Behind the Scenes at Brooke & Mark’s Wedding

Hey everyone! Here’s a little behind the scenes video from a recent wedding that I thought you might enjoy. The video is intended for potential clients to get an idea of my approach and my work by seeing me in action at a real wedding. Many thanks to Brooke and Mark who were gracious enough to let me have Jamie Abart follow us around all day. Also, a huge thanks to Jamie for a superb job on this project. He was invisible yet everywhere all at the same time. Again, this is intended as a promo piece for for my work not a traditional wedding video.

You can check out more photos of Brooke and Mark here.

Enjoy!

Bryan Allen Photo and The Visage Group Team Up for Success

So I alluded to this in my last post but now it’s time to make the official announcement . . .

Bryan Allen Photo is extremely excited and proud to announce that we have partnered with the Visage Group to completely overhaul their corporate imagery in their facilities and marketing and promotional pieces. A number of exciting projects are in the works including a new website which will launch shortly. We are also busy updating shots of their incredible facilities, capturing corporate events, and photographing their incredible staff (see below).

The Visage Group includes Salon Visage (Downtown West and Market Square), Spa Visage, and The Studio by Salon Visage. The Visage Group is the brainchild of Frank and Belinda Gambuzza, each internationally recognized performers and educators in the hair care industry. Throughout the last decade their motivation, training, commitment to education and responsibility to family, employees and community has helped them grow the Visage Group into one of the nation’s top salon/spa businesses, serving over 50,000 clients. Their businesses are nationally and internationally acclaimed and recipients of numerous industry awards. Salon Visage is also Knoxville’s only Intercoiffure salon.

We could not be more pleased to work with a new client that is is so well respected and regarded and who, more importantly, shares the same commitment to excellence and basic values.

Here’s a quick quote from Frank regarding our partnership . . .

“When choosing a corporate partner, the Visage Group hopes to make the collaboration SIMPLE, but POWERFUL. Most often, this is not an easy task. However, from inception, the Visage Group / Bryan Allen Photo partnership has had the momentum of an UNSTOPABLE freight train. Not only does BA now where it’s at, but better yet, knows where this train needs to go BEFORE it gets there. Every once in a while, a corporate partnership clicks, this is our GEM find for 2010.”

Thanks to Frank, Belinda, and the entire Visage Group family for entrusting us to deliver world class imagery while meshing with the culture of excellence they have established for their brands. It is truly an honor.

So, no blog post wold be complete without a few images right?! One of the first projects we embarked upon was to produce a “year book” of the current staff which we will update annually. These images will be utilized on the new web site. We ended up photographing over 100 employees at 4 locations in 3 days under the concept of “year book photos with attitude”. Here is a compilation of just a few of the shots. What and incredibly fun bunch of folks to shoot and meet. Attitude, energy, and passion was not hard to elicit out of this group. It is clear to see that the Visage Group is what is is largely due to the incredible individuals that make up the team and their collective commitment to the ideals and values established by Frank and Belinda.

Award Winner!

Happy 4th of July weekend everyone! Just a quick post today to announce an award winning campaign for Frank’s Barber Shop which is owned and operated by the Frank Gambuzza of The Visage Group. Frank’s Barber Shop is a really cool Knoxville barber shop with a twist! Takara Belmont is one of the leading salon, barber, and spa product companies in the world. Very honored to be a part of this!

I’ll make another post soon formally announcing our exciting new collaborative relationship with Frank and The Visage Group. We’ve got a lot of exciting projects planned and in the works. For now though, I am so happy to say that our first project together was a big success.

If you live here in Knoxville and haven’t checked out the barber shop, I really encourage you to do so. Great cuts, shaves, products, and atmosphere!

Zac Brown Band – Breaking Southern Ground Tour, Atlanta GA

Here’s a few from a recent live show shoot with Zac Brown Band and friends on the Breaking Southern Ground Tour. This stop was at the Verizon Wireless Ampitheatre in Atlanta, GA. Incredible show, incredible people, incredible fun! What more can you say. Have I mentioned lately that I absolutely love  my job!;-) I want to thank ZBB and their team for the opportunity to work with you again. Stay safe out there on the road and smell the roses along the way. You guys have earned and deserve all the success you are enjoying! Hope to see you all real soon.

Jeana & Alex – Sneak Peek

Here’s a sneak peek at Jeana and Alex’s wedding which was held a few weeks ago in Memphis, TN. This is one I’ll certainly never forget! You may have read or heard about all of the flooding in Nashville recently . . . well this wedding was that same day and believe me when I say that Memphis may not have made the news for flooding but they got just as much rain and a few tornados just for kicks. Like and idiot I didn’t even check the weather this trip and we ended up getting somewhere between 13 and 18 inches of rain . . . in one day! A quick trip to Wally-word in the early am and we were outfitted and ready to go though. We even bought toy fishing poles for the bride and groom. Hey when life gives you lemons you gotta make lemonade right!

We started the day at the spa like many weddings but soon found ourselves in an hour and a half lockdown in the spa’s “wet room” (read large shower) with 15 or so of our new, closest friends. After that, the schedule was blown, there was no sun in sight, and the sirens blared off an on all day. But in the end it all worked out just fine. Jeana and Alex didn’t let the water or the tornados dampen their spirits at all and their positive outlook carried the day.

Jean & Alex, thank you for letting me be a part of your remarkable and memorable day. You guys are fantastic and both of your families were a blast. From our New Year’s Day bridal/engagement shoot to the big day and beyond, you guys have been great fun to work with. I wish you all the best as you embark on life’s journey together.

Oh, now here’s a sneak peek at a few shots from the big day. You can check out a bigger sneak peek here . . . and of course many, many more images to come shortly.

Tilt-shift Miniature / Stop Motion Project

Here’s a video from a project I did back in January for Deborah Molique with Molique Event Specialists and the Digital Wedding Forum (dwf). Deborah requested that I produce images to be used for a video for the dwf convention using tilt-shift miniature and stop motion techniques. Sounded like fun so I signed on and quickly enlisted the help of two fellow photographers, Brian Bastinelli and Ted van der Linden. Over about a day and a half we snapped off over 30,000 images at 1 second intervals. I then compiled sequences using iStopMotion at 10-20 frames per second to achieve the desired visual effect. Given some of the physical constraints of the convention space we were not able to do quite as much miniature effect as we had hoped. You really need to be able to observe the scene from a high vantage point to achieve the effect. So, we opted for a mixture of miniature effect and good old stop motion. Deborah’s team edited this final version. I have a bunch of clips that ended up on the editing room floor and may play around with them in the future. For now, check this version out. A huge thanks to Brian and Ted for their help on this project and thanks to Deborah for the opportunity!

Out on a limb . . .

I often get requests to show behind the scenes documentary shots from some of my shoots. Unfortunately, I am terrible at remembering to take documentary shots along the way or remind my assistants to do so. Well I finally remembered to do so on a recent shoot for a billboard. Thanks to Allan Mueller for his help and for snapping the documentary shots. I posted on this shoot earlier so you can see below for the final shot that was used. Of course we shot a lot more than the one shot and some more of them are included below. This was a particularly fun and interesting shoot. Not for the faint of heart or acrophobic out there as you will see.

The second half of the shots in the lightbox below are documentary shots. Many of you know that I will go to great lengths to get the shot I see in my mind’s eye! I preach putting your camera where others don’t, can’t, or won’t in my teaching. Where here’s a little of that philosophy in practice. All of this was shot on a ropes course some 75-100 feet in the air. Doesn’t sound like much until you’re up there standing on a tiny wire or laying upside down on a log.

For those of you who are interested in the technical aspects of the shoot, I was shooting in late afternoon sun side lighting from camera right in most cases. For some shots I exposed for the shadows and let the side light blow out a bit. For others, I lugged an AlienBee strobe, beauty dish, Bogen magic arm and super-clamp combo, and some pocket wizards up into the trees to light the talent. Fun stuff as long as you don’t look down or drop anything;-)Enjoy!

Gift Gourmet & Interiors

Hey Everyone. I’m extremely happy to make this post. I’ve been working for a while now with Gift Gourmet and Interiors on revamping the imagery for their website and marketing materials. Everyone in town seems to know and love Merri Lee and G&G and with good reason I might add. Merri Lee is the poster child for high touch customer service and her personality and way of doing things is the gold standard as far as I’m concerned. As a result, her store has continued to grow and prosper. I have been a long time customer and now am honored to work with Merri Lee, Sarah, Jamie, Robin, and all the fine folks at G&G. We still have lots of work to do and much to shoot over time but the new site is finally up and running and features some of my work. Look for more features on their interior designs in the coming months. Here are a few screen grabs . . .

A Bus and a Billboard

One of the most rewarding things about being a photographer is seeing your images come to life in print. Here are two recent examples of commercial images coming to life in a larger than life sort of way.

The first example is Joey and Rory‘s tour bus. This shot is from a shoot we did for their soon to be released second album entitled Album #2. This shot will be the cover shot and they have already started using it in various branding uses including their website and the new tour bus.

The second is a recent billboard shoot I did for my friends John Macready and Johns Roethlesburger, who own and operate a retreat business in Crossville, TN called Lake Frances Retreats (when the facility is not in use for their summer gymnastics business FlipFest).

Movie Stills in Memphis Pt. II – Fandango Crew

These are some behind the scenes and production/crew shots from the Fandango shoot. These shots are a huge part of the equation as well. When shooting set stills you are generally asked to document the production as well as capture creative shots of the cast and the movie scenes themselves. Shooting people is always a good way for me to build rapport, so this aspect of the job was a big help in establishing the critical relationships, trust, and credibility with all of the principal people on set. Again, I just want to say a huge thanks to all of the folks behind the scenes who I met and who were so helpful to me. I have such respect for how you all go about your jobs and how the whole production runs. Really incredible to be a part of. Hope to see you all soon!