The Story Behind the Picture: Le Blorr at the Delano

Last month I did a feature on Le Blorr for my column over at Skope. I really wanted to do a legit shoot for the main photo of the article and figured since they were playing at the Florida Room in the Delano Hotel, I could possibly swing the chance to shoot in a hotel room. I was able to work it out and arranged for a 4 hour window to use the room.

A few of the final arrangements weren't confirmed till the day before, but I went to bed that night thinking I had gotten everything set and we would be good to go. I thought should have plenty of time with the goal of a few different shots. Well, sometimes things don't go as planned.

So to start the day, one model cancels that morning and my window of time gets cut back an hour. Luckily, the stylist for the shoot, Tiffany Azmouz, was a trooper and was able to step in and model for me. No problem, I was prepared for the shoot and didn't necessarily need that long to get the shot. Next, the band, who had traveled down that day from Melbourne, FL (a few hours away), got caught up and doesn't make it till I have an hour left to be completely out of the hotel room.

My original goal was the main group shot and also do some individual ones of the guys. With out much time I had to focus on the group shot. So the lights are already set up, I talk things over with the guys of Le Blorr, and I've got 20 minutes to shoot. Sometimes you gotta just make it happen. We got the shot and I was stoked with the result. Thanks to Chantelle Tarride for make up.

Later that night the band played at the Florida Room. The place was filled with entrepenuers from a conference being held in Miami and they were in for a rude awakening. One minute the DJ was spinning and the next Le Blorr plugged in took over. Check out the article for my interview with the band.

The Story Behind the Picture: Dancegiving

Sometimes they say a picture can tell a thousand words right? Well, sometimes it is nice to hear the actual story behind how a picture is created. So I thought I would start a series of blog posts on the story behind the picture.The full gallery is over at New Times

For this image, I was covering Dancegiving, an all day electronic music festival in downtown Ft. Lauderdale at Revolution, The Green Room, and America's Backyard. I had already been at the event for 9 hours and the music was starting to blend together. The lighting was pretty rough all day, but I kept on trying different things to make it work. The headliner, Steve Aoki, was playing and after taking a few photos on stage I headed to the back area to take a little break. As I was talking to someone, one of the event's staff made his way to the stage entrance with an inflatable raft and told someone "this shit is about to get crazy". That's all I had to hear for I know Steve Aoki tends to crowd surf. I immediately headed to the crowd. I really wanted the epic shot of Steve Aoki crowd surfing in the inflatable raft (where did they get it?), but a few minutes later as I am packed in the middle of the crowd, out comes the raft......