Church (The Cat)

Nathan and Sara (Bishop and Church) - 2020.

Nathan and Sara were some of the first friends I made after I moved to Atlanta in 2010. At the time Nathan was DJ-ing at a club where his wife Sara was bar-tending her way through her Doctorate. The first time Nathan and I actually “spoke” to each other was after a Friday night event on the same week I had all four of my wisdom teeth removed.

His Facebook message poked fun at the fact that I mostly sat by myself not paying attention to anyone in particular, and it wasn’t until I let him know of the recent dental surgery that we started the first part of our friendship. Flash forward sometime later and Sara invited me over to their home at the time, where Nathan and I got into (no shit) a 3 hour conversation about the “Terminator” franchise of movies. We’ve been close ever since.

I’ll get into it more when the time comes, but for now please enjoy the first steps into a long term project “Cats who live with my Frinds”

Let Me Take Your Picture - Episode 2
Nathan & Sara (Bishop & Church)

In this episode, Blake describes a new project that he is starting and sits down with some of the first friends he made after moving to Atlanta a decade ago to talk about one of the things he loves most in the world...cats.

At the end of the podcast I mention how much Church is just done with all of us and has retreated to the blanket fort, below are a few extra photos of that as it actually happened.

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Top 5-ish Photos of 2019 – A Year in Review.

Spoiler alert - In true UNEXPhotography fashion this post contains WAY more than 5 photos. Hope you don’t mind.

Here we are once again at the end of another year. The end of another decade. It’s still strange to me that this adventure started 12 years ago and here I am still keeping going. Yet, I’m still not surprised.

Stubborn maybe, but not surprised.

This year has been far from an easy one ( think I talked about that in the last blog) but that wasn’t enough to stop me. But enough of being a downer, this post is about accomplishments. So lets dig in so we can catch up shall we?

I know when I get a message from The FanDOM crew that something fun is about to happen. This year they have tasked me with two very ambitious projects that we were able to work together with.

The first was in January when they asked me to create a series of portraits that were in the same style as what Marvel has been doing with its MCU marketing. This was one of the first major projects that I played with compositing images into artificial backgrounds, and while some worked better than others I think that the end result was pretty good.

2019 was also the first year I branched out and hired a professional traveling model. Abby Div is wonderful, and if you have the chance to catch her in your city I totally recommend you do so!

Because of my work with The FanDOM I have received several inquiries for more work within the Atlanta burlesque community, and it was a pleasure getting to meet and work with Ruby Marx this year. I have been watching behind the scenes as she is rising through the ranks to become a powerful performer, and can’t wait to shoot with her again in the future!

Of course, who could forget Sunday O’Dare? She jumped at the chance to help get me out of my mid-year slump and we were able to create something simple yet elegant as always.

Another FanDOM project was creating a set of cards for the Pokémon themed show. I partnered with resident media expert Red Kyber to make a unique physical set of marketing cards (That I still need to get my hands on there Red) that fans, performers, and audience members couldn’t wait to collect.

Honorable Mentions

Working in the photographic industry for a day job allowed me to have some fun takin portraits that were used on company websites and other internal media.

I even had the chance to play around with some unique techniques and equipment to create a different look while playing with depth of field.

Ultimately the job never materialized, and only now are some of the test images getting to see the light of day.

Writer, Actor, and Performer Gideon Hodge asked me to shoot some new headshots for him, and during the session I was able to shoot the image above. Sometimes the best work comes when you are just “playing around” after the original job is done.

This was an outtake from my last shoot of the year with Benjamin Unbutton (see more in the previous blog post). This particular photo didn’t make the cut for the original blog…but I couldn’t let it go to waste.

Earlier in the year I lead a tour of photographers through The Netherlands, and took a short break from portrait photography to capture some wonderful images of bikes and graffiti (My usual when traveling abroad for some reason).

And finally an image I completely forgot I captured. During some camera tests, I had the perfect feline model hop into frame and sat really still and pretty for just a few seconds.

Accomplishments:

I was asked to be a part of two podcasts this year. So if you want to listen to me ramble on…I have provided the two links below.

I actually enjoyed the experience both times, and can’t wait to see about talking more in 2020.

 

So that’s about it. We’ve come so far, and as always have so far to go. Thanks for sticking it out with me.

Have a wonderful New Year everyone. See you in 2020!

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