Sorry for the lack of updates this week, I just got back from a week of shooting in Miami for Coke’s Summer 2010 Global print campaign. This was the biggest shoot I’ve worked on to date for sure. It was 5 days of shooting in multiple locations. In one shot we actually shut down the busiest street in downtown Miami to complete a shoot where kids were running through an open fire hydrant on a hot summer day. I’ll have behind the scenes shots of that up soon. In the meantime, check out these photos I took while just walking around my hotel. I want to try to do this in every city I visit. See more pics after hitting the link at the bottom of this image.

Last week I went to first football game. I think I got spoiled because I was sitting in club level seats pretty much on the 50 yard line. It was definitely a great experience. New England people love two things….The Patriots when they are winning, and getting drunk while watching the Patriots while they’re winning. The guy in the pic below passed out after the Patriots’ dominant victory over the Jets. Check out the other pics I snapped while there with my G11.

A few weeks ago, I was out in LA on the set of a Coke shoot with Ryan Seacrest. I was there as Gary Land’s assistant. It was cool because that was my first time in LA. I’m thinking I may want to move there one day so it was a trip I definitely needed to take. As I said in an earlier post, there’s been lots of jobs I’ve been that I couldn’t talk about publicly because of non-disclosure agreements and this one of them. Now, I can finally post the behind the scenes shots I took while on set. We built 3 different sets for this shoot, one of them being the red room from American Idol. I also retouched one of the final images, so I’ll post that as well when I have clearance to. In the meantime, enjoy some behind the scenes stuff. Note: Images get larger if you click on them.

Today, I did a simple test shoot with Amanda, a model here in Boston repped currently by Model Club. I had her come into the studio and pretty much just play in front of the camera, no hair styling, or make up. Just her natural self. Did a really simple light set up, and just captured the moment. She was really good when it came down to constantly moving and changing it up. No editing was done to these except color, and black and white conversion.

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to shoot up and coming music artist, Shea Rose. She has a style that mixes Rock with Neo-soul, and Hip hop. She is an amazing singer, songwriter, and guitar player. I took over 700 shots, and will be spending the next few days editing down, making selects, and retouching. But, until I’m able to post any of those, enjoy her music by visiting her myspace page, and take a look at this candid I snapped while Shea was getting prepared for her next look.

This is one of my favorite photographers, Ben Watts. Watch these videos, especially the last two where he talks about how he made it as a successful photographer. Very inspiring stuff.

Sunday night, I was watching the ceremony for Bill Cosby winning the Mark Twain award. For people that haven’t seen it, here’s a small clip of what the ceremony was like.

Now, I always liked Bill Cosby and loved his show. But, I never really took the time to think about just how much he contributed to black entertainment. Bill Cosby was born in 1937, and dropped out of high school, and received his GED while in the Navy. Back when he decided to be a comedian, blacks were not allowed to do stand up and were ONLY allowed to sing and dance. Bill Cosby was one of the first to break down that barrier. The odds of him becoming a successful comedian were less than none, and he still made the choice to pursue his dream in spite of. This ceremony really inspired me to keep striving and persevering in those tough times, as I have opportunities and resources available to me that he never had back then. I have no reason not to give 150% when it comes to achieving my dream. I hope this story inspires you to achieve your dream as well.

Again for people that subscribed to the old blog, please re-subscribe, and to those that are new, enter your email address in the form to the right under the big word “SUBSCRIBE”. By subscribing, not only will you automatically be notified of new posts, but you will also get exclusive sneak peeks at stuff I’m workin’ on.

I know some people are going to wonder when they comment as a guest who’s picture comes up by default. Well, it’s a beauty image I shot over the summer of model, Kim Matthews. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that if you don’t sign in before commenting Kim will temporarily represent what you look like, LOL.

Welcome to the redesign of the MSP blog.  I hadn’t been blogging much over the last couple months, so I thought maybe if I redesigned my blog that maybe it will motivate me to post more often.  First of all, I switched from Blogger to Wordpress so some of your comments may not be there any more, I’m sorry about that.  I’ll try to figure out if there is a way to some how get them back.  Second, anyone who subscribed to the other blog will need to re-subscribe to this one, just enter your email address in the box to the right.  Also, the new address is http://marcussmithphoto.com/blog.  I’m going to see if I can get the old address to re-direct to this one.  RIP to my old blog, it was goof to me while it lasted.