Eat (Dinner) At the Potholder

If you're a Long Beach local, chances are you've had breakfast at The Potholder Cafe at least once after a long night of sport drinking. The Potholder is a Long Beach icon of sorts and is known for their great breakfast menu and walls with photos of customers holding a sign "Eat at the Potholder" while standing in Hawaii, Mexico or Iraq.

I had the good luck of being hired by them to shoot some images for their dinner menu. We decided to play around with the customer-holding-a-sign idea. I shot some standard food shots, then a few lifestyle images of people hanging out, then I beg and pleaded with some of the customers there for a snap with the sign. It was a fun evening of shooting and I hope my images go a long way in promoting their business.

Constructed Realities

This weekend I did a photo shoot for a local development company, Conduit Development. Their growing speciality is building with ICF, or insulated concrete forms. Basically, instead of using wood to frame a house, they use foam forms that shape the walls which is eventually filled with concrete. This creates a solid, well insulated, fireproof and more eco-friendly structure.

I was hired to shoot some portraits of the principals as well as some lifestyle images telling the story of a family moving into a new home built by Conduit. I got to work with real clients who were actually walking through the frame of their new house. It was a fun shoot but also a challenge. I had to direct people but also keep it loose enough so the images look natural.

Shoots like this take lots of quick thinking. I had a storyboard of some images I knew I wanted to get, but I also had to keep myself open to impromptu images.