Gary Sinise Foundation's Snowball Express

The 2023 Snowball Express was 8 days of photography, laughs, hugs, and some tears. Put on by the Gary Sinise Foundation, Snowball Express brings thousands of military and first responder families together at Disney World to honor their fallen heroes.

The media team not only captures all of the events that take place, but they also work closely with families to document the stories of their lost loved ones. It’s one of the most rewarding photo editing jobs I could ask for. Thanks to Julia Robinson for bringing me on to the team.

Photos by:

Julia Robinson
Sol Neelman
Octavio Jones
Matthew Busch
Justin L. Stewart

Visit California • Luxury Travel Guide

It was the middle of an endless summer in Austin when AFAR reached out asking if I’d be interested in working on a travel guide for Visit California, one of the nation’s largest and most successful tourism boards.

With the blazing sun and 90% humidity beating down on my home office, I happily said, “yes!”. If I couldn’t spend the summer in California, at least I could distract myself with a deep dive into some of the most beautiful images of its mountains, beaches and beautiful cities.

The brief:

  • Source unique, stunning, and high quality imagery from over 500 points of interest across the state. Find images that evoke a sense of quiet luxury, focusing on unexpected experiences.

  • Manage permissions, model releases, and licensing.

The sources:

  • Favorite California-based lifestyle photographers, including Amanda Friedman who captured the beautiful poppy field moment featured on the cover

  • PR firms

  • Hotels and restaurants

  • Regional and city tourism boards, including Visit Palm Springs, Visit Anaheim, and Go North Lake Tahoe, Santa Monica Travel & Tourism, and many others

The results:

A beautiful, antiqued copper wire-bound source book, as well as a stunning digital experience.

The bonus:

Appreciating the beauty of the images alongside the playful and fun illustrations of the amazing Libby VanderPloeg!

Texas Tribune Festival, 2022

I’ve had the pleasure of working with the Texas Tribune Festival since 2016. Of course, Covid really put a damper on large scale events like TribFest, so I appreciate the event even more now that it’s back in full force.

For the 2022 festival, I focused on producing all of the sponsorship and marketing-related photography coverage, managing the budget, scheduling and photo assignments for the team of photographers and photo editors.

See more of the photos, including those produced by the editorial team.


FHI 360 and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

DC-based photographer Rebecca Drobis was awarded a contract by FHI 360 to create a custom image library for the CDC to use for its diabetes prevention campaigns. CDC realized that traditional stock photography just wasn’t connecting with their users, and wanted to focus on real people talent and situations that would resonate.

I served as the project’s creative director. My priority was ensuring that the CDC’s missions and goals were furthered through Rebecca’s photography.

I reviewed CDC focus group findings, brand guidelines, and other marketing documentation in order to arrive at a list of key themes the photos should touch on.

We approached the project in phases over the course of 14 months, collaborating on what locations, talent, and situations would help the CDC achieve its goals. I created mood boards to help hone the creative direction, and once that was finalized, I created shot lists with location, art and talent direction.

Rebecca and her rock star producer Nancy Swenton took the months of prep and turned into shoot day magic, creating relatable, authentic imagery.

Texas Book Festival, 2022

I got to work with the rock star photo crew for the Texas Book Festival again. Everyone was so happy to be IN PERSON and enjoying the beautiful, fall weather. Thanks to Bob and Janis Daemmrich for having me be their photo editor and to the amazing photographers: Laura Skelding, Stephen Spillman, and Bob Daemmrich.

Here are a few of my favorite photos from the weekend.

Attendees pose on Congress Ave / Laura Skelding
Xelena González / Stephen Spillman
Volunteers / Stephen Spillman
Sandra Cisneros / Bob Daemmrich
Jacques Pépin / Laura Skelding

Texas Writer Award boots / Bob Daemmrich
Beautiful weather and good eats / Bob Daemmrich
Chef Chris Scott / Laura Skelding
Rabia Chaudry poses with a fan / Laura Skelding
Capitol rotunda / Bob Daemmrich
Omar Epps / Laura Skelding
Capitol / Stephen Spillman

Big Weekend Calendar, 2023

Hard to believe it’s been over 10 years since I joined the Big Weekend Calendar team as their photo editor. The 2023 edition was a joy to produce. From vintage clothes shopping in Austin’s North Loop neighborhood to hot rods and chihuahuas, this year’s calendar had something for everyone.

Here are a few of my favorite photos.

WWE

It’s never a dull day at the office when you’re working for WWE. I’ve had the privilege of doing onsite photo editing for their live TV shows, Smackdown and RAW, as well as the marquee annual event, WRESTLEMANIA.

The photo team at WWE is top notch, and produce amazing work every week. Photographers include Craig Ambrosio, Eric Johnson, Cooper Neill, Heather McLaughlin, Richard Freeda, Mike Marques and Preston Mack. Photo editors include Melissa Halladay, Jamie Nelson, and Julia Robinson.

The team is led by Vice President of Photography Bradley Smith, longtime photo industry leader and former DOP of Sports Illustrated.

Dell Technologies, Fall 2020

Photo production and editing for the most recent issue of Dell’s magazine, Realize.

We produced these shoots in March, right the country started to lock down due to Covid-19. Seems like so long ago!

A Robot to Fix Us All
Photographer: Jeff Wilson
Location: University of Texas

Chief Digital Officer Jen Felch

Photographer: Bryan Kuntz
Shot on location at Dell Headquarters in Round Rock, Texas

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Photo Research and Licensing

Photo by Maggie Steber/VII/Redux

Photo by Maggie Steber/VII/Redux


Endangered Wildlife Trust

Endangered Wildlife Trust

DUSTIN CHAMBERS/The New York Times/Redux

DUSTIN CHAMBERS/The New York Times/Redux

Dell Technologies, Winter 2019

New work for Dell Technologies’ magazine, “Realize”. The theme of the issue was optimism, which is something I need a daily dose of. Sometimes when you look at the headlines and all the terrible things happening around the world, it’s hard to remember that there are really smart, creative people solving big problems.

A few highlights:

For a story on how emerging technologies are helping solve the planet’s plastic problem, we chose this intense image of people rowing through a river of plastic by Dimitar Dilkoff of @AFP / @theblindkolcho. Lettering by @joelholland_studio

Tony Luong made a beautiful portrait of Dell’s Chief Responsibility Office, Christine Fraser, in Boston.

Photo by @_tonyluong
Lettering by @joelholland_studio
Art direction by @alison_wilkes

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Environmental Portrait Production for Dell

United x AFAR • Branded Content

Recent work for AFAR and United Airlines. After sourcing images for around 100 cities that United flies to, I had a serious case of wanderlust! This was a fun project, combing my love for photography with my almost-equal love for spreadsheets and project management.

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Dell Technologies Magazine

New work for Dell and their executive journal, Realize. We commissioned Noah Berger to document work being by @draperlab, @chicostate, and @calfire to use satellite imagery and data to help predict wildfire behavior.

We also got to use some of Noah’s excellent work from the #paradisefire. @noah3929 .

I also commissioned Bob O’Connor to photograph Dell Technologies CTO John Roese.

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Texas Book Festival

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Last fall, I had the pleasure of being an on-site photo editor for the Texas Book Festival. The photography team, led by Bob Daemmrich, included Deborah Cannon, Laura Skelding and Marjorie Kamys Cotera.

Lots of great photography events including talks and book signings with Pete Souza, Kenny Braun, Wyatt McSpadden, Pete Beste, Jay B Sauceda, and Casey Dunn.

Highlights from the 2018 Texas Book Festival can be viewed here. Check out some of my favorite photos below!

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Texas Tribune Festival

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This fall, I had the pleasure of working with the media team for one of my favorite events, the Texas Tribune Festival. Working this event is a fun whirlwind of scheduling, editing, captioning, funneling images to social media teams, and of course, breakfast tacos and coffee. Lots, and lots of coffee.

Austin is lucky to have some incredibly talented, hard-working photojournalists covering this event. The Tribune Festival photography team included Bob Daemmrich, Callie Richmond, Chris Carrasquillo, Erich Schlegel, Erika Rich, Marjorie Kamys Cotera, Rachel Zein, Rudolfo Gonzalez, Stephen Spillman, Steve Moakley, Thomas Meredith and fellow photo editor Leslie Baldwin.

Thanks to Tribune Creative Director Jacob Villanueva for putting together a rock-star team! If you are in need of solid event or editorial coverage, these photographers should be on your list!!

If you're in need of an editor to produce photo and video coverage, give me a shout!

You can see more photos from the event here, and read more about the Texas Tribune Festival here.

Austin City Limits Festival

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Being an on-site photo editor for large events is one of the best things about my job! Working with the photographers, PR folks, and social media team in a fast-paced environment is always an inspiring way to spend a work day.

ACL Fest is a special level of high energy, since your office is in the middle of the largest music festival in Texas!

Together with fellow editors Alyssa Coppelman and Molly Winters, we reviewed tens of thousands of photos, selecting, editing, and distributing images in as close to real time as possible.

We curated galleries of the best images from the weekend, highlighting marketing activations, crowd shots, aerials, and of course, EPIC stage shots of the bands performing.

The unsung heroes of the production were the runners, who literally ran -- to and from golf carts -- to shuttle cards from the photographers in the photo pit to the A/V trailer.

The photographers were Callie Richmond, Cambria Harkey, Greg Noire, Nick Simonite, and Reagan Hackleman.

Here are a few of my favorite images!

Ten-X Commercial Photo and Video Production

Director of Photography responsible for managing in-house team of photo and video editors, as well as 350+ professional architectural and interiors photographers, videographers and VR/360 content creators. 

 

Partnered with careers team to produce a custom image library for use on redesigned careers and HR pages. Shoots took place in three location, using real employees as talent. 

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American Youth Exhibition and Book

American Youth

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Produced the American Youth book, a collection of photographs about young people shot by the photographers of Redux Pictures. The book received a lot of great press, including praise from Readers Digest, The Washington Post, Photo District News, NPR, The Daily Beast, Time.com and numerous photo blogs.

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Organized a traveling exhibition which was shown at The New York Photo Festival, LOOK3 The Festival of the Photograph, The Minneapolis Center for Photography and the Rochester Institute of Technology. Each of these exhibitions generated their own press.

Travel by Handstand Photo Editing

Travel by Handstand is a beautiful app for the iPad that features original photography and writing. As photo editor, I was responsible for all research, licensing and commissioning of photography.

Unfortunately, production halted on the app, but I'm hoping that the smart folks at Handstand come back with something bigger and better in the future. It's a great team of highly creative publishers.

Here are some screenshots from some of my favorite stories, including the Pamir Highway by Matthieu Paley and a commissioned assignment on Charleston by Paul Zoeller.