Dani is my close friend. That’s the first thing that comes to my mind. We have a good, solid friendship that I’ve cherished since it began.

A talented model with whom I’ve worked many, many times, she’s finally moving to L.A. in just a few short months to pursue a career in acting. Now I can’t say I’m crazy about L.A., but I’m unapologetically excited for her to leave Utah in pursuit of far greater heights than I feel she could ever have reached here.

Man am I gonna miss her…

Because beyond all of that, she’s full of life, full of energy and positivity, and best of all, it’s infectious. You can’t help but feel better when you’re around her. You can’t help but turn into a goofball when you’re around her.

Well ok, I can’t help but become a total goofball when I’m around her.

So when she decided to pretend like her hands were having a mostly violent conversation with one another, well…

That’s just Dani

And here, just for kicks, are all the best images from all the shoots we’ve done together, starting with what could very well be the last shoot we do together for a long long time. How apropos that it be a gradual evolution as she prepares for a new adventure of her own.

Evolution:

I want to mention something in passing.

I love Dani (big surprise, huh?). It’s no coincidence I’ve worked with her seven times with no apparent end in sight. She’s impossibly fun to be around, easy to work with and endlessly talented.

And about that talent, I remember taking those first few shots thinking “Man, I don’t have to tell her anything. We’re in perfect sync. She just moves exactly the way I’d like a model to.”

This last one isn’t particularly good, it’s just a pre-cursor to something I’m shooting next week

The Music Project

Listening to great music, and I mean really great music, elicits an avalanche of powerful images in my head. So powerful in fact, that with the best of songs or melodies, I am completely paralyzed in my visual imagination run amuck. The whole world falls away and all I’m left with is what I see from what I’m listening to.

So one day, I decided to attempt releasing everything that remained a prisoner in my mind.

Because I want you to experience what I do.

I started digging through all the music I loved, asking myself the biggest question behind the concept for The Music Project:

“What do I see?”

This will be an ongoing project with new photography concepts for new songs. I won’t be posting the songs together with the images, or even the lyrics. Hopefully, if you enjoy my work enough, it’ll make you want to go out and buy albums and MP3s. Nothing would make me happier than to find out there’s a spike in sales for every song that inspires me to a shoot.

Let’s kick things off with Regina Spektor’s “Summer in the City”.

Many thanks to Shanda Palmer and Nick Hemsley for the amazing makeup and hair, respectively, and of course my good friend, the endlessly energetic and beautiful Dani Jae for modeling, even in a bar full of men who all wanted to buy her a drink. I was planning on buying her a drink for the shoot anyway, but a customer did it for me.

Day 85/365

Day 86/365

As the title implies, I worked with Dani again. We’d actually planned the shoot for that day (the 7th) weeks ahead of time, while the one from a few days back (the 4th) was last minute. That’s my excuse at least.

I tried doing some natural light stuff and it really didn’t work out… Like, at all… It’s making me want to get to the point where I can do it well, so I’ll probably try again in the future.

And then I turned my lights back on… Ahhhhh… The control…

Day 87/365

I honestly didn’t think Quincy was gonna show up! Communication had been touch and go, but I was glad when I heard a knock on my door.

Also from that day, I took this shot of my cologne… Why? Because I was in my bathroom getting ready, I look down to my cologne and then realize… I have the most pretentious, arrogant cologne on the planet!

I promise, I really just bought it because I liked how it smelled!

Day 88/365

I’ve never bought a Seventeen Magazine in my life. That day, I did. And that’s because I’ve been published in it! Woohoo!!

Look for this photo in Seventeen’s May issue, which I shot in the summer of last year:

Just a few days before this shoot, Natasha Roos calls me up and says she wants to shoot.

“I have a car”, she says. “A baby blue, mint condition, ’66 Ford Thunderbird.”

Whoa. That’s cool.

It’s especially cool because it’s not hers and we still get to use it. It’s her friend’s roommate’s boyfriend’s doctor’s wife’s father’s cousin’s nephew’s car dealer’s Thunderbird.

Who cares, we have a ’66 T-Bird!

“How long do we have with it?”, I ask, thinking we’ll have a limited amount of time in a specific location, like I was stuck doing the last time I got to play with some cars and a model.

“We have it all day and we get to take it wherever we want”, she replies.

No way…

So I suggested we take it by the Saltair. There’s a long, lonely road that goes along the I-80, just west of Salt Lake City. It looks remote enough. Perfect.

Now we just need to find a model, and I immediately thought of Dani, a personal friend and model I’ve worked with repeatedly and with great success. I call her up, and she’s all over it.

Sweet.

The following pictures resulted:

Dani is a terrific model I’ve had the privilege of working with before. We’ve been trying to schedule a time to shoot together again, but our schedules haven’t been too kind to either of us. Anyway, here’s the stuff I’ve done with her before:

Last night, I worked with her on a slightly different project than I’m used to.

She invited me to shoot alongside another photographer, so I said yes. The concept was body paint. Now, I’ve seen some body paint work in the past (online only – never in person), so maybe that’s spoiled me and given me unrealistic expectations for last night’s shoot, but I was disappointed with the results there… Dani did fantastic as usual, I think I did alright, but the body paint…

You be the judge.