Mo Sabri – The Overnight Classic

Introducing the talented Mo Sabri, an up and coming hip hop artist from my alumni East Tennessee State University. But don’t let the small residing town of Johnson City, TN fool you. Mo has big dreams, with the ambition, raw talent, and of course songs to back it up. I admit I have to be picky when choosing photoshoots, and after listening I cleared my schedule to work with him. Mo takes his inspiration from Eminem, Blink-182, Kanye West, Blue Scholars and U2, but he’s not a copy-cat. I too take inspiration from other artists, and use it to fuel my future work. This post is about the photoshoot, I’m not a music critic, I just know what I like!

Simple product photography setup – D2 Racing

1 floor
1 camera (and a lens helps)
2 alienbees
2 softboxes
2 pieces of white board
= results you see below

Growing up in my high school and college days, I was HUGE (massive) into cars. So much that I started a car club when I was 15. The legal age for a driver’s license in SC used to be 15 (insurance companies get confused about that). During that time I made a very good friend who is the North American distributor of D2 Racing, which is primarily a performance suspension parts manufacturer.

Hamann BMW X6

Introducing one of the most confused cars on the planet. Car?… or is it a truck? No, an SUV for sure… but it can hardly go off-road (especially with those sweet ADV.1 wheels). Whatever the DMV calls it, I wouldn’t mind wheelin’ this one around on the weekend. This is a BMW X6 tuned by the fine performance shop GMP in Charlotte, NC. The same fellas that got a hold of the Bentley in the previous blog post. Again a real treat to shoot one of the cars from their stable.

“So… did your mailers work?”

I’ve noticed a trend among the tip-top commercial photographers… minus a handful (Joey L, Nick Saglimbeni, Chase Jarvis, Zack Arias), most have a polished straight-laced persona that is unwavering no matter how big a gig they get, or what awards/feature they’re offered. Will I get jaded after I land my 50th job with Reebok or Atlantic Records? Hopefully I can tell you one day, but the answer to that will most certainly be HELL NO! Back to the question in the title, maybe this will answer the quizzing inquisitors; I’m featured in this months PDN magazine!!! (can you sense the excitement?!?) No, this doesn’t mean I instantly got 20 jobs the next day from the mailers, but YES I got a lot of replies from them, and that builds a solid bridge to future jobs.