Google Economic Impact Report | Seattle editorial photographer
Back in March I got a surprising phone call. It was about 6 in the evening on a Monday and a producer at North6 was searching for a photographer to shoot for a Google project. Where? A remote Alaskan town. When? That weekend. I half expected a radio DJ to burst out laughing on the other end. But the assignment was to photograph an aerial tour guide in Talkeetna, a few hours north of Anchorage, as part of Google’s state-by-state Economic Impact Report highlighting how small businesses use Google services. I hoped for a chance to fly around Denali, but alas, that shoot became impossible due to scheduling. But I stayed in touch with the client and fortunately there were opportunities to take on assignments for the project in far more familiar places.
I photographed Portland Meat Collective Founder Camas Davis in Oregon, then Sip & Ship Owner Diana Naramore in Seattle, and flew to Boise, Idaho, to photograph Tsheets.com Founder Matt Rissell on a quick there-and-back trip April 1st.
Bertha tunnel project activist Cary Moon for Seattle Weekly | Seattle editorial photographer
I had a great assignment from Seattle Weekly earlier this month to photograph Cary Moon, an activist and urban designer who opposes continued development of the Bertha tunnel project. For those not living in Seattle, the waterfront highway a.k.a the Highway 99 Viaduct, is being torn down and replaced with a tunnel. The project has been plagued with problems and delays, some technical, some bureaucratic — all expensive. Check out the story for a much more thorough peek into why this divisive issue matters so much. We battled the wind on top of Pier 86 in downtown for a view of the skyline and then moved to under the viaduct for another view of the city.
Thanks for looking,
Daniel
Alison Holcomb & Gregg Holcomb cover for Seattle Weekly | Seattle editorial photographer
My first assignment for Seattle Weekly was this cover shoot for a sensitive story about Alison Holcomb and Gregg Holcomb’s unique histories. Alison was the writer and public face of Initiative 502, which legalized recreational marijuana in 2012 here in Washington. Her husband Gregg is the owner of the Capitol Hill bar Witness. Her story as a drug law reformer and activist for criminal sentencing reform intertwine with her husband’s tragic reality. His father was murdered. He is alone among his siblings in calling for rehabilitation for the murderer, and not a life sentence. There is so much more to this powerful story by Nina Shapiro, please give it a read.
Color Expert Leatrice Eiseman for American Way Magazine | Seattle editorial photographer
You know those color wheels, the ones with samples of every conceivable hue from Pantone? I got the chance last month to photograph Pantone Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman. She’s a color expert. American Way Magazine is the in-flight publication from American Airlines and they interviewed Lee for their monthly In-Brief column. My assistant and I hopped on a ferry over to Bainbridge Island to meet Lee at her beautiful home nestled in the woods. Her walls are covered with art and past interviews in prestigious magazines and books. We set up a white seamless and lights in her upstairs office, trying to not disturb the two designers working a few feet away at their iMacs. For the published shot, I asked her to hold a copy of Pantone’s new book about the role of color in fashion over the years. It’s not every day that I get to photograph people whose work has such an influence in my own personal field!
Thanks for looking,
Daniel
Bill Gates for La Stampa Italy
This spring has kept me hopping and shooting a lot of new editorial and commercial assignments. I can’t share them all yet, but one came in late last month (for the first time ever via LinkedIn) to photograph Bill Gates being interviewed for a large Italian newspaper called La Stampa. The paper is launching a new series about global issues and the wide-ranging interview covered a lot of ground. I was allowed to shoot the first and last five minutes of the interview, for which La Stampa Editor-in-Chief Mario Calabresi flew in from Turin. It was a little surreal to be inside Bill’s office at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and hear him speaking about everything from who his heroes are to what lies ahead for the newspaper industry. I did my best to be low-key and inconspicuous as I moved around and tried out different angles. Bill never acknowledged me, but I suspect he is very used to this kind of thing. At one point I was trying to line up a shot from his profile side and almost sat down in his chair — I caught myself and thought better of it. It was one of those crazy days planned for a week and all over in a matter of minutes, I am just happy to see it ran in print today.
You can see more from this shoot at La Stampa’s website and in my archive.
Thanks for looking,
Daniel
Brooks Running Company for Footwear News
In April, I did a shoot about the turnaround at Brooks Running company for Footwear News, a Condé Nast trade publication dealing with the footwear industry. The story is about how after 100 years in business, Brooks CEO Jim Weber has managed to overhaul the company from the brink of bankruptcy into a company that sold a half billion dollars in products last year. It was no easy feat. It required dumping entire product lines, launching new ones, and hiring executives from visionary brands to come work in new divisions at Brooks. Over what became a very long day, I photographed Brooks CEO Jim Weber, as well as Shane Downey, head of the new heritage line, Pete Humphrey and Eric Rohr in the Brooks Running testing lab in the Eastlake neighborhood, and several other employees for a lookback quote section about their experiences and memories at Brooks. The magazine cover story published last month and I am excited to share the tear sheets! It’s always a sweet assignment when I get the chance to photograph and meet people who do interesting work in interesting places.
Thanks for looking,
Daniel
Shelton Mayor Gary Cronce for Cityvision
I had a fun assignment a few months ago that was recently published. I traveled a few hours south to the Peninsula area town of Shelton, Washington to photograph Mayor Gary Cronce. I wanted to capture his connection to the town, where he also runs a jewelry business, and so my assistant and I roamed with minimal equipment and just walked around. I loved the bright colors of some walls along a back alley and was struck by the visual starkness of some of the area’s scenic landmarks, like the train parked on Main Street.
Thanks for looking!
Daniel
Medical marijuana business owner Martin Nickerson for Northwest Leaf
For the March issue of Northwest Leaf I got the opportunity to photograph Martin Nickerson, the owner of Northern Cross Collective, Bellingham, Washington’s longest-running medical marijuana dispensary — open since 2011. I’ve photographed him a bunch over the years for various stories. This time around, it’s because the Washington state Department of Revenue contends that Nickerson owes more than $50,000 in unpaid taxes related to the sale of marijuana. “This is medicine, you can’t tax medicine,” Nickerson told Northwest Leaf in February, during a tour of one of several marijuana grows under his control.
Before working on the inside grow room portraits, I was drawn to the stormy weather and open fields surrounding Martin’s property. The wind was whipping and cold, but the light and color of the sky was so striking. I quickly threw a light on a stand and convinced Wes, the editor, to hold on.
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