Dogs Rule at the Battery Park Book Exchange

One of my favorite businesses near my studio in downtown Asheville is the Battery Park Book Exchange. Not only does it have used books floor to ceiling of all genres that you can peruse, it also has a wine bar with an extensive wine menu and a cappuccino bar. Additionally, they allow four footed humans to accompany their owners on a comfortable sofa or chair as they read or socialize - the servers even bring the dogs water and a treat. To celebrate this fact I created a short stop motion video to advertise the fact that they are so dog friendly and to let people know that they sell wine to go at a big discount. I hope you enjoy watching my video (please share it if you do!).

The Asheville Marathon

Just before the holidays I had a memorable photo shoot for the Asheville Citizen Times upcoming Marathon. My job was to capture the feel of the marathon as it goes through downtown Asheville, specifically by the Lexington Avenue bridge, aka art mural. If you've spent much time in downtown Asheville during the warmer months, you'll surely have seen the "Silver Drummer Girl"who performs on the streets downtown, mesmerizing many with her ability to stand motionless until someone she beats her drum when someone leaves her a tip. We wanted to have a shot that showed her handing out water to the runners on the marathon as they go by the Lexingon bridge and have a blur of runners go past her.

Did I mention that it needed to look like a warm morning in early September, and that it was 25 degrees in December with up to 45 mph wind gusts?  This was a challenge for all involved - the volunteer runners, the client, the assistant holding down the lights, the Silver Lady, and of course yours truly. So, we would have everyone wait in their cars near the shooting location and then I would shout "Okay, out of your cars! Drop your coats. Run! Back in your cars!" and everyone would dash to the relative warmth away from the winds as they waited for the next call to shoot again. My fingers were so numb despite the gloves I wore that I tried to use my knuckles to operate my laptop. Here is the final image from that shoot that will be showing up in billboards soon.

All Things Baby

I feel like I just gave birth. Not to a child of my own - I had more of a midwife position with this one.

Together with stylist Chris Bryant, I have been working for the past two weeks doggedly to finish A LOT of shots of food for babies through 3 year olds for Becky Cannon's upcoming mega book "grow healthy. grow happy: The Guide to Natural Baby Care".  While composing and shooting the photos, I've learned a lot about the ways you can prepare healthy, appetizing food for babies that doesn't come from a jar, and that tastes good too...almost makes me wish I was going to have a baby to try these dishes out on (but not quite). We were able to set up a make shift studio in Becky's dining room that provided plenty of nice light for most of the shots, trying as always to make the food "real" vs. painting all kinds of icky "enhancers" on it. We shot long and hard days, culminating in the last day's schedule that had six 10-12 month old babies showing up 30 minutes apart for back to back portraits in the summer garden (created in the fall garden on an October day). The crew scattered picked flowers all around and I bet you can't tell it wasn't shot on a summer day.  It's been a while since I've photographed babies so it was fun to use all those tricks I'd accumulated over the years that I used to photograph children a lot. We were amazingly lucky to have such happy little cutie pies show up, so Becky will have a plethora of shots to choose from.

Below is a combination of food shots from the book, setup shots and the baby shots.

Here is our set that we used for most of the food shots - a dining room table propped up on two other tables to get the right height.

Chris making a "bedside table" set in the hallway consisting of sofa pillows stacked on top of my camera bag.

Working For My Neighbor, the Grove Arcade

After many months of running across the street to the Grove Arcade to shoot this or that, and countless edits, I'm happy to report that I've finished (as much as I'm ever finished with these videos) my newest stop motion video featuring the Grove Arcade. The goal was to show that it is a happening place with lots of character (and local characters hanging out there) and diverse stores, wine bars and restaurants - something for everyone. The music is by one of my very favorite bands, local musicians Ol Hoopty with a version of "Step Back Baby", which was a perfect match for the upbeat mood I was after. I hope you enjoy watching this two minute video - please share it with your friends. If it inspires you to get a makeover at Makeup, browse the used books while sipping a latte at the Battery Park Book Exchange, sip wine on tap at Sante, or grab a burger at Burger works, then something is working...

Two are Better Than One

Thursday October 4th is the opening of Chris McMillan's new furnishings store in Biltmore Village - Dwellings Inspired Furnishings. Many of you remember the former Dwellings store in the same area, so you know what a shopping treat Chris provides, but this store takes creative furnishings to a whole new level. Not only do we get to see beautiful furniture imported from other parts of the world, we get to see the work of other artists as well that Chris invited to share his space. My friend and long time artist/collaborator, Billy Sproul, asked if I would like to help him cover the walls of his 1000 square foot "Slab Fab Studio" space with art work that we could work on together - my photos, his frames, collaborative aesthetic.

It was interesting to go through years of never printed images with "What would work with Billy's wacky sensibilities?" in my mind. I wanted to show images totally different from the Asheville colorful images I've become known for, and these definitely fit that description. Here are samples - I hope you will get to Dwellings to take a look not only at our work, but because you'll find all kinds of things for that wish list, I'm sure.

Bringing Back Some Old Favorites

Many people have asked me where they can buy the Asheville series images that used to be sold at Mobilia before they were bought out by Four Corners a couple of years ago, so I decided to use my studio, for a while at least, as a "store" for these images. I've got all sizes and prices available, and as always all images are available as custom orders. I realized that as fun as it was to share the work of other artists has been by letting them display their work in my studio, it was more work than I had bargained before on top of my own business. So, for now my studio has become my own retail outlet and I will be hanging that "open" sign up whenever I'm available, and of course I'm always open by appointment as well. If you are in Asheville and would like a souvenir, please come by.

The new Asheville Scene mentioned Working Girls Studio & Gallery in their premiere issue - take a look and stop by next time you're in downtown Asheville!

A Year of Pies

It's been a while since I actually worked on Ashley English's "A Year of Pies" (being published by Lark Books, available soon), but when I saw a pre-order ad for the book today, it brought back all the mouth watering memories of shooting that beautiful book. Of all the books I've shot for Lark, I would have to say that this is my favorite. Not only was it great to be working with the Homemade Living team again, but we added the talented Travis Medford as designer to make the team that much stronger. Team being author Ashley English, editor Nicole McConville and stylist, photo/food stylist extraordinaire, Chris Bryant and designer Travis Medford. We shot the entire book over an 8 day period in Chris's wonderful cottage in W. Asheville with his bounty of props that were just right, using mostly available light and reflectors - my favorite way to work. Of course we always lugged all the lighting equipment in the house, but many days we barely used them, opting instead to chase the sun around various windows so that it looked like these were prepared in a "real" home (they were). 

On top of interesting photography, we were treated at the end of each shoot day with slices of Ashley's delicious pies to take home to our grateful families (when they lasted the car ride home). The recipes were so yummy that I've already pre-ordered 3 copies, as this is one cookbook that I must  have, and am very proud of.

Here are a few shots from the book:

The Team, drooling...