Betsy Fisher

I recently created a series of ads for a local ( Washington DC) fashion retailer Betsy Fisher www.betsyfisher.com which involved the perverbial ‘smoke and mirrors’. It was kind of a throw back to the type of work I used to do in the good old days of retail product photography. Remember when there were locally owned and operated department stores in the area? Hechts and Stewards and Woodies et al.

So I got a call from Eric Dreyer of the DC based  advertising agency August Lang and Husak www.alhadv.com to create a series of ads, which would be used as outdoor Duratran displays on bus shelters and subway panels. Eric had a fantastic concept for the shots and I was very happy to devise a way to achieve the look he was going for. A little creative use of dry ice, black plexiglass, water and lighting and we were in business.

As the final ads looked on the street and in the subway.

Addy’s

I’ve never really been too interested in pursuing awards or entering judged competitions for recognition. I’ve always felt having clients who trust me with helping to create their image is all the reward I need. Having said that, when my friends at Marriner Marketing entered a series of ads I shot for them to the Advertising Association of Baltimore’s Addy’s awards, I was pleased. When those ads won gold and silver awards for photography, campaign, and full page trade and consumer ads, I was really pleased.

As it turned out, ads for which I created photography won quite a number of awards that year, including an ad for the Baltimore Sun with MGH and a series of food ads for SNS Marketing. Perhaps I should start paying attention to these things.

MD Seafood ©2007 Dan Whipps Photography

Baltimore Sun Paper writes review

This image was created for a show presented by the Baltimore chapter of ASMP entitled “Mixed Messages”. The concept was that a “seed” idea, known only to the first in a series of photographers, was represented as an image. That first interpretation was then passed on to the next photographer in line, with no explanation of the original inspiration. The new photographer then had to re-interpreted the image in whatever way they felt compelled and pass their new image onto the next photographer, and on down the line. The idea being, like the game of telephone, to see how the “idea” evolves in the hands of a series of creative visual professionals. It was a lot of fun.

Shown below is also the ‘parent’ image which was the inspiration for the image I created of my lovely wife, Betty. I immediately saw the figure of a woman’s torso when I reviewed Beth’s still life of a blue flower vase. The rest was just a matter of wrapping her in blue cellophane and creating an environment which recalled the one in which I found the vase.

©2006 Beth Line

Promotional mailer for ASMP show

Here’s some very nice comments made by Glenn McNatt, the fine arts columnist for the Baltimore Sun when he reviewed a show at the Creative Alliance where this piece hung after the Mixed Messages show;

Show illustrates an almost single-minded pluralism

Art: Glenn McNatt

Exhibit brings home an art world theme

I thought the best photographers in the show — artists like Dan Whipps, Mindy Kay Best and John Davis, all of whom are now working in the digital domain — came closest to my idea of the contemporary cutting edge. (Not surprising, perhaps, given the pivotal role photography has assumed recently on the contemporary art scene.)

In particular, Whipps’ image of an hourglass-shaped woman in an upscale home wrapped in blue cellophane and wearing a wreath of bright green tropical leaves — the piece bears the provocative title In every dream home, a heartache — struck me as a wonderful conflation of classical and biblical allusions with an unmistakably contemporary design sense.

The unnamed woman in the photograph is both seductress and heartbreaker, the Eve of Genesis and the Delilah of the Book of Judges, and her dangerous allure seems as eternal as that of any classical Venus.