Movement of Kingz Entertainment recording artist, C-Sharp.

About a month ago I had the pleasure of working with a fun group of artists from the Movement of Kingz Entertainment group. Movement of Kingz is a fairly new outfit of R&B and hip-hop artists based out of Houston. Their main goal was to create a set of interesting portraits of 4 of their members for promotional use on their upcoming website as well as other promotional pieces.

Since I have been shooting a lot of portraits of hip-hop and rap artists lately, I decided to turn to my favorite source of inspiration for this type of work, RESPECT magazine. I was fortunate to pick up the premiere issue of RESPECT, the quarterly “photo journal of hip-hop culture”, about 2 years ago and have been glued to its pages ever since. The premiere issue itself, which features the works of photographers like Ben Watts, Barron Claiborne, and Clay Patrick McBride, is something that is constantly pulled out prior to shoots like these. You don’t even have to listen, like, or shoot music or musicians to appreciate the work within its pages. Check it out here: http://respect-mag.com

Snapshot of my desk featuring 2 issues of RESPECT magazine taken with the new iPhone 4s.

The shoot was booked at Houston Skyline Studio in the warehouse district of Houston. It’s a decently sized and moderately priced rental studio with a small cyc corner and a few other setups available for use. There was plenty of cold A/C, a sound system for playing music (a definite plus for working with portrait subjects) and a nice ramp that allowed us to pull the car right into the studio to unload.

The client wanted basic portraits on white of each member in a few different looks. After that, he gave me the artistic license to be creative and go from there. We started with the basic setup on white, and although the cyc corner was a bit small, we made it work and knocked out several looks for each artist.

After those were out of the way, we switched up the lighting and went for a more harsh look with one simple gridded light that created some deep shadows. With two looks accomplished, we were done with the white cyc corner and moved on to the black background. We were able to knock out several different looks on the simple black background including one where we utilized simply the modeling lights of the flash systems to be able to maintain a shallow depth of field. One of my favorite of the artists, C-Sharp, decided to smoke several times during the shoot which added another layer of interest and complexity to the images.

For the final setups we took advantage of two different textures that the studio space provided, the first being a corrugated steal wall and the second being the bare wood of the structure of the studio itself.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to studio photography is space and the lack thereof in most cases. Having a space large enough to accompany several different backgrounds and/or sets that are all accessible without breaking down one to get to the other saves tons of time for the photographer and the client. In this case the entire team was fortunate to be working in a space that provided a multitude of different sets without having to do much work, which resulted in me being able to provide the client with the images they were expecting and then some within a limited amount of studio time.

I am very fortunate to be working with clients that hire me because they trust my creative vision and ultimately give me a lot of creative license to do what I feel represents the artists best. With that in mind, after I provided the simple looks on white that the client originally had in mind, I allowed myself to be a little more creative in the editing process of the remaining images and I am pleased with the results.

On the day of the shoot, my good (and very talented) friend, Anthony Oyedeji, of Vicious Films, was on hand producing a behind the scenes spot for the Movement of Kingz camp. The result of his efforts is below. Check it out to see me and the rest of the Movement of Kingz crew in action! Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page to check out a few edited selects from the shoot.

And now the edited selects from the shoot.

MOVEMENT OF KINGZ (SEPT 2011) – Images by Todd Spoth

As we wrap up the first week of the new year I can’t help but reflect on the past year. There were struggles as there are with anything, but I’d be remised if I didn’t sit back and be thankful for the good things. I met a lot of great people, made a few new clients, learned a ton of great things and made a few decent images along the way.

2009 was the year I was blown away by being accepted as a participant into the Eddie Adams Workshop.
2009 was the year my first major documentary project premiere to a sold out audience of over 250 people.
2009 was the year that documentary project won not 1, but 4 awards including a Gold Remi.
2009 was the year that I owned the copyright for 100% of the images I captured.
2009 was the year that I got to visit 5/7 continents in the span of 4 months.
2009 was a good year.

Here’s to 2010 being even better. The short piece above showcases about 65 of my personal favorites from 2009. They may not have run, they may not have been the best pictures, but they are my special to me in one way or another, so sit back and enjoy.

Every year Libby and I send out a self-designed holiday card using our own skills as graphic artists and photographers. When it came time to produce this year’s card we had some initial trouble coming up with a fresh idea. After a bit of thinking I came up with the idea of using images taken specifically with my iPhone.

We whittled down hundreds of images from 5 continents and numerous events down to 70 colorful images that all appear on the front of the card. I wanted the thumbnails on the front of the card to be large enough to be readable to the viewer, yet small enough to maintain the graphic element of the grid. After putting the design together, we were both pleased with the initial outcome, but wanted to take it a step further. I decided to create the online aspect to supplement the physical card. IPHONEADVENTURE.COM is the manifestation of that.

Since all of the images that were chosen represent a significant moment or memory from 2009, we wanted this project to go beyond just a tiny thumbnail, and to explain itself, in context.

All 70 images from the physical card, are viewable in a larger, un-cropped format on the website. In addition, each image is accompanied by the date the image was made, the GPS coordinates corresponding to where the image was taken as well as a short and candid description of the image. Since the iPhone automatically embeds GPS location data into each photo taken with the device you will be able to see exactly where we were when we took the image via Google Maps. Clicking on the coordinates in each image’s description will open up a new window with data about the location.

Happy Holidays to everyone. Please take a moment to visit our little end of year project, IPHONEADVENTURE.COM

(ps. the image above is also an iphone image!)

I have a few updates and news(ish) items to talk about. First off my recent article, “Riding A Wave” was published this earlier this week in the SportsShooter.com newsletter. The article which talks about my recent experience producing the documentary, The Messenger: 360 Days of Bolivar, was featured on the front page for a day as well.

I have also used some much needed downtime this week to update my main portfolio website TODDSPOTH.COM. I changed up the look and went with a new sleek white look, added a “recent work” section, added some video and multimedia projects under the new “multimedia” tab as well as added some new images here and there.

One of the multimedia pieces is a project that I worked on with two of my favorite local photographers and good friends, Robert Seale and Dave Einsel for Do1Thing.org. We volunteered our time back in February to tackle this multimedia project to help bring awareness to the homeless youth community. I was in charge of interviewing the youth and assembling the audio to accompany the images, however the person that was supposed to assemble the piece was busy so I decided to take on the task and throw something together. It wasn’t my greatest multimedia feat, but it works I think. It was for a great cause and we were happy to volunteer our time. The piece is also up on Do1Thing.org as well.

In other charity news, I am donating several prints to a charity art fundraiser this Saturday. Wolf Camera has graciously agreed to donate their printing services to the cause so thanks to them for that. My good friend Thomas and I are going to be doing an 8-song acoustic set at the event as well in an effort to raise even more money for the cause. Hopefully we raise money and don’t drive people away. Libby, although in LA for business has agreed to donate a few of her early (limited edition and amazing!) silk screen works.

If you are in the Houston-area and are interested in coming to this event please let me know!

Ahhh Valentine’s Day. I usually don’t look forward to this day even though I should since I am in a wonderful relationship and not sad and alone, however it just means I have to find something to get my lovely lady, usually at the last minute. In the end, they usually turn out OK, but this year’s was grand.

I had another early Chron assignment in the AM downtown, covering Eleanor Tinsley’s memorial service. The media access was restrictive and it forced me to dress up, but the church was gorgeous. On the way home I stopped and got Libs some awesome looking pink roses to satisfy the traditional.

Libs was in Chicago all week on business so I had ample time to think about what to get her, however the idea didn’t come to me until midday Thursday.

I had been wanting to play with some stop motion video for some time so I decided it was time. The idea I had was to create a stop motion movie based on a regular day for us at our current apartment. Sure we go out, travel and do a lot, but we also work from home a great deal so I wanted to illustrate that. Since we are moving to a new place soon I also wanted to emphasize our space, here, and create something that would hold captive those small memories of home that we have shared in this apartment.

Influenced by all of the awesome stop motion I used to watch on Sesame Street as a kid (Teeny Little Super Guy), I started to capture the frames. I wanted to use the song “Diagnosis” by the amazing dudes in The Weakerthans as the soundtrack so based on rough calculations I knew I needed between 500-600 still frames.

I took a photo of the two of us in Brooklyn over last Thanksgiving and cut it in half. I used her side to illustrate a few of her daily activities; waking up, showering, eating breakfast, watching family feud (lol) and working. I used my side to illustrate a few other things like getting dressed, playing with my awesome cat TT, and of course, working.

It was pretty tough, especially by yourself and being pressed for time. I winged most of the scenes and shot most of it in about 6 hours or so.

Today, after exchanging traditional gifts, Libs went to visit her mom as it was her birthday. It gave her a chance to do the finishing touches on her non-traditional gift to me and more importantly gave me a chance to throw my stills into final cut and see what I could come up with.

After some cutting, mixing, adding, subtracting and rendering I came out with a short little piece that I am happy with. The color is off, sometimes the focus was off, etc, but I love it even more for those little idiosyncrasies.

The folder that held the stills was hastily named STOP LOVE, so for the title, I went with that. I kinda dig it now that I think about it.

Libby finally got back home and with her came my gift. I was in awe! She never ceases to amaze with with her ridiculous craftiness. She bought a sleek lamp and replaced the lampshade with a custom sewn one made from slides of images of us together and other random images from our past. She used old slides, make custom slides from digital files and even planned ahead and shot slides with our old AE-1p while exploring the East Coast last fall. When it lights up it looks awesome! There are images below, but they don’t do it justice. It rules.

One of the images she used in the lamp was the same one I used in mine. See images below.

Afterwards I showed Libby my video. She cried. I think she liked it.

Its been a while since I’ve posted on this (primary) blog. My music reviews/photos have re-spawned into a new blog called http://whatdoyoumeanimnotonthelist.blogspot.com and given the frequency of live music I’ve witnessed in the past few weeks, that blog has seen more action. It’s mostly a me thing, but hey if I can serve a purpose with it I’m flattered. In all honesty, things have been hectic here. I was offered a staff photo position with PPC and in the end I respectfully declined the offer. I don’t think I’m crazy and I really hope I don’t end up regretting the decision, but I think it was for the best. While I do think a staff photo position would be great at this point in my career / life and while I do think PPC is a great place to start out, the industry and economy is in a tough spot and the offer would mean a significant pay cut with a significant increase in the cost of living, since Houston is an extremely inexpensive place to live with the Baltimore / DC area on the other end of the spectrum. PPC has its ups and downs as does any newspaper or employer really, but as I head into my last month here I am coming to the realization that the feeling of coming (or going) home is going to be somewhat eclipsed by this sadness of leaving the incredible friends I’ve made up here. Math Roth, Drew Smith, Monica Lopposay, Patrick Smith, Nicole, et al. They are all excellent people and even better friends and I am going to miss the hell out of all of them. There are some amazing shooters in Houston that I work with and get advice from, but my Houston life is void of any photographers my age to really socialize and talk to on a level that I do with this group. Enough of the bittersweet symphony here.

Last week I shot an assignment at Laurel Park which is the second largest horse racing track behind Pimlico (of Preakness fame). It was to be a multimedia piece to supplement a story on the Maryland slots debate, which is a huge issue for the state of Maryland and everyone involved. They put me on the story because they wanted multimedia, but it presented itself as a challenge because it really was not an ideal multimedia story, as there are no slots yet, and the story is on opinions and opinions are hard to make into pictures. I did what I could and put a short piece together using a few of my stills I captured during the day and my quick and dirty audio interviews I did with the players. I limited my editing time on this to force myself into getting better with the workflow of producing a piece in a matter of hours. I think it came out decent.My goal is to keep learning new tricks and to be able to pop these suckers out quickly. I’ve also been spending a lot of time teaching myself more about Final Cut and learning the new CS4 suite, more specifically Flash.

I always enjoyed my old (current until today) business card. It was nice and clean and matched my older web portfolio nicely. It was glossy on both sides and displayed a nice mix of color images in a neat little design on the front with one image and my info on the back. Earlier this year I upgraded my web portfolio and since it was completely redesigned, I wanted, then, to create a new business card to accompany the change. I had a partial design that I had created at the inception of the new web design, but never followed through. Recently a few of my co-workers and I were out to dinner and while showing me a few of their new cards they inspired me to finish my new card. So I did! I wanted a new, more simple design with one bold image on the front and the info on the back. I just picked up the new cards today and I love them. Below is an image that shows the new design.

In other news, my mom called me earlier to tell me she was filming a movie all day. My parents live in Rio de Janiero, Brasil. She occasionally tells me about some ridiculous event going on there, and when she mentioned to me yesterday that she was asked to be an extra in a movie, I figured she would gather in a crowd of thousands and be an ant on the screen, but when she updated me just now, I found out that the situation was a bit different. Apparently the film is a mockumentary about documentaries made in Rio that show the favelas in a harsh light. The producers and director wanted to show that the people of the favelas are for the most part a friendly and happy people. The film features actor Bill Pullman and Fisher Stevens (of Short Circuit and LOST fame) While I am unclear on a lot of the details, she did tell me she was riding in a jeep and sitting across from both actors for a better part of the day filming in Rio’s largest favela, Rochina, which I had a chance to visit during my trip earlier this year.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending some time with 82-year-old Mickey Stubblefield at his home in his hometown of Mayfield, Kentucky. Mickey is a former Navy veteran, Shriner Mason, Kentucky Colonel, and was also the first African-American baseball player ever to play in the Kitty Leagues. He receives an average of 10 letters of correspondence a week from fans and while he may possess fame, he is not rich. He has been everything to everyone, but his most important role is being a father (and a mother) to 2 young girls, ages 10 and 12. The real story of Mickey is his relationship with the 2 girls under his care. This is a story of love and compassion. Although I am actively pursuing the multimedia option, the story will likely end up a still photo story. I did however capture some good A-roll interview clips and since they may not make it into the piece itself, I have included an un-cut, raw clip of a portion of one of the interviews below. It is an emotion recollection from Mickey’s past.

**UPDATE**

I am proud to announce that the above clip of Mickey was used in a presentation at the Indianapolis Museum of Fine Art on Martin Luther King Day in 2009. The still images from the story of Mickey, entitled “The Good Loser” are viewable on my portfolio site at TODDSPOTH.COM.

Since the lady leaves tomorrow for Houston, we decided to pick up a few pumpkins at the Fells Point Safeway. I feel guilty buying them from Safeway given the fact that I’ve covered countless events at local farms that feature fresh pumpkin patches, but I like to think I just bought them from the retailer instead of the wholesaler. They are (hopefully) local, farm-fresh pumpkins! Either way we drug them up here to my temporary 3rd floor room and carved away. We had visions of elaborate designs, but in the end decided on a simpler theme. She usually beats me as far as speed and overall design goes, but I may have her this year (don’t tell her that) We had a grand old time. I slapped the trusty G9 on the 1 second time-lapse setting and let it fly during the process. The following video is the result. Nothing too crazy, just a little view into the event, complete with a cameo by my old Persian cat, TT, who awoke from his perpetual slumber and dawned his curiosity cap.