I recently had the pleasure of working on a wonderful ad campaign for TreeBaltimore. Creatives Davina Grustein and John Fabrizio teamed up to support this organization’s efforts to help grow Baltimore’s tree canopy. (Learn more about the benefits of planting new trees using Maryland’s Tree Benefit Calculator.) A newly planted tree is a worthy cause in my book; it was my pleasure to shoot stills for the campaign. Thanks to Anne Draddy — TreeBaltimore Coordinator, Ignite Baltimore speaker and all around ecologically caring tree hugger — for giving all three of us the chance to do something good for the city of Baltimore. Look for the ads on buses and in the Urbanite Baltimore magazine.

I was commissioned to shoot a portrait series featuring the nurses at Johns Hopkins Hospital accompanied by bio-captions describing the important roles these nurses brought to their respective departments. Having shot at hospitals a lot over the years, I realized my biggest logistical hurdle was going to be coordinating the schedules of the doctors and nurses. So I proposed shooting pseudo-David Hockney photographic collage style. I wanted to shoot this way just in case someone was unable to make the scheduled time for the portrait sitting. This way, I could use another person as a stand-in with a white coat to fill the edge of the frame of the person who was there, come back and re-shoot the person who missed the session, then fix it in post. I was thrilled with how they turned out. It offered both a visually unique styling AND scheduling flexibility for the doctors and nurses. Final prints were 24×38 and set in a white matte with a black frame.

Just read in VARIETY that the major studios are gearing up for a rush of feature films. SAG strike? Hope not…