A couple months ago, I had an old friend come into Los Angeles, as she works for Fiat as a Product Specialist and the LA Auto Show was going on at the time. Megan and I had worked together a couple times in the past, so she reached out to me to collaborate on a portrait photography session in Los Angeles during her visit. A few days later, I was able to pick her up from Downtown Los Angeles, and go to Runyon Canyon for a photography session at sunrise.
This particular session with my friend Megan was really great for a number of reasons. First, it was a lot of fun because Megan and I go way back. I first met Megan nearly 4 years ago, in Michigan. At the time, I was gearing up for moving to Albuquerque, NM, and she booked a shoot with me at the last minute (Literally, later that night, I was having my going away party with friends and family). During that shoot, we got along great, and even kept in touch when I moved to Albuquerque. Our second shoot came nearly two years later when I was visiting West Michigan over the holidays. So, this particular session here in LA was our third photoshoot together (and our first one not in studio).
Another reason why I was particular excited for these photos is the planning involved. Typically, if you’ve followed my work over the years, you know I’m big on pre-production. A lot of my work involves a lot of lighting, team of talented people, and location scouting beforehand. While this is really great for commercial photography, I’m trying to get back to my roots, where I’m able to just walk around, shoot from the hip, and create some interesting and fun images. Aside from the time of day (sunrise….dreaded, early, sunrise), not much was planned for this shoot. We just knew that we both knew what we were doing, and could create some really great images together for the third time.
Finally, I was excited for this photoshoot in LA with Megan because of the noise the images have created. Shortly after editing one of the images, I posted it on various social media and other outlets. The community of these places loved the image, and it ended up getting over 1 million views in the course of 48 hours. It also reached the front page of reddit on three different subreddits for a variety of reasons and generated a lot of great discussions. It’s incredibly exciting to live in the digital era, where my work can suddenly be seen by over a million people in such a short time. The amount of comments and critiques were inspiring and educational, and just further fueled my love for creating images.
