Philadelphia Panoramic

A client wanted me to shoot a city scape panorama from their offices located about 15th & Market here in Philly.  The job was shooting their employees working and interacting with one another.  The panoramic was an after thought which I kind of thought would be fun.  We had to go to the building at night and shot this from their roof.  It's a combination of 18 shots put together to make the final image.  The image was used in their brochure.  When the building owners saw the image they bought it from me and blew it up to ten feet wide and it now hangs in their lobby.  

Kitty-Litter Cake

A few weeks back I was asked to shoot a job for Digitas Health for a product that helps with dry mouth. (They have drugs for everything!) The idea was to create a piece of cake that just by looking at it would make your mouth DRY.  The A.D. came to me and asked if I had any ideas as to how to achieve this.  He knew or thought the cake should be made of sand.  

I knew that it required a great prop?  SO I called my food stylist & chef exstrodinaire - Iris Richardson.  I use prop stylists as well but thought Iris would be a better choice as we were still creating a piece of "food".  Iris & I have been working together for years on food ads, menus & cook books.  So here was our first assignment together that we had to make something look like food but look un-editable.  She made a bunch of different cakes made of sand.  In person they looked - dry.  But once in front of the lens the sand took on the essence of sugar.  And they all started to look- editable.  We showed the client and brainstormed more ideas as how to make it look drier. 

SO back to the studio Iris went and thats when the proverbial light went off in her head.  Actually it was her cat using its kitty-litter box!  She decided to make the cake out of kitty-litter!  And that was the winner!  The Kitty-Litter Cake. 

Happy New Year

Way to long since I've updated this.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!!  

This past month I've been shooting for AstraZeneca.  They have sent me from New Orleans to Boston and many places in between!  Working on a project called The Day in the Life of AZ.  It's been a lot of fun.  All the shooting has been a photo-journalistic style.  It's a bit of a departure from how I normally shoot but I loved it!  Meaning natural lighting, a minimal amount of equipment to lug around and a very small crew.  We shot fast and as unintrusive as possible.   

I was back up to Boston this past Monday for the AZ shoot.  As I was sitting on my Southwest flight waiting to depart for Boston about ten secret service agents entered followed by Vice-President Elect Joe Biden and his wife.  They sat two rows in front of me surrounded by secret service.  Way to go Joe!  Flying coach on Southwest!  Sorry no pictures.  

Franklin Mint Magazine

OK so it's been to LONG since my last post.  And I have much to show & talk about - but not here!  Just want to show you this job I finished for Franklin Mint Credit Union.  I shoot for their magazine.  It's always a lot of fun.  I get to shoot their clients for stories written about them.  I shot this woman & her horse and after I finished shooting the horse he decided he wanted to see the pictures too!  Then we shot this guy with his Smart car.  I got to drive it.  It was a blast!  They're a lot roomier then you think.  The first person in front of the car is my assistant Justin.  The second person is Peter the art director on the job.  The last is the person we were photographing.  I asked him if he could lift the car - it looks more like he's humping it!  NO this image wasn't used in the article!  

Caribbean

A few weeks back I spent some days on the French side of St. Martine.  Absolutely Paradise. Besides the water being clear blue and soft perfect sand the airport was fascinating.  The arriving planes come in about 50 feet off this beach on the Dutch side of the island.  People just lay on this beach all day while these jumbo jets appear to fall from the sky!  

Six String Shooting!

The "Bring People to Philadelphia" campaign moves on!  Here is another set of images from the series, all taken in Valley Forge National Park for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Office.  My assistants were slack in terms of taking all the "behind the scenes" type shots.  Actually I am being nice, they totally forgot and I was too busy fighting with pesky park rangers with guns as to why we couldn't hang a rope swing from a tree!  After all we had all the correct permits to shoot in the park but when we started putting the swing up I almost had a heart attack when the rangers pulled out their guns!  Well not exactly but their  aggressive attitude implied they would at any moment.  For some reason they were really pissed off!  

We shot two couples in different areas of the park.  Here are some of those images.  Including one of me strumming my six string while the talent were being made up and styled in the RV.   We rented a Vespa as a prop and it was a blast racing it through the park after the shoot!    

Philadelphia Tourism

It's been way to long since I've updated this blog.  I know all of you have been bombarded with news and videos of Peter's escapades out west.  Exciting they are and it would be great to be seeing all his travels first hand!  But alas we can only thank Peter for his fun stories and countless hours of video. I'm sure it has kept you entertained!  So while Peter has been traveling the world somebody, namely ME has stayed back and has kept the great machine - Lien/Nibauer Photography taking pictures & making money so Peter can go off to exotic locations and report from all around the globe!  These are exciting times!  

So i bring you a small snippet of a campaign I've been shooting for the city of brotherly love!  GPTMC Greater Philadelphia Tourism & Marketing asked me to create images to help bring tourist from around the country to come to Philly to vacation and spend countless dollars!  It's been a wonderful campaign to shoot.  My crew of Susan, Justin, Tom, Jason, Linda, Michelle, Meradith and Scooter have been fantastic in keeping things organized, staying on top of all technical issues, propping, wardrobe, makeup and just having fun as well as being true professionals! Great job all!!!  

Over the next week I'll post images from all the various shots I've done for this campaign and a small behind the scene view as to how these shots have come together.

The one you are viewing here is titled "Independence Hall" for obvious reasons.  We closed down Chestnut street between 5th & 6th in front of Independence Hall from 2am to 6:30am to create this shot.  We brought in a double-decker bus, an articulated scissor lift, a dozen or so talent/models, a cast of clients, police, park rangers and the occasional drunk!  That's what you get for being on the streets of Philly at 4 in the morning!