This past September I was hired to shoot the Lawrence University President’s Annual Report published in the fall Lawrence Today Magazine. A long day of shooting in-studio, but we had a blast with the faculty featured in the article. The shot below was my favorite from the day. Not only because I was shooting two extremely talented photographers, but I was shooting two truly interesting personalities. John Shimon and Julie Lindemann are photography professors at Lawrence University and interestingly enough, they are both considered to be one single teaching position. They compliment each other perfectly; both are a definitive creative team and come packaged with discernible style. The moment they walked in the door I knew they would need zero direction. This was taken in the first thirty seconds of the shoot and I knew immediately we got a solid editorial photograph.

And no, they don’t smile much.

Below are a few more tearsheets from the spread. I think the strongest facet to creating a solid editorial photograph is to understand an individual’s personality as opposed to simply making a picture.

And for those wondering… Yes, they had film in the camera. I had no idea they even took this photograph. We were just excited to see this pristine Deardorff fire:

You can check out John and Julie’s kick-ass work at www.shimonlindemann.com.

We had a blast at the latest Breaking The Rules Workshop. So much in fact, that we are throwing another one on February 11th, 2012! Yep, we have had so many folks on a waiting list that we decided to announce one more date this winter. The workshop date is currently open for registration HERE and I would expect these to sell out fast! Many thanks go out to all the photographers who traveled many hours to be here and to our awesome models Erin, Ali, Nicole, AJ and Delaney!

My SIMPLE+DIRTY series came out of a year-long hiatus for two hours today. On very short notice, as in a mere few hours ahead of time, I got the call and a rather intimate invite from a lifelong friend to shoot the former Brown County Mental Health complex. Keith and I were given full access to the property, complete with the blessings from the 24-hour security crew, to tour the building. My intentions were to initially shoot backgrounds for future composite material, but of course I couldn’t resist shooting some SIMPLE+DIRTY work amidst wandering through an untouched, moth-balled mental health facility. A true “diamond in the the rough.”

~dave

Another killer Breaking The Rules Workshop has wrapped! And we had an incredible crew along for the 15 hour ride. And yes, I’m still up… stoked about it all. Mad respect to my dude Dan Woolf for helping out with the shooting portion of the day and to the awesome Graeme Pitman for rolling in with a mini-keg of New Castle Brown Ale. You rule dudes! Thanks also go out to our models Erin, Ali, Che, Chelsey and Lyz. We even had a few talented “sleepers” in the class, blowing me away with their skills. GREAT NIGHT GANG!!!

Here are some of the shots I walked away with…

~dave

Being on the receiving end of high powered tactical weapons is all in a days work…

In mid-September I was asked to shoot some photos for the Appleton Police Departments SWAT team, primarily to snag some team group shots. Coupled with this was the need for some editorial photos of the units tactical officers doing what they do best; being… BAD-ASS. Given the fact I came from a law enforcement background, I was eager to shoot for APD again. This department has always treated me awesome and have been open to thinking outside the box when it comes to their photography needs.

The only problem was that the weather was horrible and I had limited time as not to distract from the team’s training day. With pouring rain I was outside for all of 10 minutes to grab some shots of the snipers out in the field, emerging from the foliage in their ghillie suits. We spent as little time in the rain as possible due to our lights getting soaked by the downpour. Editing out the rain in the shot was a trick in itself..

I went into the shoot wanting to get a some killer shots outside, utilizing their armored vehicle. Of course due to the weather, we ended up shooting inside a fairly boring maintenance garage where they we staging their equipment for the training that day. With a little composite work, I was pretty excited about these two shots and walked away with some solid portfolio work:

A standard group shot of the APD SWAT Team:

I need one of these suits to scare the crap out of the neighbor kids…

~dave