Bags and Bags and Bags

After moving home to Detroit a few months ago, I received the expected chorus of 'wait, you LEFT New York to find more work?'

Yes, I left NYC to pursue new clients in my hometown and expand my creativity in ways I felt I couldn't do in the city.

And it's worked, quite well actually. One client that's been listed, but hasn't had a post yet, was worth the entire move alone. And this stunning Gator bag that's been half drawn as though to depict it's original planning stages was a part of it as well.

Most of my work in NYC was E-comm, for The Evolution Store where this guy's siblings may have ended up, and other designers, jewelry makers, restaurants and more. One market I hadn't tapped into yet was a little bit further from home than I expected, but a working vacation is never a bad thing.

It also turns out that leaving NYC was the way to get my work back there. Granted, a line sheet isn't the most glamorous of things, nor will it have my name attached, but it's being shown during Fashion Week to potential buyers.

I worked with a much larger team than I usually do for products (usually just myself) and it was needed. Over 120 bags and accessories in three days of shooting involving an assistant/stylist, two production managers, a graphic designer, and the owner herself with high expectations.

Once we got a system going, and named a few newly minted bags ourselves, this job looked like a drop and pop on the surface, but with the variety of materials used, including python, leather, sheepskin and stingray, we had to tweak lighting every time we changed to a different kind of bag.

While I'd love to take my sweet time on each bag and perfect lighting on each one, I've at least developed a system that looks good on a variety of subjects with as minimal changes as necessary. We even adapted my top-down back to a shoot into table so we wouldn't waste the 15 minutes or so changing tables.

I've also got my magical traveling studio down pat, removing a bunch of stuff that we can easily buy once on location, and bringing just the essentials and irreplaceables. There's no real camera store for over 100 miles, so new 1DMKIV batteries are out of the question.

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