Last month we shot a cover for BJ's Wholesale Club Journal. The cover was for the Fall issue, however, and it was May. Where oh where do you find pumpkins in May? You don't, you can't. They dont exist according to all the stylists. Instead you get funkins... yes that's right funkins. We shot it in my backyard in Sherborn since the fields in the back had not been cut yet and the yellow grass and leaves by the fences there helped create the fall look we wanted.

Mike and John running power out from the barn

Jenna came out with her little boy Chase

My golden retriever - Bogey was loving having all these people around.

A couple of the shots we took. Can you tell the difference from a real pumkin?

With everything going on with our commercial shoots and the wordplay contest I never posted any of the family photos I have been shooting. Some are just for the sake of memories but some are also a little more experimental since I tend to get a little bored shooting my kids doing the same thing over and over. For instance while in Florida this year I didn't shoot a ton but did have some fun shooting from bike to bike while we were riding around the neighborhood.

They seemed to love it too....

Swimming lessons - no floaties allowed this year

They didnt seem to mind that rule...

Instead of jet boats we oped for a more peaceful excursion

Osprey

The manatees were very playful and loved to be scratched by both your hands and your kayak

As usual Florida was full of smiles

and the winner is...smasHRecord by Amy Vischio: Creative Director at Moffly Media.

Congratulations Amy! We had over 500 really great really fun entries and I can assure you we will be shooting a number of them. I really want to thank the judges Chris Sheldon at Arnold Worldwide, Tracy Maidment at Mullen and Dan Stewart of Noble. I think they had as much fun judging these as you all did submitting them. Here are the runners up and their entries:

2. pincHRunner by Mike Stillman: VP/Associate Creative Director at Draft FCB, Chicago
3. wortHReapeating by Timothy Cory: VP/Associate Creative Director RetailFirst
4. fisHRun by Jimmy Bonner: Group Art Director at The Richards Group
5. batHRadio by Maari Thrall: Art Director at McKinney
6. searcHResult by Brandy Gill: Creative Director at Fletcher Martin
7. casHReward by Brian Spain: Associate Creative director at Noble
8. healtHRemedy by Megan MacCutcheon: Art Producer at Arnold Worldwide

A note for all the participants: some of the entries were entered by more than one person and in each of those cases the first entry recieved was the one acknowledged.

There are so many I love and hopefully will have time to shoot! If I do get to them I will will definitely be calling the author!

Thanks for playing everyone. We were excited to see some comments with the entries which le us know what they thought of the contest. Until the next one... here's a few of those comments:

"Had fun playing!" - Timothy Corey, VP/Associate Creative Director RetailFirst

"This has been fun Jenna, but now I'm constantly looking at words and trying to create H/R's"
- Mark Mantegna, Art Director Family Fun Magazine

"Thanks for the fun" - Stephanie Caruso, Art Director, Marketing Drive

"Heath, This was a blast" - Collen Neutra, Neutra Design

We shot another promotion piece the other day. See if you can guess which other piece it will go with and what the phrase will be. Some out there have had so much practice with this it should be a piece of cake for them!

I got to work with Alanna Leonard on this shoot who I found to be very talented and very fun to work with. It's amazing what a simple straight forward task of finding a great pair of legs will land you with... Kelly McDermott, of course, had the perfect outfit for her, again. She never ceases to amaze me with the number of great wardrobe choices she brings and her efficiency at keeping the budget to a bare minimum - if anything at all. We used real ice on this one instead of fake and Travis did a nice job with that.

My goal here was to highlight the high ball drink against the black while making the image very sexy with light and shadow on Alanna. The goal, however, was to make the drink the focus not the model so lighting was everything. Take one look at Alanna and you can see that wasn't going to be easy.

I started with a strobe with a grid on the drink from behind Alanna. Even with the grid it was hitting her shoulder and making her arm to blown out so I added a scrim to cut down on her arm. I then added another grid from the right side to give some light to Alanna while just grazing the glass. Finally I put a softbox off to the other side to light her figure and hit the glass as well. You can see where everything was in some of the production stills here.

The Finished shot:

This was a test, not a paid job and so everyone here was working for the picture. No one got paid, I paid for the expenses but all anyone gets in a test is pictures for their portfolio. Given that in this shot you cant see Alanna's face it's not all that useful to her - although she is a fantastic hand model. Kelly also wanted pictures of the wardrobe including the shoes for her book. For any of you who test on a regular basis I highly recommend you take care of everyone you're playing with. Not only is it good business, it's the right thing to do and it's usually a lot of fun.

Here I got to play fashion shooter, which I don't regularly do, so we could get the shots Kelly and Alanna wanted. I could very easily get used to this....

Think she'll get any work?....

The Wordplay Judges: Chris Sheldon- Senior Art Director at Arnold Worldwide, Tracy Maidment- VP Director of Art Buying at Mullen, and Dan Stewart- Executive Creative Director at Noble have let us know that the winner of the contest will be chosen by June 15th and announced on June 16th.

We will post the top choices they made from the over 500 entries here, and then personally notify the winner. After that we'll set out to produce and shoot the wordplay which, of course we will blog about through the whole process.

Oh yeah, and we'll ship the ipod touch.... good luck!