The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Judy Doherty

Quick Pickles is a collaborative project between myself and Publisher Cheryl Koehler, of Edible East Bay Magazine, in the SF Bay Area in California. We wanted to create an eBook that would inspire folks to make beautiful quick pickles in their kitchen. I got to work with some tempting flavor pairings, and developed recipes for many concoctions including: carrot ginger, asparagus basil, cabbage hot pepper, and garam masala cucumber.

The quick pickles “quickly” came to life in my photo studio and when we published our eBook, I blogged it to my base. The line of the email was, Pickles in Cupcakes? Maybe Just A Few, it was a metaphorical line to suggest we were really creative and maybe you could use them in your cupcakes. This line came from my favorite children’s book of all times, Warthogs in the Kitchen. This book taught math and generated an interest in cooking by having sloppy fun with warthogs in a kitchen.

Well, I received thousands of hits on the blog and Instagram post and dozens of requests for a recipe for pickles in cupcakes came into my inbox!

So, I delved into my past as a pastry chef for Hyatt, remembering that I used to make a red velvet cake with beets instead of food color. So pickled beets were a natural for a red velvet cupcake and it was a whole lot of fun to make, too! It turns out that they pair well with rich butter, fluffy cake, and cream cheese frosting. And the color is a deep ruby chocolate.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Jason Lindsay

Reflecting Forward

In science, we are often contemplating the future by evaluating the past. The portrait obscured by reflections represents the idea of looking forward and backward in time. The ambiguity and the unknown come to the surface, clouding our vision of the past and the future. These portraits explore the uncertain futures of the next generation that will be struck the hardest by the impacts of Climate Change. Just as these images suggest, we are intertwined with the natural world and will need to find our path. My 13-year-old son, Björn, inspired the “Reflecting Forward” project. During one of our many daily chats, he asked about Climate Change and what the world will look like in the future. I realized I had only murky visions of that future myself and could not give him a clear answer. As a father, I hated the fact that I could not provide much clarity for Björn and knew I needed to explore this idea with a photography project. “Reflecting Forward” was born.

To see more of this project, click here.

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Dana Romanoff 

Logline:

NOAH, Rising from the Ashes in Flint

Short general synopsis: 

“Noah” tells the story of Noah Patton, a young man from Flint, Michigan, who was going down a one-way street backward. With a gun on his hip and always in search of the next lick, he had many enemies and was living on borrowed time. However, like his hometown, Noah is striving to rise from the ashes. With the support of his pastor, he is turning his life around and helping to positively shape the future of his community.

Artist Statement

Noah caught my eye the second he walked into the room. I was seated at a table with a group of men, mostly ex-felons, at the Joy Tabernacle Church in Flint, Michigan where I had been commissioned to create a video on resident engagement by Community Leads. I had been introduced to Pastor McCathern as a potential subject. When Pastor opened up the church doors to me he said: “if you want to know my story, you have to hear the stories of my council.” That’s when Noah entered, gently placing his sleeping toddler down on a couch and taking a seat across from me. He looked up at me and said “I got a story that’s meant for the movies.”

Directed by filmmaker Dana Romanoff and edited by Blue Chalk Media, “Noah” tells the story of Noah Patton, a young man from Flint, Michigan who was going down a one-way street backward. Backward past abandoned homes and empty schools and the sounds of bullets echoing louder than children’s laughter. With a gun on his hip and always in search of the next lick, he had many enemies and was living on borrowed time.

Flint is a city built on the American Dream. With the disappearance of industry, it became impoverished and neglected, and so did its residents. The water crisis is just one more tragedy piled upon a mound of oppression.

But Flint is a city of survivors. And like the phoenix, Noah and his city are rising from the ashes. Noah returned to his deep-rooted faith in God, and with the help of a pastor, he is turning his life around and helping to positively shape the future of his community.

Noah’s story provides an entry point into the discussion about the role of grassroot efforts in urban revitalization. Flint is a city looking to build itself up from within by empowering its communities from the ground up. Both Noah and his pastor are examples of such grassroots efforts. Today’s political climate, and the often harsh rhetoric about inner cities, make the discussion about resident engagement, and Noah’s story, ever more important.

To see more of this project, click here.

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Paul Elledge

iPhone Once A Day                                              by Paul Elledge

This is a body of work that I started January 1, 2009 as a visual social media experiment on Facebook.  More than ten years later the project still continues.  It can now also be found on Instagram at iPhone once_a_day as well as it’s own website of the same name.

I am not a writer, thus I have chosen the camera as a tool to create a pictorial diary.  In some ways, this project brings me back to when I started my love for photography.  Rather than a commissioned assignment this project is personal expression. I’m making images just for me that are about how I feel as well as living in the now.  This project keeps my skills sharp to the process of making images, as I am always looking, feeling and creating them.  I photograph every day to capture an image that mirrors an emotion, an experience, or a feeling that illustrates my state of mind for that day.  I have always believed that making images is not about where my feet are, for me it is really about where my mind and heart are.

In order to bring some visual consistency, I have set up a few rules for this project.  I can only make images with the iPhone and they have to be shot vertical.  The images are always black and white, and I can only alter the images within the app network on the iPhone.  The final rule is that the daily post must be done as a mobile upload.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Justin Bettman

When it became clear that the COVID 19 quarantine was going to keep us at home for a while, I was really bummed. This meant that the situation had become really serious, lives across the world were at risk, and all my commissioned jobs were cancelled. For a personal project, I wanted to create a series of quirky images that illustrated things that we could all be doing alone during this quarantine. This was the impetus for my latest personal project, Isolation Inspiration.

There are many ways in which people are providing assistance during this global pandemic. I am extremely appreciative of the many healthcare and food workers on the frontlines, the photojournalists who are capturing the stories that need to be told, and the individuals sewing masks from home. While I don’t have skills to contribute in these ways, I started Isolation Inspiration in hopes of bringing a small smile to people’s faces during a challenging time.

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Bruce Brown

A Portrait of a Modern Bullfighter in America.

After a twenty-year break from bullfighting in Mexico, Agustín Gutiérrez returns to the ring. He talks about his passions and fears in this new version of bullfighting in the central valley of California. Depicted in this film is the Bloodless Variation of Azorean Portuguese Style Bullfighting a non-abusive, pro bull, non-kill interpretation of traditional bullfighting. No bulls during these festivals are injured or harmed.

Directors Statement

What interested me in this project was the glimpse into this variation of Azorean Portuguese Style Bullfighting, a bloodless interpretation of traditional bullfighting. In that the bull and the fighter are on equal ground. Having witnessed traditional bullfighting in other countries it was refreshing to see the bulls leave the ring in the same shape as they entered. That cannot be said for the matadors who often are introduced first hand to the power of these creatures. I hope you enjoy this character study of this controversial sport.

Bio

Bruce Temuchin Brown is a California based filmmaker/photographer/artist specializing in portraiture of the human condition. He attended the noted Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena. His clients include AT&T, United Airlines, NCR, Chevron Texaco, Money, Forbes, Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, USA Weekend Magazine, Chronicle Sunday Magazine and Hemispheres, to mention a few.

He lives in the Napa Valley with his beautiful wife and newborn son.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Cade Martin

THE CREATIVE NOW

As a kid I spent many a dinner at a table surrounded by parents’ friends, an eclectic cast of characters — sculptors, writers, painters, and creatives. That thread of creative community has remained in our offices, our teams, and our collaborations. But that thread feels thinner at this moment.

So I’m asking, with the purpose of sharing, and of supporting and caring for this creative community in its current, uncertain reality. I asked what people are doing, how they are feeling, how they are sparking creativity. It feels important to share what we do when we can’t do all our doing.

Reaching out first to some of the 200-ish talented people in the Mid-Atlantic that I’ve had the good fortune to profile through the Capitol Communicator portrait series. Capitol Communicator serves as a resource to the region’s creative community and this is my version of a virtual dinner table of sorts. Grab a chair and come back often.

Kerry-Ann Hamilton, KAH Consulting Group

 “With more breaths, I am taking the time to see more in nature and it gives me hope that things will be normal again; but a new normal, filled with gratitude and a deep appreciation for friends, family and freedom.”

Learn more              

 

Matt Smith, SmithGifford

“Sudden change is inspiring for me, it’s energizing, and open for opportunities. I have found myself being far more passionate about ideas and how to help.”

Learn more                 

Michael Dumlao – Corporate Affairs Booz Allen

 “My life’s greatest creative moments tend to come from struggle and introspection so I’m using this time to rediscover my roots as an artist,…”

Learn more               

Sean Flanagan, Philadelphia Eagles

“…it’s keeping as much of my former routine as possible. That’s what works for me. This is a psychological battle as much as a physical one.”

Learn more                 

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Robin O’Neill

I am compelled to create images of people who are making the world a better place. During the global state of emergency and the mandate for self-isolation and distancing, I couldn’t help but turn my heart to the people still working to provide our essential services.

Trying to balance my own responsibility for social distance with my desire to give faces to the people still risking infection to care for the rest of us, I began to bring my camera along on my necessary outings. From a safe distance I took portraits of front-line workers at the grocery store, and at our community mail and waste depots. I have since extended the project to include other professionals who aren’t in my direct path, including medical workers and hospital janitorial staff. I plan to continue capturing these portraits of the unsung heroes of this unprecedented time.

Thank you to Arc’teryx for offering jackets as appreciation to some of the people I have captured and for sharing my images in their global campaign.

To see more of this project, click here.

Robin O’Neill is an outdoor lifestyle and action photographer based in Whistler, British Columbia. Her editorial and social documentary backgrounds have helped Robin develop a unique view into the wild landscapes and wilder personalities that surround her. By translating her passion for outdoor adventures into exciting visual stories and dramatic imagery, she has found success in working with many reputable outdoor brands, as well as winning the Whistler Deep Winter and Deep Summer Photo Showdowns, People’s Choice at WSSF 2019, and a finalist at Red Bull Illume 2019. Robin’s insatiable curiosity and addiction to mountain life have perfectly combined to ensure ongoing grand adventures and a growing portfolio of outstanding images captured in the wild outdoors.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

How I used a personal project to learn a new skill, gain confidence directing behind the camera, and even open a few doors for new work.

So often working in this business you can be more of a tool for someone else’s creative vision than of you own. In order to maintain my creative drive I try my best to jump out of that box with side or what you might call personal projects. For myself, I wouldn’t say the motivation would be to gain more work from these projects but more so to just connect with something inspiring.  If I can learn something new, have fun doing it, and possibly add a new tool in my creative toolbox then I would consider a project successful.

About thirteen years ago I used that out of the box motivation to try and learn something new while creating unique images by photographing animals and compositing them into preconceived scenes within Photoshop. Within a couple years of practice I was able to convert that newly developed skill and confidence into creating unique scenes with people instead of animals. My video discusses the biggest example of all those hours paying off with the cover of Chelsea Handler’s book “Uganda Be Kidding Me”

James created a video about the whole process: click here  Video

James Quantz, Jr work can be seen here

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Kendrick Brinson  Brinson/Banks

“I call this community: “Life after Life”. There are people well into 80’s and 90’s enjoying their life as if they were 50’s and 60’s. You can actually look forward to growing old. There is a lot to do. A reason to live,” said Vera MacIntosh, on a Sun City blog.

The first time I went to Sun City, Arizona was December 2009. I was a new freelancer after having left my last staff photojournalist job at a newspaper and I’d read about the age-restricted city of 40,000 retirees, and then read about the Sun City Poms, a cheerleading squad made up of women all the way in their 80s, and I read about the 50th anniversary of the place that would begin the next month, and I knew I had to go and take photos there. I never would have thought that December that I’d be returning with my camera for a decade, but I have.

For 60 years, those 55 and older have relocated to Sun City, Arizona, a city self-governed, a city unlike any other in the world. Sun City was the first place of its kind and it is still the largest. The city is 14 square miles of a retirement paradise of palm tree lined streets, each with a golf cart lane.  Sun City provides seniors with a life after work and a life after raising children.  Sun City is a life of enjoying friends and being active, in spite of age.

There are more than 100 active clubs in Sun City and the days are filled with lawn bowling and group swim classes and the nights are filled with dancing. All this living comes with loss, however. Friends and spouses die, and the singles dance night are just as full as the couples dance night for obvious reasons. Yet, there’s optimism everywhere.

“Enjoy your youth, I’ll tell ya, you never know how much you have left,” resident Tom Woods told me.

People can see more my work here:

Yes, I do intend to make a book of the project I just have to decide when I’m done going 😂

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Andy Batt

I’m very much a non-traditional landscape photographer. I don’t carefully scout or go anywhere with the idea of making “that shot”. I just wander with my camera, and occasionally get to do it in amazing places.

I spend a lot of time just looking when I’m wandering. It’s a search for a reaction in whatever’s in front of me— usually nebulous and poorly defined, but it’s what I’ve come to think of as getting an emotional reaction from a rocks.

My landscapes feel like an exploration of myself as much as they are about the land. I’m looking for resonance with shapes, light, and form. There’s an acknowledgement that each moment is fleeting and different—not better or worse. It’s about opening myself up and being receptive to that moment and taking the photo without judgment or criticism.

Landscape work gives me the freedom to simply be in the moment. It has a sort of artistic healing effect on myself—it bleeds over into my commercial photography, giving me much needed perspective.

There’s something calming and inspiring about being reminded that the world is a much bigger and older place than I often remember. I feel humbled being down in a canyon that’s been carved out over millennia or standing on a pumice field that’s been shaped by ancient volcanos and the constant scouring of wind. Creating art in these places connects me to them—it gives me a touchstone I can return to over and over.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Pat Molnar

Most of our projects are pretty good-sized ad campaigns and image libraries with a big ole pile of people involved. Campaigns that include: agencies, clients, production teams, pre-pro meetings, pre-pre-pro meetings, trucks, motorhomes, castings, mood boards, etc., etc. It’s honestly a wonderful business and I’m honored to work with some of the best people in the world…a lot of whom are my closest friends.

Below are a few images that I have done as an ongoing personal project with families over the past year or 2. These projects are the absolute opposite of an ad project. We find a family….come up with a few very rough ideas a day or 2 before….and go shoot. Normally on these shoot it’s: myself, an assistant or 2, a wardrobe/prop stylist (we normally use the families own clothes) and a hair/mu person. Things are really loose and a whole lot of fun. We aren’t checking things off a list…..it’s really just playing around and finding what feels right.

The pictures aren’t really about what the subjects are doing….it’s really just finding an honest, human, imperfect moment that we all can relate to. I don’t remember any immaculate, picture perfect moments when I was a kid. The stuff i do remember is little details from pretty obscure moments. Working with kids is pretty cool because they are completely straightforward. They don’t care who you are, what you’ve shot or how big the budget of your last project was. If a 4yr old wants to pretend he’s a tiger for the next 2 hours…..you damn well better figure out a way to incorporate a tiger into your picture.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist: Ewan Burns

Florence

In the past I’d been to war zones and places of conflict.  Two distinct human themes seem to surface in those places.  It’s simple and clear to anyone who has had that experience.  In the face of communal disaster, one can witness the best and worst of humanity.

In NYC a local torrential thunderstorm can unit people getting mutually wet and cause interactions that on another occasion wouldn’t happen.

The disaster that was Hurricane Florence is no exception but the magnitude of the problem magnifies the human experience.

I had planned to head south from NYC on Thursday afternoon but I had to respond to a client who needed an executive team portrait shot on Friday morning and a quick turn around so I was delayed.  I arrived in NC on Sunday morning having entirely missed the most devastating part of the storm and headed for Wilmington, which was where the eye had made landfall.

My efforts were thwarted due to either municipal road closures; Interstate 95 was shut down for about 80 miles, or local flooding. I spoke to a man in a large heavily booted pick up with a broad North Carolinian accent who told me he’d spent 3 hours trying to get to Clinton which was where I too was heading.  It was 8 miles away, but every road that might have led in that direction was truncated by floodwater that ran for hundreds of feet away from our position.

Due to the declared state of emergency, it was illegal to enter the water, which made sense given the enormous drain on rescue services and first responders.

“You could have been arrested”, a fire martial told me as I waded away from an abandoned car I’d been photographing, which had failed to make the crossing. I never find it helpful to be told that what I am doing might be illegal as well as unsafe.  I understand that part but that I might be on the wrong side of the law too makes decision making much harder.  A veteran myself I understood the concept of not endangering another’s life because of a selfish whim.

On Monday I ventured to New Burn, an old town sitting on the fork of the tidal Neuse River and Trent.  As I drove over the elevated roadways that crossed the estuary to the east of the town I saw my first glimpse of the power of the storm.  I could see boats and yachts in unexpected places.

Unsure of where to begin I went in search of a local coffee shop, a number that were closed and the place had the feeling that something is really wrong.  There were a lot of people out and about but all the big box store parking lots were almost all empty except for people using them as temporary camping.  There were people with pickups’ and camper trailers running generators with dogs tied to trailer hitches in conversation with other parking lot campers.

In a coffee shop in the old part of town, a greeter called Nate and I had a chat about the storm and where he had been.  He told me of a couple of low-income neighborhoods that were close and whom he’d been to on the night of the storm in order to check on friends.

I first went to Trent Court, a low-income mostly African American neighborhood.  Almost desolate as most people had evacuated.  Apartments sat about one hundred feet from and two feet above the water of the estuary. There was nothing to stop the storm surge making its way into these homes.

Two men were pulling out waterlogged furniture into the street so it could either be disposed of or dry.  They invited me inside an apartment.  It was tiny, and all the furniture inside was upside down and wet.  It smelt of sewage.  In the back room, the two men were wrestling with a refrigerator.  They were emptying it of water and putting it back on its feet.  For a moment I tried to imagine what sort of wave action could have done this to a home.  It made no sense as wall and doors would have broken down the wave action.  I asked the workers and they told me that everything in the apartment had floated and once the water had receded it was left as I witnessed it.  Everything these people had in the home on the ground floor was done…

To see more of this project, click here.

 

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Clemens Ascher

“A Modernist Lunch break “

In “A Modernist Lunch break “ I show business people eating their lunches on the go.

Therefor I’ve created abstract spatial compositions, populated by surreal figures – like marionettes on a theatrical stage.

With a certain ironic elevation I explore the relation between past visions of a modernist future and contemporary sociological phenomena – People feeling free within a very limited spectrum of acceptable opinions and generated desires, for which to be satisfied they have to function within the system.

As a recurring topic of all my personal works I continue to explore the subliminal effect of colours and some of the most relevant and distressing topics of our times. Societal control through generated desires; alienation from nature and other uncomfortable contemporary truths build the superstructure of my surreal photography.

In my work process I builds stage like scenarios and populate them with surreal figures performing their everyday life. I often utilize a slightly exaggerated advertising aesthetics, contrasted with calm and detached minimalism. I’m combining various styles and elements from art history and our collective visual memory to form new contemporary statements.

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

 

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist: Tom Hussey

It’s late and we’re looking for a Second Line Band to photograph with no luck

We are one block north of Congo Square, deep in the heart of New Orleans’ Treme district. We stop and ask a man, who introduces himself as Oswald, if there’s anywhere close by that has live music? He points across the street to a faded yellow building. Oswald says he’s pretty sure his son’s band is playing later — it’s 8:00pm Sunday night.

Drink, Eat, Dance

The lounge is one big room with a bar, pool table and a large painted dance floor. The band is setting up in the back. Our bartender tells us the lounge has been here since ‘79, three years before Katrina took the roof off. He says there’s a cash bar, free red beans and rice, the best live music in NOLA, and you better know what drink you like when you approach the bar.

Around 10:30 the bass line kicks in and the room begins to move. The band tonight is the Treme Funktet. There’s no play-list just old school New Orleans music mixed with brass band, funk and some mainstream jazz. The group leader is Corey Henry. Corey is Treme royalty. His Grandfather played at Preservation Hall. His Uncle is Benny Jones of the famed Treme Brass Band. And, his cousin, Ms. Leona, owns the lounge.

We ask about the band to find out more about their music. They’re known for a Treme born style of funk, based in the New Orleans Second Line tradition.  That doesn’t mean much until someone explains that “Second Line” is a four/one drumbeat — not on the beat or off.  The unique rhythm was picked up by Motown in the 1960’s and made famous by James Brown. The room is warm but the sound is shifting from hot to cool.

The sound bounces off the plywood ceiling, as the whole room seems to move to the bass line groove.  It’s after 11:00 and the band is just getting started. New Orleans Treme Funk is a part of life for this neighborhood.  The roots are Afro-Cuban, but the music is universal.

After Midnight

 It’s getting late but there’s no set time for when the band will quit. We pay our tab and exit into the humid night air making way for people that are just coming in. The Candle Light Lounge is the beating heart of the last live music in the Treme.  As we head back to the hotel, a quote I had read earlier in the day, by Ellis Marsalis seems dead on to me —

“In other places culture comes down from on high.  In New Orleans, it bubbles up from the street.”

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art-buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist: Kremer Johnson

After waking up and piecing the previous evening together, this quartet of lifelong friends enjoys a fun filled winter day at the beach. Unaware the world around them has changed. Unaware their appearances will no longer be considered normal. For who’s perception of beauty is in the eye of the beholder or is it in the eye of society in a place we call, The Twilight Zone. ~ Based on the “Eye of the beholder” – season 2 episode 6. Released 11.11.1960 ~ Thank you to Oscar winner, Kevin Haney for the SFX Make up

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own.  I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before.  In this thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find.  Please DO NOT send me your work.  I do not take submissions.

 

Today’s featured artist:  Mead Norton

Sepak Takraw – The People’s Game

There’s a scene painted on a wall in the Temple of the Emerald Buddha where the god Manuman plays a game with 3 monkeys. The game is called Sepak Takraw, one of Asia’s most oldest and most popular sports. There are references to the game being played as far back as the 1500s. A cross between Hacky sack & volleyball, this timeless activity is the most widely played sport in Thailand. Sepak Takraw is simple; all that’s required is a ball, a net and an extraordinary amount of skill and athletic ability. It is today what is always has been, a game played by gods and by people.

As a child, I grew up playing soccer and when I didn’t have a soccer ball to play with, I spent hours playing what we called Hacky sack- where I would kick a cloth/knitted sac filled with beans around either by myself or with my friends. When I saw Sepak Takraw on a TV show where they were highlighting sports from around the world and I remember thinking that it was a wild sport.

Last year, when I had a chance to travel to Bangkok, Thailand, I decided to use the opportunity to explore the sport and the people who play it. Through the images I wanted to focus on the simplicity of the game- playing with the shapes of the court, net, ball and also the lack of equipment needed to play it- a lot of the players would play the game barefoot and at the same time highlight the athleticism of the players.

 

To see more of this project, click here.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s.  After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty.  Follow her at @SuzanneSease.  Instagram

Success is more than a matter of your talent. It’s also a matter of doing a better job presenting it.  And that is what I do with decades of agency and in-house experience.