I tend to show up with lighting that may or may not work. I usually tell people that I’m glad I’m not them when I start doing this.
Some subjects handle it better than others.
CEOs — like Luke Ismert of Schier Products — generally do just fine. Years of decision-making under pressure helps. Less powerful people have been… understandably concerned.
I’m sure I could tag the companies that make the lights I use and they’d politely explain their products were not intended for this and ask me to please stop.
Power is staying calm while the photographer experiments.
#ceoportrait #kansascityphotographer #editorialportrait #creativeportrait #peopleofkcmo @profoto@adj@schierproducts
Vanessa Arico agreed to photograph her at her house. I scouted it a couple weeks before we shot. She asked that we keep everything on the main level — her husband, a musician, was asleep upstairs. Naturally, I can’t scout a house without waking it.
I never committed to where I’d photograph her, but I did ask them to move everything out of the living room when I came back, just in case. They did.
And I didn’t use it.
Her hundred-year-old house has a stained glass window spilling light into a narrow stairway. I abandoned the spacious living room for a tight set of stairs because the light was doing something better there.
I have a habit of changing people’s lives by making them move their stuff.
Nothing here is loud, but nothing is passive either. Stillness can hold just as much tension as movement.
This was about letting presence do the work.
#artistportrait #editorialportrait #creativeportrait #kansascityphotographer #peopleofkcmo @hoopinblack@nanliteusa@adj_lighting
I’ll risk being corny and say this — the camera enjoys Clarissa. I’ve photographed her several times for different publications. This was the first time we worked together. The photo never ran. I sent it to her today for no reason other than a random act of kindness.
She moved into this pose on her own. That mattered. She wasn’t “posing” — she was present. There’s a quiet confidence there, the kind that doesn’t need instruction or reinforcement.
I’ll give myself just enough credit for knowing when to get out of the way.
#kansascityjewelry #artistportrait #editorialportrait #creativeportrait #peopleofkcmo
I was given two months to make a portrait of Clark Hunt and remained doubtful it would ever actually happen. On NFL Draft Day, it did — for exactly fifteen minutes.
I arrived three hours early to set up for a fifteen-minute shoot.
The location was the Chiefs’ crowded video production studio, where no one knew I was coming. Within minutes, I tripped over a valuable Chiefs prop, earning immediate and well-deserved scorn from the room.
I shot fifteen frames — the same number as Patrick Mahomes. He probably would’ve done more with them.
#kansascitychiefs #kansascityphotographer #creativeportrait #editorialportrait #peopleofkc
Without knowing me, I told the manager at @theoxcafeandbakery I needed to photograph Bill Haw Jr. inside the café two hours before it opened. She didn’t know me — but she knew Jr. The answer was yes. Kansas City knows who it knows.
I met with Jr. twice during the three times I scouted locations inside the Kansas City Livestock Exchange Building. I still wasn’t convinced where to photograph him, so I asked if there was a place inside the building that held particular meaning for his father. He said his father sat at this exact table inside the café every day.
Looking back, the photograph shifts from portrait to legacy — and ghosts.
The light pouring through the blinds isn’t just a technical choice; it reads as time passing. Unlike a studio portrait, where the subject is the event, here the chair and the table matter just as much as the man. This is the space his father occupied.
Bill Haw Jr. isn’t filling the seat. He’s continuing it.
#kansascityphotographer #environmentalportrait #editorialportrait #storytellingphotography #peopleofkc
When Nettie told me she walks across the river from one side to the other, I thought: Jesus Christ?
Within five minutes of meeting Nettie Zan, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
This photo for @kcstudiomag took a month of planning and three separate days at the Blue River. All re-shoots — because I wanted fog, rain, and not to drown.
My assistant @photosteve1962 did not want to be accountable for losing $3,000 of my @profoto lighting gear to a strong current.
Nettie was up to her waist in bliss. I was up to my chest in stress — mostly because I can’t swim.
That’s the portrait.
@listenmore #creativeportrait #kansascityphotographer #kcphotographer #storytellingphotography #kccommercialphotographer
This was supposed to be a studio shoot, planned for weeks. A lot of back and forth about one thing — let’s not make this a dance cliché photo.
On shoot day, it was raining hard. I called Sam McReynolds 2 hours before the shoot. He probably thought I was canceling.
I wasn’t.
I said immediately, everything’s fine — I’m not canceling. Then I asked, do you want to shoot this in the rain?
Sam thought for a moment. Then happily agreed.
People watched from their office windows as Sam performed against a white backdrop in the rain.
The weather changed. So did the work.
#kansascityeditorialphotographer #danceportrait #kansascityphotographer #kcphotographer #creativeportraits @sammypmc
