Category: Stories

Giggles rose from the backseat of the car the first time we drove past the dilapidated Beury Building on Philadelphia’s famed Broad Street. Seeing the words “Boner Forever” tattooed on the side of a 14 story building will do that to teenagers. And their father. Not so much his wife.

The once majestic Art Deco movie theater was built in 1926 but has stood vacant for more than 40 years. It was originally the home of the National Bank of North Philadelphia and later took the name of Charles Beury, the bank’s first president and former president of Temple University. My oldest daughter attends the university’s Boyer School of Music, giving us opportunities to travel down Broad Street to watch her perform. And while the Viagra mural still makes me chuckle, I’ve since learned that Boner and Forever are actually two graffiti artists who collaborated on the prominent tag.

Broad Street cuts through roughly 13 miles of the City of Brotherly Love. It was one of the earliest planned streets in the United States, designed by Thomas Holme for William Penn in 1687, and remains one of the country’s busiest and longest urban boulevards.

It’s a street paved in history. It intersects with Clearfield Street on the exact location of the 40th Parallel. It’s shared corner with West Glenwood Avenue is the former personal gym of Joe Frazier. Just up the street from my daughter’s dorm is the 50,000 square foot Uptown Theater. Built in 1929 and opened on the eve of the Great Depression, the theater played an integral role in rhythm and blues, soul and gospel music. Names like Sam Stiefel, Georgie Woods and Sid Booker produced weeks long shows on Broad Street. Daryl hall, a Temple student like my daughter, got his start at the Uptown.

Broad Street was also the flashpoint for the Philadelphia race riots in 1964, one of the first in the civil rights era.

Traveling up and down Broad Street is a reminder of the history that traveled one of America’s most storied streets.

I shot these images with my Olympus E-PL1 street camera while stopped at traffic lights heading north on Broad Street.

I’ve had a pretty good run these last 50 years. I had a great childhood enabled by loving, hard working parents. I created a lifetime of memories with my brother, cousins and friends. I immortalized myself Al Bundy style in high school soccer. I got into college. And graduated. I built a successful career doing something I’m really good at. I traveled the world. I spent a few hours with Chris Farley on the set of SNL. I met a girl. I got married. I became a father. Twice. I rode a seesaw in a Mexican bullring. I saw my oldest child go off to college. I created my own business. I helped other people less fortunate. I lived. A lot.

On March 4, 2019, I begin my next 50 year run. For some, it’s a time of crisis. A wake up call to things not experienced. Me? 50 is a time to re-rev the engine. An opportunity to reflect on all I’ve had the privilege and opportunity to see, hear and do. A chance to take some time before those candles light in March to recalibrate where I want to go and what I want to do based on what I’ve learned to make these next 50 trips around the sun even more exciting and fulfilling than the first 50.

Understand the privilege of being in a position to choose what and who I work with. Be discerning in choosing clients who see the world through a wide angle lens and work on projects that advance society for the many instead of the few.

No red convertible sports car, but an opportunity to shift gears and watch the tachometer flirt with the dial’s red zone. A shift informed by studying my past and observing the present. Because one of the things I’ve come to realize is that, as a society, we have a bad habit of locking people into impenetrable career membranes that too often squelch what makes a person whole. So over the past year, I’ve taken time to explore the intersection of what I’m good at, what people need and what stokes my creative flame. I studied the state of the PR industry, spoke with startup founders and VCs about what they really need from their PR partners, and refined my photographic eye. What I found was:

• Companies value my ability to help them build their stories. Talking about what they do comes naturally. Telling people why they do what they do is surprisingly difficult. I help them find that why (which frequently helps them find their product market fit).

• Founders rely on me to guide them on communicating better. Having an experienced, objective communicator to bounce investor, customer, press and employee communications off of is invaluable. 

• VCs like that I don’t needlessly suck up valuable budget/capital. PR agencies are expensive. And the disintegration of trade media means a startup’s PR requirements aren’t what they once were. I wrote more about this important shift here.

• People like my photographic style and ability to tell a story through my images. Humans are visual creatures. Storytelling has been the core of humanity’s progress since the dawn of the caveman. Organizations are beginning to recognize the powerful combination of editorial and photography to tell the stories of the humans who make what they do possible.

I’ve been a valuable communication coach to nearly 20 startup founders and their exec teams. I’ve served as the acting director of PR for startups who otherwise couldn’t afford someone with my experience. I’ve discovered I have an eye for capturing people’s personality and using those images to help organizations tell their stories. I’ve found I really like to give back to the communities I’m part of. What stops people from building services around the spectrum of things they do best, the things they love to do, especially when they can combine them to bring value to others? Why do we let a self imposed career force field trap us us from living our complete lives? Why be one thing?

So that’s what I did. I took my reflections, industry knowledge and passions and built services and projects around them. Some of them are straightforward. A few are ambitious with the potential to have a significantly positive impact on the technology industry and those around it.

Services

• Communication Coach: On-call senior-level communications counsel, influencer research, monitoring/connections, marketing copy editor, weekly strategy session. Read more here.

• Messaging/Story Development: Wrapping what you do into the larger narrative of why you do it and making your story compelling to the media and customers.

• Conference Portraits: Give attendees at your next conference something of value instead of a t-shirt. Perfect for large organizations and foundations and a way for conference organizers to allow smaller, less-well-funded startups to participate in sponsorship. Here’s a peek from Cloud Foundry Summit in Basel and a few of the faces from Gluecon.

• Corporate Editorial Photography: Where the combination of words and images truly shines. I embed with your executives/teams to help your corp comm department tell your stories as they are happening, to help your developer advocates highlight the humans behind the code, and support your CEOs and top executives to strengthen and personalize the impact of their leadership.

Projects (in development; seeking underwriters)

• Humans:Code: An editorial photo project documenting a cross-section of people across the technology industry doing what they love to do when they aren’t tethered to a keyboard and screen.

• Going Home: An episodic photo essay that follows underrepresented Silicon Valley founders back to their hometowns to capture and tell stories about what their life was like in the town they grew up in and the influence it had on them before they moved to the Valley.

• See Me: Environmental portraits and profiles of tech’s diverse workforce, allowing underrepresented communities to see a reflection of themselves (a major obstacle to tech entry).

• My Town: Ongoing local portrait series in conjunction with CB Cares to highlight the educators and support staff of the Central Bucks School District.

The start of a new year is an opportunity to refocus on what matters. A chance to reset. To create a clean slate. To create a springboard for the next year…or 50.

I felt her hand on my arm before I saw her.

I had wandered down Ochsengasse barely a block off one of Basel’s main streets. Approaching Webergasse, I apparently and accidentally stumbled into the city’s red light district. More like a corner than an actual district. An estimated 800 prostitutes legally ply their craft in this Swiss town along the Rhine. Prostitution has been legal in Basel since 1942. I gave a polite, yet demonstrative, “No. Thank you.” and made my exit back toward Claraplatz.

I was in Basel to shoot headshots at Cloud Foundry Summit. After the conference, I took some time to explore this corner of Europe where the borders of France, Germany and Switzerland meet. I flâneured like Hemingway at the buvettes on the banks of the Rhine. I stopped for lunch, okay, Prosecco, on the Münsterplatz as kids scootered past and tourists craned their necks to the steeple of Basel Minster, which was built between 1019 and 1500. I watched members of an older generation drink wine and toss bocce balls beneath the changing leaves.

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And I made a new friend. She sat at my cafe table on the edge of Münsterplatz as I sipped my Prosecco. She ordered a tea. I told the waiter to put it on my bill. I asked her name in my best German. She told me it was Draga. I then asked where she lived. She said Basel. This is why I learn basic phrases when I travel. It doesn’t take much to make a connection and travel like a traveler instead of a tourist.

These are a few of the images I captured during my brief stay. Click one of the images to see the uncropped versions.

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I just got back from my annual Monktoberfest sojourn to Portland, Maine. I’m home for roughly 24 hours and then head off on a weeklong corporate portrait assignment in Basel, Switzerland. It will be the 25th country I’ve had the privilege of visiting. 171 more to go.

It was weird not having my Canon with me in Portland, but felt prudent to leave it home with the other equipment I’ll use in Basel. My office floor is currently an organized grid of camera bodies, lenses and lights ready to be packed up. Luckily, my iPhone was able to capture some of the beauty of Casco Bay during our sunset boat trip on Wednesday night.

When I get back from Switzerland, I’m excited to see images from my “This Is Our Town” project displayed as part of the pre-roll during the Saturday kids’ matinees at The County Theater in Doylestown, Pa. My daughters have had the luck and privilege of being taught by amazing teachers. Teachers whose work, caring and above and beyond effort too often goes unheralded. Working with the CB Cares Educational Foundation, I created portraits of our school district’s art department. The arts are the foundation for a well rounded, long term life of learning. They cause us to question and think about the fuzzy gray areas outside of the black and white lines of life we often live.

Standing behind the podium at last night’s CB Cares Celebrity Waiter Gala, Kimberly Cambra reminded attendees “When you have Care in your name, you do.” And she has. To the tune of more than $500,000 over the years. Money — and, more importantly, time and effort — dedicated to enrich the educational experience of our community’s students. Last night was my third year creating portraits at the event. These are a couple of my faves from last night’s Parisian theme gathering.

I’m almost a third of the way through my time on this planet. I’ve had the privilege of meeting and interacting with interesting humans along the way. Some famous, some infamous, and some normal just like you and me.

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with one of the famous: Broadway actress Jenny Lee Stern. You’ve seen her on the boards of A Christmas Story, Rocky, Forbidden Broadway, Spamilton and the national tour of Jersey Boys. She just finished a run as the legendary country singer in “Always…Patsy Cline.”

Here’s a small selection of the images from the incredibly fun session we collaborated on to create portraits to celebrate her pregnancy.

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[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1524059361394{padding-top: 50px !important;}” kswr_row_top_decor_enabled=”false” kswr_row_bottom_decor_enabled=”false”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Fun weekend of celebrity’ness seeing Bruce, meeting Danny DeVito and shooting from the back of the moto and seeing Floyd Landis — former Tour de France winner and the man who took down Lance Armstrong and burned down the culture of doping in cycling — in the lead pack.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

Mead was, of course, the famed anthropologist. She was also a resident of Doylestown, Pa. It’s the town I and my family have lived in for the past fourteen years. It’s the town we call home.

And, like Mead’s well known quote, a small group of concerned citizens swelled to 3,000 marching the streets of town in support of stricter gun control in the wake of ongoing mass murders in our country’s schools. This march, dubbed March for Our Lives, was part of many simultaneous marches across the nation. Each was organized and led by students. Students who are being forced to rise to stations of action and leadership while Republicans held hostage by the National Rifle Organization abdicate their roles as elected leaders.

What follows is a small selection of the images I captured during the march. You can see the full gallery here. If you’re a news organization and would like to use any of these images, shoot me an email or DM me on Twitter.

Pay special attention to the image of American flag with the peace sign. As I was running past to set up for a shot, the man and woman holding it told me it was last brought out during the protests over the Vietnam War. I spun quickly and grabbed the shot. A vivid reminder that committed citizens can indeed change the world.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”29640″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”29642″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”29641″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”29644″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_single_image image=”29643″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/R7oN9RMJ2kM” align=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row]