W Seattle Architecture Tour

I'm really excited to show off my first video for a new client, The W Seattle hotel.  A big thank you to Lissa Gruman of Gruman & Nicoll who pulled the whole project together.  Here's a bit of background from their blog post on the video;

W Seattle has one of the most impressive urban chic interiors in the city. That’s not just our opinion, it’s that of the International Restaurant and Bar Design Awards, which recently named W Seattle’s Living Room and bar as the best designed bar in the Americas.

It makes my job a lot easier shooting in a place like W, where everything is so well designed and photogenic to begin with.  I love how the chess board looks with the light coming through it in Jeff's interview; not every hotel would have a chess board like that just sitting in their rooms waiting to be used as a prop! 

Also thanks to Rachel Gallaher of Gray Magazine who did a great job in her first hosting gig, and Jeff Kovel of Skylab Architecture for going above and beyond with the set design ;)

Allrecipes // Kahlúa

Jennifer & Angela: These two were pros at the "sip coffee and laugh a lot" scene.

Allrecipes, Kahlúa, and yours truly teamed up to make this five video series to showcase Kahlúa's seasonal pumpkin-spice flavor.  When the idea was brought to me, the plan was to use a similar format to the videos we produced for Herdez, with an Allrecipes member as host reading a prepared script. 

While I was really happy with how those Herdez videos turned out, I didn't think it was the most engaging format and I also didn't think it really fit very well with Allrecipes' brand (not to mention the added difficulty of asking non-professional talent to 'host' a one-person cooking show, which trust me, is harder than it looks).

What makes Allrecipes, Allrecipes, is their community of home-cooks that use the site to share recipes & tips with eachother.  A stand-up host felt more Food Network than Allrecipes, so I sold them on the idea of doing these in a more natural, documentary format and letting the Allrecipes members (that they flew in from all around the country) speak for themselves and say what they like about the dish, and what their experience was in making it.  I'm tempted to call these hybrid documentaries but I think that would come off as blasphemous to people out there making actual documentaires (or hybrids), so I'll refrain. 

Here are some fun behind the scenes shots on Angela's blog Dancing with my Father.  And hats off to all the ladies who were super fun to work with and all did a great job!

Here are two of my favs;

Nelly making the Kahlúa Pumpkin Whiskey Cocktail    

Sarah making Kahlúa & Cofffee

New Lens!

Went out and got myself a new lens today, the Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro (thanks Glazers!).  So expect to see some even closer close-ups in my next food video.  Here are a couple of test snaps.  First one is a side by side comparison of how tight I could get with my new lens vs my old standby lens, which is a 24-105.

 And a close-up of one of my couch cushions.

UW Legends game with 3PT

My first few seasons with the Sonics / Storm, I worked in the video control room at KeyArena... and one thing I can say for sure is that for a non sports-fan like myself, being on headset during a basketball game makes the game a thousand times more entertaining.  Behind the scenes it's controlled chaos, there are so many things going on at once; everyone is yelling at eachother and cracking jokes all at the same time and yet somehow it (usually) all comes together at the last minute and the show goes on without a hitch. 

I always thought it would be fun to document the whole process in video... so when my brother and two colleague / friends of his started their own sports entertainment production company, 3 Point Productions, I finally got the chance to do it. 

The Perils of Shooting Courtside

Pretty much every Storm game, someone sitting courtside gets landed on by a player.  Somehow, in my 5+ years shooting courtside I've avoided taking a direct hit... until last night.  I ended up with a face-full of Skylar Diggins (one of the "three to see" I should add), but thankfully my camera came out unscathed.