ballet

Bid On This Misty Copeland Print For A Good Cause Now!!!

love_logo

For more than 20 years, I have been involved with an organization called Leave Out ViolencE…or LOVE. LOVE’s goal is to help youths prevent, reduce and respond to the violence in their lives. The kids involved in LOVE have all been victims, witnesses, and/or perpetrators of violence. Their lives have been shaped by bullying and fighting, assaults in their communities, gang recruitment, self harm, attempted suicide, domestic violence and dating violence. Many live in predominantly low-income communities across NYC’s five boroughs.

One of LOVE’s biggest fundraising activities is Images of LOVE…an annual auction where that get some pretty amazing photographers to donate prints, with the proceeds helping to fund projects like youth outreach workshops on photography, afterschool programs that encourage leadership and teamwork, and publishing books containing their photography and writing.

For this year’s Images of LOVE event, I contributed my multiple-image photograph of Misty Copeland, which I also had Misty sign…

misty_copeland_group

Pre-benefit bidding for the Misty Copeland photograph is now open at Paddle8. Honestly, the print is gorgeous…it’s 24” x 36” on bright cotton rag art paper, and the opening bid is only $300…and runs until May 11th, when it transfers to the live auction. All winning bids are 100% tax-deductible and for more information or to purchase tickets to the benefit, please visit the Images of LOVE website.

So Mikhail Baryshnikov Says To Me…

Click on Any Image for Full-Size
______________________________


______________________________

That’s right…Baryshinkov! I can’t help but love my job, but when I get to meet some of the people I’ve been lucky enough to spend time with, even I hafta to step back from time to time and ask myself…really?!!

I’ve done a few gigs lately for the London Sunday Times, so when photo editor Sean McKillop called and asked if I wanted to shoot Mikhail Baryshnikov and his wife Lisa Rinehart up at their country house for the weekend ‘Home’ magazine, I didn’t skip a beat before saying yes. The couple was selling the centuries-old converted barn they’ve lived in since 1981 and I was there to not only get a few portraits of them, but also as many views of the house as possible. The only problem…Misha’s schedule was extremely limited and I would have no more than half an hour with the two of them. Of course, the Times wanted ‘four or five’ portrait situations, never mind that on the day we were to shoot it was about 38 degrees and pouring rain!

After a whirlwind tour of the house, we started by lighting what would be the cover image of the two of them at the front door to the house…

…..then very quickly set up two additional portraits in the sunroom (bathed in clouds)…

…and in front of a fireplace in the original part of the house…

With his part of the performance over, Misha bid us good day and I then got off a photo of Lisa relaxing with one of the many cats that share the house with them…

With the portraits out of the way, we then went about shooting as many detail shots as possible…

Thanks to Sean for the gig and thank you Misha & Lisa for allowing me the opportunity to spend a bit of time with you…