Available now on DVD! After nearly one year of storyboarding, filming, editing, animating, audio mixing and more editing, I am thrilled to announce the release of Inside Contemporary Children’s Photography, a collaboration between our studio and Ballard Productions (available now on DVD).
When we first started thinking about putting something like this together, we had no idea what it would turn into … and what it became was due, in huge part, to the direction of Rex Ballard, who oversaw production of the entire project. We first met Rex through Charlie Engle ~ they had remained friends after working together on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. We’d heard from Charlie that Rex was “the guy”, a genuinely kind person with some amazing experience in the industry ~ if he could find time for a meeting, he could give us some great ideas as to who could help us out, possibly even give us some idea of how to even get started. After our initial talk, though, we were surprised to learn that Rex, himself, was interested in the project ~ due to his genuine love for visual arts, I suspect. And his passion for production. He read through a lot of my materials, put together pages and pages of notes and came up with the entire idea for what we would be filming. We all agreed right out of the gate that it was vital that everything about the creation of this product be authentic ~ no scripting, no glossing over real challenges, we’d go out on “real” shoots, not hire models, and deal with the everyday issues we encounter on shoots, such as lighting concerns, personality issues, technical questions, all the stuff that you have to think about when you’re photographing children. The initial challenge was schedules. Everyone’s calendar is full enough with work and family and life. In addition, Rex is on the road 274 days a year filming Extreme. The show is split up into two teams, but he and host Ty Pennington are the two guys who travel to each and every location. But he worked around his schedule, and often through it, going over footage in the evenings at hotels around America. And, over time, the project grew in scale, scope and depth … evolving to its current state right now, an educational product that I am thrilled to be any part of, a product that actually blew my growing expectations out of the water. Because the truth is that Rex, his exceptionally talented wife, Susan Ballard, and Lisa Walter, our wonderful Studio Director, all saw something in this that I hadn’t seen when it was first being conceptualized. I knew it’d be pretty cool, but … wow. I love being sooo pleasantly surprised. Inside Contemporary Children’s Photography retails for $199.00. You can purchase it directly here!
