Melanie Dunea

Tweet Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting a photographer that had previously been unknown to me. The photographer is Melanie Dunea. She came onto Nashville to work on a book project called "My Country" you can find out more details about the book on her blog www.melaniedunea.com/blog. She has been shooting some of the biggest names in country music for her book. I was asked by a friend to be one of the assistants on a shoot for the book. So yesterday I assisted Melanie Dunea on her shoot with fellow assistants David Johnson and Wes Aldridge. It was a great shoot. Melanie took pictures of two major country stars. The first shoot of the day was at a small town drive in just south of Nashville. The second shoot was at Lawrence Tubb Record Shop. Between the shoots we stopped off and had lunch at Arnolds Country Kitchen which is an amazing meat n three. Melanie is an amazing photographer. She has a great report with her subjects and really tries to understand them. She also works amazingly quickly.

To find out more about Melanie Dunea visit her website www.melaniedunea.com where you will find some absolutely amazing photography.

A Tribute to Les Paul

Tweet On August 12th the band Halo Stereo invited Wes Aldridge and myself down to Muscle Shoals Sound Studios to photograph them recording. When we arrived at Muscle Shoals Sound we were all struck by the historic nature of the studio. In the studio you can sit where Duane Allman, Cher, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Joe Cockker, The Rolling Stones, JJ Cale, Lynyrd Skynard, and many more have recorded. Not only that you can see pictures of these amazing artist from their time in the studio.

Well just after you think you have had a massive history lesson on recording at Muscle Shoals Sound Noel Webster offers to take you out back to their wear house which is acting as a museum. In this museum you are bombarded with analogue recording history. Some of the worlds finest gear lives at Muscle Shoals Sound. When Noel gives you the tour you will be awestruck by the awesomeness of recording history. You can touch some of the gear and feel that it was built to last. The gear used in the hay day of recording featured military spec knobs and switches, point to point class A wiring, and heavy duty housings. When you look at the circuit boards you see a work of art that people poured their hearts and souls into. After our tour of the wear house Noel takes us back up front to show us one last goodie. He says this one is going to knock your socks off.

We get up to the entrance to the studio and Noel shows us the very first Ampex 8 track recorder. This is the very first ever 8 track recorder! The machine was designed by the very famous Les Paul. The recorder is a work of art. Not only is it a work of art it helped to make modern day multi track recording possible.

The next morning I wake up with a text from my fiance. The text reads that "Les Paul is dead". I mull those words over in my head for a few minutes before I say anything. Les Paul the man that invited the solid body electric guitar, multi track recording, tape delay, the phaser, and much more is dead at the age of 94. It was a sad day. It had even more impact because we were at Muscle Shoals Sound a bastion of analogue recording in todays digital world.

Noel Webster who runs the studio and is the engineer says to me at breakfast that we should take some pictures of the Ampex 8 Track Recorder on the day of Les Paul's death as a tribute. I think that is an amazing idea and get pretty stoked about it. Well the day runs on and it is a busy day of recording. At about 11:30pm Wes and I still have not taken any pictures of the 8 track recorder. Noel comes us to us to remind us. So we hurriedly pull some amazing photos off to honor Les Paul on the day of his death.

Kanye Dog

Tweet The above picture is of my retired racing greyhound Dory. Dory is now 6 years old and has been off the track for a little over a year. She is an amazing dog. She is quite the couch potato. To find out more about greyhound adoption in the Nashville, TN area check out GPA Nashville.

This picture was taken a little over a year ago. This was my very first picture taken with studio strobes.

One hell of a week.

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This week was crazy. It was a big week for me as a photographer. I had a four day shoot with Plattform Advertising. I worked with one of their production crews in Nashville, Mufreesboro, and Clarksville this week. The shoots went great and it was awesome working with the crew. The picture above is one of the crew when we did the tourist thing around Nashville together some b-roll. The director of the shoot has a great blog post on his website www.michaelmackie.com. You can also check out Plattform's website at www.plattformad.com.

In addition to my busy week shooting I also ran into some technical difficulties. This week was the first time in the 5 years that I have been shooting digital that I have had a card corrupt. I have not just had one card corrupt but 3. All 3 cards had important photos for clients on them. I was able to recover all of the photos with out incident. It was still a big heart stopper. I am replacing 2 CF cards and 1 SD card this week in addition to a card reader. This should solve the problem. If not the 1DMKIII will be sent back to Canon to see what is wrong.

Hair

Tweet Last week I had the distinct honor to work with hair stylist Kenya Smith www.kenyashairstylist.com and make up artist Marie Ali Sweeny www.wix.com/marieali/marieali. The above is one of the many images that were made that day. Kenya and Marie come together to create some crazy styling.

Busy

Tweet Between the last week and this coming week I have been swamped. Last week I retouched photos from a shoot I did for a hair stylist on Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday morning I assisted a fellow photographer Eric Adkins in the morning. Wednesday afternoon I headed to Glasgow, Ky to do a photoshoot for Steve Newberry. Later on Wednesday I went down to Muscle Shoals, Alabama with Wes Aldridge to do a photoshoot for Halo Stereo at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio where they were recording. Wes and I returned from Muscle Shoals early Friday morning. It was a busy week.

This coming week I have a four day shoot on location for a local college. Then on Friday and Saturday I am assisting for a local photographer. Sunday will bring a bridal session.

Hopefully sometime in all of this madness I will get to post some of the amazing photographs from this time span. Their are some really awesome photos that will be posted in the coming weeks!

My New Headshot!

Tweet I was assisting Michael Gomez awhile back in the studio and we took a test shot. As it turns out the test shot was pretty amazing. It is my new headshot. So this is a big shout out to my buddy Michael Gomez. Michael is an amazing photographer and a mentor to me. Check out Michael's work at www.gomezphotography.com. Michael is a master of putting photos into new backgrounds.

Halo Stereo Retouch

Tweet I finished up retouching one of my pictures from my session with Halo Stereo. Tonight Wes Aldridge and myself will be meeting with the band again to show them the pictures. I went ahead and printed this one off to the band to give them as a gift. If you have not already you should check out their website http://www.myspace.com/halostereo. The band makes some great music.

Whit Aldridge

Tweet The other day Whit Aldridge came into the studio to hang out. Whit is Wes Aldrige's brother. I had him stand in for a test shot before I shot Kristen Kukta. This is a natural light portrait. At Studio Daylight natural light pours through the windows all day. This portrait is a great example of how simple a good portrait can be.

Kristen Kukta

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Kristen Kukta is a great country singer based out of Nashville, Tn. I had the pleasure of shooting her the other day during a test session with fellow photographer Wes Aldridge. A big thanks to Wes for allowing me to shoot Kristen. To find out more about Kristen you can visit her myspace at http://www.myspace.com/kristenkukta.

Test Day: Halo Stereo

Tweet Thanks to my friend Wes Aldridge I had the pleasure of shooting Jody Hicks of Halo Stereo. Also a big thanks goes out to Brian Carter at Red Light Management for making this testing session possible.

You can find out more about Halo Stereo at www.myspace.com/halostereo.

Testing

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Yesterday Wes Aldridge and myself held a test day at the studio. A big thanks goes out to David Bean and Michael Gomez. David allowed us to do the test at his studio, Studio Daylight in the heart of down town Nashville. Michael allowed us to borrow some of his gear.

This is the first shot that I will be posting up from our testing session. We had a country music artist, a model, and a band show up for our test day. More pictures and information to come.

Danielle Dobbs' is the model in this picture. She is an amazing model to work with. You can find Danielle on Model Mayhem