“We fall in love with ideas, but unfortunately we’re not monogamous,” - Scott Belsky

Making Ideas Happen is the love-child of Scott Belsky.  In the book, Belsky explores how the worlds leading creative professionals and innovators, “overcome the obstacles between vision and reality”. For nearly 3 years, I have served as the photo-documentarian for Behance and its founder & CEO Scott Belsky. I am very pleased to share that my story as a lifestyle and wedding photographer is featured on page 130 of the book. Keep reading to learn more…

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Behind the Image: The Story of a Joy Ballad

On July 28th 2007, I produced my most recognizable image to date. The photograph is titled “Mohawk” and was documented on location at a wedding in Brooklyn. The boy was a wedding guest who simply stood in front of me, waited for me to make his portrait and quietly walked off  afterward. Several months later, the photograph was published in Computer Arts Magazine. For this feature, I collaborated with Melbourne, Australia based art director and illustrator Justin Maller. This collaboration is one of my earliest features in the press.

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Within days of publication, the image came to the attention of many leading professionals within the international art community. One of these individuals was an illustrator in New Delhi, India named Archan Nair. To date, Archan’s client’s include: Pepsi, Microsoft, Canon, Blackberry, GQ Magazine and others. Together we collaborated on “The Joy Ballad” (seen above).  Within months, the collaboration was featured on the site of Hip-Hop artist Kanye West (see his official website shout coverage).

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Behind the Image: Making Ideas Happen

In Making Ideas Happen, Belksy cropped a photograph that I documented of him at the 99% Conference in 2009. The original photograph (seen below) features Belsky and Coolhunting founder Joshua Rubin waiting patiently for the second half of the conference to begin.

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As a wedding photographer, the challenge of continually improving my creative instincts is very real. As an artist, I accept this challenge because it is often my innovations that result in the most breakthrough growth. I am humbled that one of my wedding photographs has helped bring awareness to the artistic quality of wedding photography. While my approach is not for everyone, however, for the discerning clients that I have the pleasure of serving, we make ideas happen. I am thankful for role-models/clients like Scott Belsky who risk failure and lead by action.

UPDATE: Scott was recently featured in the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company.