLAB’s new gravel riding and MTB accessory brand, Dawn To Dusk. Shoot concepts focused on featuring Dawn To Dusk’s first product line, their hydration line of cycling bottles, cages, and cage-mounting accessories, as well as wide aspect ratio action imagery to be used for website banners. Pre-production tasks consisted of virtual location scouting and wardrobe/prop coordination in collaboration with the client, and shoot production was completed over one day from sunrise to sunset at Lake Hodges in San Diego, California. Due to the geography of the shoot location, shoot production was carried out via mountain bike to allow timely access to all the required vantage points.
The marketing director at IKHANA Group reached out to me to produce imagery of their newest aircraft build, a DHC-6 Twin Otter being “re-lifed” for use on Soneva Resort’s tropical destination on the Maldives Islands, as well as to capture photos of their facilities for marketing use. Production was completed over one morning at French Valley Airport in Murrieta, California.
Highlighting the Mazda 3 for Mazda’s customer magazine, London-based agency Redwood BBDO commissioned me to shoot the sporty hatchback across Nevada and Utah’s portions of Highway 50, popularly known as “America’s Loneliest Road.” The agency had me document the Mazda 3 across 400 miles of desert and high alpine landscapes for their print and digital feature.
Looking to set themselves apart amidst an abundance of local hotels, the marketing director at Hotel Santa Barbara commissioned me to develop a content library of several hundred lifestyle and travel images featuring both the hotel's amenities and landmarks of the hotel's beautiful California beach town. Locations and shot concepts were developed in collaboration with the client with the intent of targeting the hotel's ideal demographic, 30 to 60-year-olds with a penchant for traveling.
CUR is the world's first portable TENS (Transcutaneous Electric Nerve Stimulation) device, offering targeted pain relief for chronic muscle pain that can be applied either before or after physical activity. The marketing director at CUR approached me with a specific vision of the aesthetic he wanted to emulate and requested a very particular demographic/demeanor for the talent, so great care was taken to select talent and locations to execute the client's vision as closely as possible. Additionally, as only one color way was available of their prototype device at the time of the shoot, color-accurate retouch played a large role in the post-production process, as the final color palette was already solidified. I shot four outdoor lifestyle concepts over four shoot days and provided three rounds of retouching to the client to ensure that the images produced met their marketing needs as closely as possible.
Pairing the Mazda 3 with the music lover’s dream American South road trip, London agency Redwood BBDO commissioned me to photograph the sedan in Tennessee’s music hubs of Nashville and Memphis, as well as in iconic New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo and cinemagraph production spanned three days and featured not only the Mazda 3 but also several musicians in each city, weaving together both a travel and culture narrative to be featured in digital and print versions of Mazda’s customer magazine.
The founder of Swork Coffee hired me to capture the shop’s modern, urban vibe, friendly staff, and craft food and drinks for their website and social channels. As the shop had just undergone a drastic visual overhaul, it was important to feature the more drastic changes to the interior, especially since the shop had a steady stream of long-time regulars who were used to the old layout. My approach entailed a combination of long and wide focal lengths, shallow depths of field, and meticulous geometric perspective alignment in order to achieve a cinematic feel. Imagery was shot over two days and at different times to maximize lighting scenarios that were ideal for shooting but still distinct from one another.
With the impending release of their first expedition-class sea kayak, the marketing director at Oru Kayak reached out to me to develop a project featuring their new 16' boat in several diverse locations. After putting together concepts surrounding 7 different west coast locations for the client, we settled on three locations to be shot over the course of 10 days: Big Sur, California, the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington, and the San Juan Islands off the coast of northwestern Washington.
A personal project shot in Golden, Colorado.
A personal project consisting of landscapes and seascapes photographed in Maui.
I had the opportunity to partner with Angel Flight West, an aviation non-profit that provides free medical air transportation to families in financial distress, in documenting AFW pilot Stephen Danz transporting a passenger in need of chemotherapy from Delano, CA, to Santa Monica, CA, in his Cessna 340. It was an honor witnessing such philanthropy at work – this was Stephen's 1,020th mission for AFW, which translates roughly to $1,000,000+ of donated avfuel over the course of those missions. To read more about AFW's mission, head on over to their website at http://www.angelflightwest.org, and visit http://afids.angelflightwest.org/give if you feel compelled to donate to their cause!
Conjure Inc. – a design, brand, and communications agency based out of Chicago – approached me while conceptualizing the second installment of Verso Paper Corporation's "Elevated" campaign. Developed to market Verso's new Sterling Premium paper line, the campaign celebrates innovative U.S. manufacturers that share Verso's passion for being the best at what they do. I was hired by Conjure to create imagery of Oru Kayak, a kayak company at the forefront of the portable kayak industry, in action in their hometown of San Francisco. Project responsibilities involved scouting locations, arranging the charters of a staging boat and camera boat, contracting a videographer to develop a short motion piece to accompany the still images, shooting content over two shoot days in the San Francisco Bay and Buena Vista Heights neighborhood, and retouching images for print in a print promotional book printed on Sterling Premium paper and distributed nationally to Verso's mailing list.
A personal project consisting of aerial images photographed by drone in Santa Barbara, California.
A personal project shot in the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest in southern Washington.
In the spirit of their mission of making the outdoors more accessible, the team at Oru Kayak chose to innovate further on their two existing (and highly popular) kayak models and design an open cockpit kayak for a demographic more interested in casual recreation. The director of marketing at Oru asked if I could develop a shoot for them that would fit the ethos of the Beach Kayak, and I happily agreed. Pre-production was composed of location scouting and permitting, talent scouting, prop acquisition, and a location prep day, while the shoot itself encompassed a full day of shooting, starting before sunrise and ending at sunset.
My fourth project with British agency Redwood London for Mazda’s Zoom-Zoom Magazine took us to the highest paved road in North America, the Mount Evans Scenic Byway outside of Denver, Colorado. The brief had me documenting the Mazda 6’s ascent up the 28 mile road, which tops out at 14,264 feet, as well as capturing the vistas and wildlife along the way as supplemental material to accompany the print and digital feature of the Mazda 6.
The co-founders of Kespor Bike, a bicycle manufacturer based in Guanzhou, China, reached out to me for developing lifestyle brand imagery of their new mountain biking line. Pre-production entailed location scouting, talent selection, and wardrobe selection, and shoot production took place over one day in Chino Hills, California, and Arcadia, California.
Seeking to build their social media presence and build rapport in the Los Angeles South Bay, Cadman Group asked me to photograph a content library of images for web and social media use featuring iconic sights of El Segundo, Long Beach, San Pedro, and Manhattan Beach. Locations were chosen in a collaborative process with Cadman Group’s marketing director and photographed over several production days.
Toyota's social media department approached me for a fourth collaboration, seeking once again to develop content for seasonal use on Toyota USA social channels, but this time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to help Toyota establish their presence in their new American headquarters in Plano, Texas. I worked together with the department to cast talent, brainstorm locations, and create final concepts for the shoot that would highlight both the 2018 Tundra and 2018 RAV4 Adventure Grade. Shoot production occurred over one day in four locations in the vicinity of Celina, a rural Texan town. As we had just one day available for shooting, I created a tight shoot schedule to ensure our ability to execute our whole shot list.
In need of a turnkey solution for engaging with their outdoor enthusiast customer base, the marketing team at Toyota approached me to develop a multi-day shoot across three diverse locations featuring their Tacoma TRD 4x4 Off-Road and 4Runner Limited. Creative direction was a collaborative process; the team at Toyota knew they wanted imagery of the Tacoma in motion in a dune environment and lifestyle-centered images of the 4Runner, but looked to me for the additional locations and concepts. Given a short project lead time, I determined the locations by referencing aerial views, image archives, and topographical maps. Production spanned 3 days and entailed over 700 miles of driving between the three shoot locations, which varied from the central coast of California to the high desert of the Eastern Sierra. Precision driving was provided by professional driver Ryan Millen.
Redwood London reached out to me a second time to develop more imagery of Mazda's popular CX-3 crossover, this time contracting me not only to shoot still photos, but also to produce a number of cinemagraphs of the CX-3 traversing British Columbia's beautifully diverse Okanagan region. As viticulture and outdoor adventure are a big part of the Okanagan, the brief focused heavily on lifestyle-driven detours that gave us freedom to shoot accompanying landscapes and a number of lifestyle pieces over the course of the three day shoot.
Evernew, an established Japanese outdoor recreation manufacturer, entered the North American titanium ultralight backpacking gear market in 2015 and quickly realized their need to develop imagery to engage with their newfound market. I was hired to produce lifestyle imagery of a number of Evernew's best selling products to use throughout their new English-language website. Due to the niche nature of the ultralight backpacking discipline, great care was put into researching ultralight best practices and developing a shoot consistent with those practices.
In anticipation of the autumn and winter seasons, the social media marketing team at Toyota contacted me to develop seasonally-relevant imagery of their 2017 Highlander. We worked with two apple orchards and a Christmas tree farm to provide appropriate backdrops for producing a narrative-based collection of images. The team at Toyota wanted a mix of exterior and interior images, so I produced a shot list and shoot schedule that would best optimize available light and their specific needs. The images performed well on Toyota's social media channels, engaging their follower base right before the automotive retail industry's busiest time of year, the last two weeks of December.
Having an active photographer-ambassador network, Rumpl had a large number of well-composed one-off images available for their use, but no collections of photos that told a longer narrative. I collaborated with one of Rumpl's co-founders to find a story and product use case that fit their target demographic, found talent that would help pull off the concept, and shot the narrative at one of California's best surf spots, Rincon in Santa Barbara, CA.
A personal project photographed in Los Angeles, California.
Redwood London reached out to me a second time to develop more imagery of Mazda's popular CX-3 crossover, this time contracting me not only to shoot still photos, but also to produce a number of cinemagraphs of the CX-3 traversing British Columbia's beautifully diverse Okanagan region. As viticulture and outdoor adventure are a big part of the Okanagan, the brief focused heavily on lifestyle-driven detours that gave us freedom to shoot accompanying landscapes and a number of lifestyle pieces over the course of the three day shoot.
A collection of mountain biking and cycling personal work shot in California, Utah, and Washington.
With the impending release of their first expedition-class sea kayak, the marketing director at Oru Kayak reached out to me to develop a project featuring their new 16' boat in several diverse locations. After putting together concepts surrounding 7 different west coast locations for the client, we settled on three locations to be shot over the course of 10 days: Big Sur, California, the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington, and the San Juan Islands off the coast of northwestern Washington.
I developed concepts for each location that would demonstrate a range of appropriate use cases for the Coast Kayak: a day trip along the Big Sur coast, an overnight river island camping trip on the Columbia River, and a sailboat-supported overnight kayak camping trip in the San Juan Islands.
I was approached by Redwood London to photograph an editorial for Mazda's Zoom-Zoom magazine featuring their CX-3 GT traversing Canada's famed Icefields Parkway. I was tasked with capturing a visual narrative of a several day trip, documenting the vehicle's passage past the forests, mountains, waterfalls, and wildlife of the Canadian Rockies. We began the trip in Banff National Park and traveled north to Jasper National Park, covering both directions of the parkway over the course of three days.
I had the opportunity to work with New York-based campstove and energy device brand BioLite, capturing lifestyle imagery of their 2016 product line to use in their initial product release and ongoing marketing materials. As much of their existing imagery had been photographed in New England landscapes, I aimed for a shoot concept and location that would encapsulate an iconic niche of West Coast outdoor culture. It was an honor working with a brand that is intrinsically invested in improving public health in the developing world and stewarding the environment; BioLite uses funds from their camp gear sales to develop and distribute smokeless home cooking stoves that curb pervasive smoke-inhalation-related deaths (4 million annually) throughout the world.
Though only six years young, Pure Cycles' fixed-gear bikes have quickly become a hot commodity amongst the millennial demographic and a heavyweight contender in their niche market of the bicycle industry. I collaborated with the creative director at Pure Cycles to document their Amaru bicycle, an upgraded version of their best selling model. As the existing content on the Pure Fix site was predominantly product imagery, a big emphasis was placed on creating lifestyle-driven content featuring talent with whom their target market would resonate.
The founder of LIGHTER1 Bear Canisters approached me to develop professional imagery of their bear canister line in a backcountry location in California's sierra. After an initial round of research on suitable locations, I pitched a number of backcountry routes to the client, and logistics led us to the Kearsarge Lakes. With the trail climbing to over 11,700 feet, talent was chosen both based on client demographic specifications and the ability to backpack the required distance and elevation. Shoot production spanned over two days, with one night spent in the backcountry.
With their recent corporate rebranding and updated product offerings, the team at Enso Relief (previously CUR) reached out my way to develop new lifestyle photography for their marketing materials, with an emphasis placed on shooting wide aspect ratios for their website's hero. Pre-production consisted of talent scouting from Los Angeles area talent agencies, two days of location scouting, and coordinating wardrobe decisions with the client and wardrobe stylist, while production took place over a half day at two locations selected from the scout.
In need of a turnkey solution for engaging with their outdoor enthusiast customer base, the marketing team at Toyota approached me to develop a multi-day shoot across three diverse locations featuring their Tacoma TRD 4x4 Off-Road and 4Runner Limited. Creative direction was a collaborative process; the team at Toyota knew they wanted imagery of the Tacoma in motion in a dune environment and lifestyle-centered images of the 4Runner, but looked to me for the additional locations and concepts. Given a short project lead time, I determined the locations by referencing aerial views, image archives, and topographical maps. Production spanned 3 days and entailed over 700 miles of driving between the three shoot locations, which varied from the central coast of California to the high desert of the Eastern Sierra. Precision driving was provided by professional driver Ryan Millen.
A personal project shot in the San Gabriel Mountains of southern California with cycling tour guide Adam Masters.
With the impending release of their first expedition-class sea kayak, the marketing director at Oru Kayak reached out to me to develop a project featuring their new 16' boat in several diverse locations. After putting together concepts surrounding 7 different west coast locations for the client, we settled on three locations to be shot over the course of 10 days: Big Sur, California, the Columbia River Gorge between Oregon and Washington, and the San Juan Islands off the coast of northwestern Washington.
I developed concepts for each location that would demonstrate a range of appropriate use cases for the Coast Kayak: a day trip along the Big Sur coast, an overnight river island camping trip on the Columbia River, and a sailboat-supported overnight kayak camping trip in the San Juan Islands.
Toyota's social media department approached me for a fourth collaboration, seeking once again to develop content for seasonal use on Toyota USA social channels, but this time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area to help Toyota establish their presence in their new American headquarters in Plano, Texas. I worked together with the department to cast talent, brainstorm locations, and create final concepts for the shoot that would highlight both the Tundra and RAV4 Adventure Grade. Shoot production occurred over one day in four locations in the vicinity of Celina, a rural Texan town. As we had just one day available for shooting, I created a tight shoot schedule to ensure our ability to execute our whole shot list.
The Mt. Wilson Bicycling Association, a chapter of the International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA), and the Concerned Off-Road Bicyclists Association are actively involved in trail work, mountain bike advocacy, and mountain bike education in the Angeles National Forest/San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles, California. I make it a point to shoot pro-bono projects in between commissioned projects, and working with my friends at MWBA/CORBA documenting their work on re-opening the fire-damaged Ken Burton Trail has been one of my favorite such projects to date, especially since I'm passionate about trail access and advocacy and have participated in MWBA's trail work on a number of occasions. More info on MWBA and their mission can be found at www.mwba.org.
A collection of running personal work shot in California and Washington.
Wanting to draw on my experience in cycling/mountain biking, Mazda’s customer magazine agency Redwood London reached out my way for a project highlighting Mazda’s CX-5 crossover and the Thule bike rack Mazda offers as an optional accessory. Our shoot featured retired professional cyclist Kathryn Bertine cycling and mountain biking on the roads and trails of Wisconsin’s capital and the CX-5 traversing the town’s beautiful fall landscapes.
I had the opportunity to document Southern California surfboard-shaping legend Ryan Lovelace at work in his new shaping room in Santa Barbara, California. Ryan has been shaping boards since he was a teenager, is an incredibly talented craftsman, and accordingly is well-respected in the shaping community. More info on Ryan's work can be found on his website, rlovelace.com.
