Mod Pizza for Franchise Times | Seattle editorial photographer

MOD Pizza CEO Scott Svenson in downtown Seattle. (Daniel Berman/bermanphotos.com)

Way back last spring I photographed Mod Pizza CEO Scott Svenson and his wife Ally Svenson at one of their Seattle locations of the wildly successful Mod Pizza chain. The shoot was just published (my first of the year!) on the latest cover of Franchise Times. Beth Ewen’s great piece details how Mod Pizza is willing to take a chance and provide meaningful employment to people from difficult backgrounds, encouraging loyalty and fostering a healthy workplace. I had a short amount of time to make multiple portrait options for a potential cover, inside opener, and a planned set of pages inside. Fortunately, Scott and Ally were super nice and easy to work with. So were their ace employees, who helped showcase this important story!

Amazon.com’s Neil Lindsay for Advertising Age covershoot | Seattle editorial photographer

Amazon CMO Neil Lindsay poses for a portrait at the Amazon Bigfoot office on Tuesday, October 11, 2016 in Seattle Wash. Lindsay has overseen the release of targeted TV commercials and innovative new digital approaches to harness the power of social.(Daniel Berman/AP Images for AdAge Magazine)

I photographed Neil Lindsay, Amazon’s vice president of global advertising and device product-line management, for the cover of Advertising Age and the Power Players list – out this week. It was an incredible honor to be asked to shoot the cover as my first assignment from the advertising and marketing magazine. We had less than an hour with Neil but my team and I were able to capture four different setups across multiple floors and buildings at Amazon’s Bigfoot office in South Lake Union. Art Director Erik Spooner flew in from New York to oversee the shoot and we spent some time that morning scouting through the office and going over the game plan. We settled on three areas and lucked out with a fourth nearby and perfect weather on the roof. I was tethered to a laptop with an external monitor so the team could see each shot — It also let me play a favorite album from Tycho the entire time for relaxing vibes! Big thanks to Erik for the commission, Glynne Davies for hair and makeup, and my assistants Spencer Wallace and Jovelle Abbey Tomayo for hustling and working so hard!

 

Alison Holcomb & Gregg Holcomb cover for Seattle Weekly | Seattle editorial photographer

Alison Holcomb & Gregg Holcomb cover for Seattle Weekly | Seattle photographer Daniel Berman

Alison Holcomb & Gregg Holcomb cover for Seattle Weekly | Seattle photographer Daniel Berman

Alison Holcomb & Gregg Holcomb for Seattle Weekly | Seattle photographer Daniel Berman

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.