Truly, a day of work and fun, capturing the flavor of everything this special place has for people to enjoy.  What started out like any assignment, the email and phone call.  

Available?  Interested?  Sure, why not?  

Not really Heath's normal thing to do, but it seemed like an assignment that could be so much more - and it was.

People were buzzing around, last minute touches, dignitaries, chefs, politicians, foodies - all there for the opening of what already is an incredible success in NYC and now, the opening in Boston.  Everywhere you turn, there was some delictable tidbit that needed to be captured and Heath got the front seat, as Boston met EATALY.

Welcome to the neighborhood, we're excited you are here!

Since last October we've had the pleasure of working with The VIA Agency on creating images for 1800 Tequila. The images appeared on Instagram, Facebook and their website and many were tied to a certain date or event.

The brand has a very specific look and it was a great change of pace for me in the approach to this project. To begin with we shot almost everything at night, on my Nikon D800's and with a minimal crew. I also decided to shoot most of it with one continous light source and one or two small reflectors, instead of strobes. This gave me the look and feel I wanted as well as kept the amount of gear and lights we had on location down to a minimum. Since we shot many of the images on location in restaurants, bars, and public places not having to take over the space with a million pounds of gear and people was super helpful.

We provided VIA with the RAW files and they put the finishing touches on in post to provide the consistent look. I loved all the creative concepts they came up with and as usual it was a blast working with them!

Below are some of the final images.  

A few years back I set out to illustrate the concept of being "out of control". I created an image of a woman surrounded by the total chaos of her 5 children (with another on the way). We had so much fun shooting it and almost every female art director with children of her own would say "that's my life!". Having kids of my own and being completely type A, it's an image near and dear to my heart.  I have always loved the conversations it incites.

As a comercial photographer, the reach of the images I create is usually limited to the media buy of specific clients and to those potential clients reviewing my work online or in private meetings with my rep, Jenna. It's not usually like the "Ultimate Dog Tease," with millions of hits on YouTube...Until last week when we got a front row seat watching this "Out of Control" image take off on a ride around the internet.

It started with a friend of Jenna's who emailed her that she saw the picture on a blog. Then, Sunday, night another woman reposted the image on her facebook page. By Tuesday it had received 40,516 likes, 7,065 comments, and been shared 27,844 times. It was, at first, really exciting for us to witness. We actually watched as, every couple of minutes, people were posting comments like these:

It was all very cool and gratifying to watch, particularly in real time, until we realized that there was no credit on the image, no reference to us whatsoever. All those people, downloading to their desktops, sending it to friends and simply loving this image that took so much time and effort to produce and no one was the wiser that we created it (Speaking of credit: many thanks to Tui Stark for the fabulous prop styling, Erin Charest for the awesome wardrobe and Cynthia Murphy for the spectacular hair and make-up!).

What ensued was an all day effort, on Jenna's part, to get credit for the image and to harness some traffic back to our website. Unbelievably, it was very difficult...We understand that not everyone has money for imagery they are using and that there are even people in the world that feel they shouldn't have to pay for any of it, regardless. But, that's a whole other conversation. Giving credit is easy, however, and with a small amount of effort you can usually find out where the image came from (try a site like Tineye.com to start). 

This conversation about the internet and copyright has been going on since the begining of the world wide web and since I am sure you have heard the arguments over and over, I'm not going to get into that here. What I would like to point out, though, is how valuable that credit can be to any artist. In the end, Jenna was able to get that credit for me as well as links back to our facebook page and heathrobbins.com. As a result of this post we received 760 additional visitors to our website and our facebook "likes" were up 46%. That kind of attention and the possible leads can be just as valuable as financial compensation.  So, in this case, it all worked out and we're happy so much excitement was stirred up on facebook....and that 40,000 people like the image as much as we do!

 Here is the image. Feel free to re-post it... just make sure my name is on it :)

Small world story: I got featured on Chronicle and Bully Boy Distillers saw it right around the time they were looking for someone to take pictures of their product and distillery. Turns out the 2 owners Will and Dave are the sons of Sally and Dudley Willis who have a farm in Sherborn (where I live) and where I buy all my beef every year... I love it when that happens.

Since I am all about supporting local and their family is both local and provides me with of some of the best beef on the planet, this was a match made in heaven. Ohh, and it didn't hurt that they were very cool people to begin with.

The product. We also shot their Rums and Vodka

The owners

The process

The end result!

Remember sleepovers?

Mine were a little different than this one (picture lots of soda, comics, baseball cards and staying up to watch Saturday Night Live) but we thought it would be fun to shoot a 7th grade sleepover and what girls would be doing these days if they had their choice of activities. Judging by the reaction of my models and my own girls who aspire to be that age, we seem to have nailed it.

Here's my new food and lifestyle imagery for the tweens:

We shot on location at my house

Coco Grace did a fantastic job as usual with the hair & make up

Verne Cordova, did all the props and wardrobe, and he matched the set with his own ensemble

The lovely Maria del Mar Sacasa was in charge of food and the kids were pysched about that one

Particularly my youngest, Trinity, who came home from school and almost fainted from excitement over all the sugar in her kitchen

I think these are hysterical because she barely left my side and I was inundated with the questions about when it would be her turn...

Our models, from Model Club and Dynasty, were fantastic and kept their drool to a minimum

Then there was Jason and our new intern Drew who pretended to do a lot of work but actually sat on my couch all day..

Here are a couple of the final images: