Down on Morris Avenue here in Birmingham there’s a delightfully quaint little restaurant called The Essential and it’s the newest spot by Kristen Hall and Victor King.
Delicious. Adorable. Bright. Welcoming. Delicious (again).
I’ll let the photos speak for themselves but do check out the November issue of Birmingham Magazine for many more photos plus the full write up on this great little place. If you’re in Birmingham, definitely stop in for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or brunch on the weekend.
A few photos at Bottega from this year.
Olivia Affuso, Ph.D.
I recently had the chance to work with some amazing humans for a campaign for UAB. These three people are no doubt just the tip of the iceberg of the great research and innovation happening in our town. I’m so pleased to have had the opportunity to meet them.
Olivia Affuso (above) is an epidemiologist studying obesity and is developing a new way to measure BMI with existing technology.
Dr. Matt Might found an extremely rare genetic condition in his son and developed a treatment previously unheard of.
Paige Severino is a senior in the biomedical engineering program and is part of a team solving medical problems by designing new equipment.
For much more about their work, see UAB’s website about being Powered by will.
Many thanks to the whole team including UAB and Lewis Communications.
I photographed at Highlands Bar and Grill again recently and thought I’d share a few images, including a portrait of Chef Stitt I’m happy with.
Mayor Randall Woodfin is a good lookin' dude and I got to spend some time with him again recently for a story in Birmingham Magazine. The cover story, in fact.
Check it out for a deep dive into the background of our "Millennial Mayor", who happens to be quite giving when being photographed. These are a couple of my favorites from our time together but it was hard to pick—he's easy to shoot.
Juliegh Green, Lori Lee, Ashley McCrary, and Allyson Allred—wonderful women I had the pleasure of meeting and photographing for the current issue of People Magazine. They are four of nearly forty people who have been diagnosed with ocular melanoma (which is super rare), all of whom have one thing in common—being on Auburn’s campus. It’s a strange story and they are working to fund further research into what is happening. For lots more, check the story out online or in the August 6 issue of People Magazine.
Also, I feel compelled to include the article's headline from their website.
Dozens of Auburn University Alumni Suffering Deadly Eye Cancer in Desperate Race For A Cure: ‘Our Lives Are At Stake’
We don’t always make the right choices in our beekeeping, but sometimes mistakes lead to beautiful things. We lost a hive and left boxes out for bee-passers-by to come have a buffet on leftover honey. Not the best idea, not the worst, but stunning to watch. No idea how many untold thousands of workers were in the air during this process, but I haven’t been this enveloped by bees since watching our first swarm five years ago. This is Stephanie using the smoker to help get the bees off the frames so we could take them back to the shop.
My friend Andi was helping out on a shoot yesterday and stepped in for a light test. I love this guy and don't actually know anyone who doesn't appreciate him. Just a quick shout out to Andi for being excellent.
A little while back I spent a day hanging out down at at Time Inc Food Studios making some portraits of some of their editors food geniuses. Here we have a couple of simple snaps of the Food & Wine Senior Food Editor, Mary-Frances Heck. Hi, Mary-Frances!
This is my dear from Roscoe, who is a painter, dad, chef, and generally wonderful human being. This is him touching up a painting that is part of a commissioned series for an upcoming record by The Green Seed. The only point to this post is to recognize his excellence, if only in a small way.
I recently made some portraits of Will Lochamy, whom I feel like is connected to basically everything that happens in Birmingham. Appropriately, he's got a new column in Birmingham Magazine in which he weighs in what's going right and going wrong in town.
Anyway, here's my favorite from our time together.
Back in the April issue of Food & Wine I made some photos of Ray Isle, their executive wine editor, for an article about shopping for wine. This is an outtake of him but the article in print had really fun illustrations from the incredibly talented Graham Roumieu (whom I know his series of Bigfoot books). Do check out the story.
Thanks to Mackenzie for the assignment and Winslow for the art direction!
Outstanding! After nine consecutive near-misses, Highlands Bar and Grill has finally won the James Beard award for Outstanding Restaurant! As an incredible bonus, Pastry chef Dolester Miles also won for Outstanding Pastry Chef. I've photographed Frank and Pardis Stitt over the years and have always been impressed with not only Highlands, but Bottega and Chez Fon Fon.
Congratulations to the whole crew at Highlands!
Above is Chef Stitt in a portrait I made for Billy Reid, and below is a portrait of Dolester Miles recently made for the restaurant.
John Archibald of the Birmingham News / al.com has won the 2018 Pulitzer Price for Commentary. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to work with him and his family several times over the years.
Congratulations John!
In the Spring issue of Audubon Magazine you'll find a story about how the Eastern Indigo snake is being reintroduced throughout its native habitat after all but disappearing back in the 50s. I had the pleasure of accompanying Dr. David Steen to long leaf pine forests in Alabama and Florida to document the work being done with these snakes. In the Apalachicola National Forest of Florida, we also spent time with graduate student Sara Piccolomini who tracks Indigos which have been surgically implanted with a small radio transmitter.
You may be wondering why a bird-focused magazine is talking about snakes and the answer is pretty straight forward—these snakes eat other snakes which in turn eat birds.
I encourage you to see the whole story online (which I've excerpted below) for a much better explanation.
David Steen slams the brakes of his black Chevy, bringing the truck to an abrupt stop on a sandy road in the Conecuh National Forest in southern Alabama. “That’s an indigo!” he says before throwing the truck into park, flinging the door open, and running out into the dappled November sunlight in hot pursuit of his quarry.
Dr. Steen identifying the snake by its passive transmitter.
Sara using a radio tracker to find snakes equipped with radio trackers.
The tracking system is very simple, which also means it's not exactly precise. We ended up tracking one Indigo down into a ravine and all the way back up the other side. It hadn't moved, there was just no way to pinpoint the location. This is Sara at the bottom of the ravine, on the search.
If you look closely, you can see the scar leftover from the radio transmitter surgery.
David and Sara place the snake is bag to they can weigh it.
I had the chance to work with Dale's at the start of the year and realized I hadn't shared anything yet. Check out their site for these recipes and more!
Stephanie and I have really taken to camping since our friends Ashley and Sam taught us the basics a couple of years ago, and a couple of weeks ago we had the chance to revisit Cheaha with them. It was a weird day but beautiful. The day that started with us waking up in a cloud also included a flash thunderstorm, five minutes of perfect weather followed by being in a cloud again, and ended with a trek to Pulpit Rock for the sunset.
While at Pulpit Rock we met another photographer up there photographing the area with his family. I couldn't not photograph him making photos. Poptpops are second nature at this point.
I also couldn't help but shoot him shooting Sam on Pulpit Rock.
I've had the pleasure to share working space with Alabama Sawyer for the last year or so and they make some beautiful work with wood that, without them, would likely end up as waste. Wonderfully character-rich, old trees turned into all manner of furniture.
Anyway, I while back I grabbed a few shots of them working around the shop.
I've also had the chance to document their work along the way, which you can see at their site.
I've been going non-stop since basically November and I've managed to fit in a lot in that time. Plenty of work stuff, some holiday stuff (including a trip to Japan, which I'm eager to share work from soon), and we slipped in a few tintypes, too.
Just before the holidays, Jared and I made a series of commissioned tintypes, including portraits of the family of Bruce Lanier. From those portraits comes this image of his daughter Avary.
I still haven't figured out why I'm so drawn to this portrait. Obviously her hair and freckles and jacket are perfect, but there's something in her eyeballs or presence that makes this one of my favorite portraits we have made (as part of Gusdugger).
