Ruby Marx - 2020.

“Framed for a crime she didn’t commit, Ruby escaped prison to take to the road. Committing herself to a life of sin, attempting to be a Vegas showgirl, and taking up with Marxist ideals, Ruby found burlesque as her new trade of tricks. Having traveled far across the country, she now finds herself in the old South, embracing her sexuality and her education under her new, assumed name. Part kitty cat, part devil, she is a tease here to please”

Coming up on a year ago now, Ruby Marx invited me into her home with one thing in mind. Self Promotion. We had a wonderful time creating a few different looks in a small space.

While in NYC shooting with Nina La Voix a few weeks back, I was reminded how good it feels to strip things back and just shoot. So I was extremely happy when I booked two shoots on the same day.

Ruby and I set out with the same idea in mind (even if neither of us told the other what it was) to create something that invokes the feel of vintage Hollywood.

Be sure to follow Ruby and see where you can see her in person. You are sure in for a treat.

Jack Calico - 2020.

"Jack Calico is an Atlanta-based burlesque performer, variety entertainer, and possibly your new stepfather.

Whether he's mesmerizing old ladies with his rhythmic dancing from his years as a professional salsa instructor, or he's charming even older ladies with his gruff baritone singing voice honed over decades of drunken karaoke, it suffices to say that old ladies will be involved.

So wash your ears, and remove your eye patch for Atlanta's Lovable Tramp, Jack Calico. “

I’ve known Jack since my early days in the Atlanta Burlesque community. But to be fair, if you spend any time in the same room as him, you’ll soon know Jack too.

I’m surprised its taken this long for the two of us to link up and do some work. After a burlesque sabbatical, Jack is currently taking the steps to warm back up to the stage and answered my call to action when I was looking for some new talent to work with.

So hide your mother, and lock your doors. Jack Calico is back baby!

Nina La Voix - 2020.

So one thing about my new day job is I am traveling much more these days.

I found myself in New York earlier this week (which just so also happened to be my birthday) and was excited to hear that my first NY client, Nina La Voix, was open and wanted to spend some time shooting.

Nina and I first met a few years ago when I found myself traveling to NY. The last time we worked together we turned a small hotel room into some vintage goodness, and this time was no different.

Believe it or not, we shot these in her apartment, with some simple blackout curtains lending themselves as a background (It’s almost like I know what I’m doing sometimes).

If you ever find yourself in The Big Apple, make sure you track down Nina and show her all of the love she deserves. Her schedule can be found on her website (conveniently located at the bottom of this post).

See more of Nina live in New York City or at her website www.ninalavoix.com

Copenhagen, Denmark – 2020.

Happy 2020 everyone! This year I’m wasting no time getting some content headed your way.

The last few days have been a blur of travel, training, and for anyone who is a regular here…bicycles and various street arts. As the title of this post suggests, I’ve spent the last week in Denmark for my initial onboarding for my new job.

Denmark is a strange place (to me anyway), it seems like there are an abundance of culture, a movie theater every few blocks, and what boggled my mind the most…more 7 Elevens than I have at all in the greater Atlanta area (Except without the famous slurpees).

Being located closer to the Arctic Circle than I have ever been, I also had to get used to the winter days ending much sooner than I expected. This caused some new challenges to my usual European muses. I also learned that 61 Megapixels isn’t nearly as forgiving to hand shake as I previously had been used to. I’ll need to do some more experimenting on how to stop that moving forward.

But enough from me, enjoy this small piece of something out of my ordinary. Hopefully I’ll be back soon with some more portraits for all of you.

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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