While I was in Vancouver, I also had the opportunity to photograph Hine Mizushima, an amazing puppet stop-motion animation video artist, illustrator, and crafter. This is one of those cases were I went into the shoot with a pretty strong idea in my head but when I saw this corner in her kitchen and saw the colors she was wearing, I scrapped all that and went with a simple and clean portrait. I love the slight Mona Lisa smile on her face and the honey bears of course! And, if you’re feeling a little blue, you need to check out one of her videos for They Might Be Giants (like this one here) — you can’t help but smile when you watch it!

This past weekend, I ventured north of the border to Vancouver, British Columbia to photograph the amazing artist, illustrator, painter, and all around super nice guy Mark Atomos Pilon. He cheerfully opened his doors to myself and my family, our kids played, we made some photographs.  I borrowed the astronaut helmet from one of my daughter’s little friends (thanks Oliver, Michael, and Lisa!) and thankfully Mark provided the ray gun!

This is the artist 179 (a.k.a. Angelina Villalobos).  I love her murals, the first one of hers I had seen was the gigantic one she worked on here in Belltown.  I love the way her animals weave and bob — I thought it would be fun to make 179 a whimsical creature as well!  She was excited to do it so my 4-year old daughter and myself were off to have fun with paper mache!  Today, we set about to shoot — we did two set-ups: one in front of one of her murals on lower Queen Anne and the other over in Golden Gardens.  I wanted to get away from the stereotype of street artists being photographed in front of some of their murals.  I love the ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ aesthetic of the woodsy image but also love the set-up in the more urban image.  What are your thoughts?

Artist and poster designer Nat Damm.

I recently photographed an ad campaign for a new liquor here in Seattle – Brovo Spirits, “lady-made liquor.” It was a fun shoot we shot at the new Aqua at El Gaucho and a few other locations around town. Great people and tasty product!

Pretty excited to be mentioned in a recent blog post in Aperture Magazine on one of my images in the Picture Black Friday event!

I asked performer El Vez to participate in my Creatives series and he replied that he had a 7-foot tall Christmas tree from last year he’d like to set on fire and use that in a photo shoot. Of course, I jumped at this! As I drove to the location, I was actually nervous – thoughts of fire escaping and burning his house, my camera and lighting gear, ourselves! Visions of police and ambulances filled my head. And, when I got there, we got everything set up and El Vez turns to me and says, “If my hair catches on fire, keep shooting!” And now thoughts of Michael Jackson’s hair on fire in the Pepsi commercial back in the eighties is stuck in my head. In the end, the tree went up pretty quickly and erupted into huge flames – it did fall over but nothing horrible happened. I’m alive. El Vez is alive. And my camera and lighting gear is intact!

These were images taken on October 12 — Westlake Center was still occupied, and some police activity going on in the afternoon. A lot more police at the park than I’ve seen lately. I’ve heard they’re going to be moving today to make room for another protest but unsure what’s going on today.

Some scenes from the Occupy Seattle movement occuring in Westlake Center.

So, Amanda Knox landed home here in Seattle today and I very much became aware that her mother’s home was a mere few blocks from my home. Camera crews were around, the whirring of helicopters following her onher way home from the airport — kinda crazy and a little bit sad. And, having said that, I too went to take a photograph — I don’t know why. It seemed noteworthy, it seemed … something. And hence my Daily today — not an amazing photo, but perhaps noteworthy of some sort – -a homecoming that should be private suddenly very public…