Sometimes I just have to shoot something differently. Sometimes an assignment comes along to let me do just that.

A couple months ago I was shooting for Yankeee Magazine and had the great pleasure of meeting and photographing Diana and Vojin Vujosevic who own Pain D'Avignon a restaurant and bakery down in Hyannnis. The way I approached the Yankee shoot impressed Diana and she approached me at the end of the day and asked if I would shoot some images at Pain D'Avignon. They did not have a shot list or an agenda (except to get in a couple of food shots) she just wanted me to explore and shoot whatever I felt would communicate the feel of the restaurant and bakery.

After scouting their place I felt it had this old world feel, very European. However, even though the bakery and the restaurant are connected  they each had a slighlty different feeling to them so I thought overall pictures wouldn't really communicate what it felt like to be sitting there. I suggested to Diana that I shoot lots of detail images and shoot in black and white or very desaturated color to give it that old world feeling. 

She loved the idea, so I put together a suggested shot list and off we went. Here's a sampling of some of the images I created.

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:

Since we have another shoot for Manitowoc coming up I thought I'd post some pictures of last year's production for today's TBT. 

 As usual it was a very serious shoot...

Happy Holidays! It's that time of the year again...Christmas in August. August and September are all about the holidays: presents, turkeys, cakes.. In our industry we celebrate throughout these 2 months. So, I thought I'd share a few behind the scene images from our recent food shoot for the upcoming holiday issue of Yankee Magazine. As you'll see we had a lot of fun over the 5 days we shot. It was a great crew!

The issue comes out November 1st with a special holiday food section and some great recipes.

Beth Wickwire was our prop stylist and made some amazing sets!

The talented Art Director Lori Pedric

Amy Traverso the senior editor for Yankee Magazine was also there

As usual everyone got to try things on

Lori took some amazing photos of her own and if you go to her facebook page you can see some of them: https://www.facebook.com/lori.pedrick/posts/10203734637261904

which inspired some more silliness of course

It wasn't all fun and games though we did do a little work

I even made lunch one day

Here's a sneak peak at some of the images we created.

You'll have to grab an issue to see the rest! ~Heath

Every once in a while, we let Heath take a day off. He often spends that time on the golf course, compulsively organizing the studio or shooting personal projects.  These personal projects are a great way to test new gear or lighting techniques or to become familiar with new stylists. In this case, Heath as well as Food Stylist Monica Mariano and Prop Stylist Lauren Niles was eager to play with the stop-motion technique. The result is beautiful and really fun. Custom music is by the very talented Adam Presston Cissell.  

You can click here to see the recipe. It's sure to be a show-stopper at any dinner party.

Salt-Crusted Fish: Stop Motion Video from Heath Robbins on Vimeo.