The only thing I love more than making portraits is making portraits of spunky, awesome women. I got that chance recently while on a shoot for AARP Bulletin. Marijo (pronounced Mary-Jo) Beckman lives in Delray Beach and is part of the Community Emergency Response Team (C.E.R.T.). View the story here.

If you can’t tell from the photos, Marijo has a smile and a laugh that is unbelievably contagious. I left the shoot thinking I was way more funny than I am in actuality. Anyhow, it was an incredible pleasure to photograph Marijo- she made the shoot a blast!

Above is the photo selected and below is how the image ran online.

Here a few more from the take-

Technical notes: Images made on the Canon 1DX and lit with the Profoto acuteB 600R with a Chimera 3 x 4 foot soft box. Special thanks to my buddy Ben Rusnak for helping out on the shoot.

I choose to make Florida my home because it really is a beautiful state… and let’s face it, just enough weird stuff happens here for it to be the butt of a lot of jokes. But that’s okay. Flo-rida (how some of us locals like to pronounce it) is strong, we will prevail to be weird another day.

I digress. Florida is beautiful and here is a story to prove it. But like most beautiful things, we are doing our damnedest to screw it up.

Here is a link to how the story ran online-

http://nyti.ms/1qBQ8J6

Most photographers have a special relationship with their car… we are intimately familiar with every aspect of our beloved automobiles (except fixing them, I don’t know shit about fixing them). We know exactly how much gear, to the light stand, can fit in our car. We know if light stands will fit horizontally in the back or if we have to put the seat down, etc.

We know these things because sometimes we get calls to drive hours upon hours for a shoot and we don’t care. We eat it up. I got one such call (well, email actually) recently to make the trek to the east coast of my wonderful state to photograph a story for the International New York Times about women who bypass their men and buy jewelry for themselves. For some reason this appealed to me- immediately I drew a comparison to buying lighting equipment or a new lens… with something this personal I would definitely want to make the call myself too.

Upon meeting the subject, Molly and I hit it off immediately and I knew she had a game plan, which I appreciated. She had a few pieces of jewelry already picked out and finding places to photograph at her beautiful home was like shooting fish in a barrel.

My default kit I take with me to any shoot, even when I’m not expecting to light anything is a Profoto acuteB 600R pack- this compact light is badass and is worth it’s weight in gold. It proved to be great on this shoot too as there were just a few situations where complimenting the natural light was key.

Anyhow, here is a link to how the story ran online-

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/fashion/what-women-buy-when-they-treat-themselves.html?_r=0

I’ll see if what ran online was any different than what ran in print and post a .pdf when I can. Thanks for looking!

Hector Picard lost both his arms in an accident over 20 years ago while working as an electrician. He has since become an inspirational speaker and an Ironman- a four-time Ironman to be exact.

We had exchanged several emails before I met Hector so I had a good idea of his personality but nothing quite prepared me for meeting him. Within the first minute I forgot that Hector was a double-amputee- this guy has an awesome attitude, is incredibly positive and doesn’t let anything stand in his way. His smile and laugh sold me as soon as we met.

As far as assignments go, this had to have been one of my favorites in recent memory. I got to work with one of my favorite editors, who was also writing the story- Nila Do Simon. Below is how the story ran recently in Venice Ft. Lauderdale’s Magazine. Below that are a few outtakes- enjoy!

For those of you interested, we shot at C&I studios in Ft. Lauderdale and used a mix of Elinchrom and Profoto lighting and shot on the Canon 1DX.