If you're in my business you know that you have to continually shoot personal work in order to stay fresh and conitinue to develop your creativity. Otherwise your work will begin to suffer simply by virtue of doing things the same way over and over. Sometimes the personal work you shoot is everything you hoped for and more, sometimes it's more a way to discover new directions or techniques but either way you continue to learn and grow.

I recently set up a lifestyle shoot to capture some images of teenage fun. I decided to push the envelope a little and use real people instead of professional models. Using real models can sometimes be a gamble which is why when I go this route for a client I always hold a casting session ahead of time in order to see how the people will react on camera. I've shot real people many, many, times but in this case, I decided not to have a casting. Instead I chose to use two teenagers I knew and then push myself to get the images out of them that I wanted. To push it a little further, I decided to use my daughter Isabella as one of them, which if you're a parent you know that choice can be just like shooting personal work - sometimes it's everything you hoped for and sometimes it's not :).

In this case, it was everything I hoped for. I have photographed Isabella before but never like this and never for 3 hours straight. She was terrific and her friend Alafair was fantastic. The two of them took direction beautifully. The cast was stellar, particularly since the weather wasn't what I hope for and I had to use strobes which can slow down the action and the pace on a shoot like this.

Big thanks to Coco Grace who did their hair and make up and to Liz Parsons with Team Artists who did their wardrobe , to my awesome producer Kristin who makes everything happen so all I have to do is show up and to my assistant Christian who is always hustling. Here's some scenes from the shoot along with a few of the final images:

Thats my girl Isabella, in make up heaven with Coco

Liz in a cloud of steam making everything look perfect

Alafair's turn

Isabella checking out the lighting tests with me that we did while they were getting ready

Kristin...best producer ever!

Christian caught me thinking. I included this picture here because it reminds me a lot of my father, memories of him in my mind have him in this exact pose.

Bogey's new best friend our intern Sara who in addition to making my dog happy all day hustled to help make everything happen.

He calls this the "light stand dance".

Here are some of the final images: