Last November my assistant John and I traveled to Boston to photograph Whoopie Pies, oh, and a couple people, for Money Magazine. Julie and Alan run Chococoa Baking and specialize in some great little pies. (I was always under the impression that these things were endemic to Lancaster County, Pa., but I’ve since learned they’re also claimed by Mainers.)

Thanks to Julie & Alan for being patient and accommodating subjects and to the rest of the team: John, Lynne Avallone on make-up/hair and Callista Wilson on wardrobe. And, as always, Shayla Hunter for all the support back at the Money Mag home office.

Check out a few other outtakes below:

I hope everyone had a great holiday and New Year. Rest was had around these parts and I’m looking forward to 2012.

We ended 2011 with a great project with recently anointed Philadelphia Magazine Design Director Jesse Southerland and company. It’s our first cover together and I couldn’t have been more excited that to be photographing a giant piece of meat. It’s a beautiful cover concept and a novel way to approach a “Best Of” restaurant list, i.e., covering the best Philadelphia neighborhoods for dining instead of individual restaurants.

Below are some shots of the images in print, with outtakes to follow. And keep an eye out for a new Food portfolio coming to Ryan Donnell dot Com sometime in the near future.

As a photographer, it’s a dream job: soda jerks in crisp linens, penny-tile and marble everywhere, a lot of awesome mustaches and the most beautifully colored soda syrups one could ask for. Thanks to Art Director Maggie Gardner for the great design.

And please enjoy the outtakes below.

McCormick & Company did it again this month: another great cover (and issue) of Philadelphia Magazine. Creative Director Michael McCormick and I collaborated to create a super simple and elegant cover photo of a slice of pepperoni pizza.  It’s from the great Philly pizzeria Rustica in Northern Liberties and is almost actual size!

My assistant and I hit something like 16 different pizzerias in less then a week and tried to try at least a bite from each place, and I’m gonna get for real with you dedicated readers…it IS possible to get sick of pizza. I had 6 pizzas in my fridge on any given night of the shoot. That said, we’re now experts in all things crust and sauce.

Thanks to Photo Director Zoey Sless-Kitain for her superb organizational aid.

Enjoy a few clips below and a little slideshow of outtakes.

The shoot was a week full of non-stop photography, good food, friends and not-a-small-amount of adult relaxation aids (you know what I mean). We had a great time shooting the Polaroids (even though they’re now Fuji instant images) for the nostalgic opening spread of the feature. And, as much as I’d like to take credit for all those images, the whole crew (creative director Michael McCormick, photo director Zoey Sless-Kitain and assistant and Bro-seph-in-chief, Ryan Collerd) shared in that creative endeavor.

Michael had a rough go of it during the shoot of the toll booth, which turned out to be one of my favorite images. Poor guy was a little afraid of the heights (see video below), though, truth-be-told, the traffic was way scary. (Michael, I’ve been waiting a year to tease you with that one.)

We also had a great time hanging with the waitresses at Uncle Bill’s pancake house, coming away with mad respect for their steady hands and seemingly unlimited patience.

And we met tons of great lifeguards, including the crazy times at Wildwood beach where off-shore hurricanes kept the guards busy the entire time we were there. I’ve attached a special slideshow of my favorite lifeguard images, below. Use the fullscreen button on the bottom right of the slideshow in order to see them larger.

Thanks to everyone at Philly Mag and ‘down the shore’ for their help in making this a successful Shore issue.

Got my copy of the May issue of Philadelphia magazine a few days ago. I completed a feature for the annual Top Docs story last month, in which we profiled six great nurses in the Philadelphia area. It was a departure from the normal Top Docs issue in a couple ways. One, they featured nurses (unsung heroes in so many ways) instead of doctors this year; and two, we did very candid, journalistic portraits. I was able to arrange time to simply hang out with the nurses and complete a day-in-the-life portrait. I hope the images convey some of the compassion that these people bring to their patients and their jobs. You’d be lucky to end up in the care of any of these professionals.

As always thanks to the crew at Philly Mag: Art Director Jesse Southerland for the great design and guidance; and Creative Director Michael McCormick and Photo Director Zoey Sless-Kitain for the support and trust.

Here are some more outtakes from the shoot, some published, some not:

I was tapped by the good people at Philly Mag to produce a set of portraits of people who will help shape various facets of Philadelphia life in the near future. As always, I want to thank every one of the subjects for their patience and help in making these images that I am proud to show. And thanks to Design Director Michael McCormick for the great typography and design surrounding and supporting the images. Here’s how they ran in the magazine:

And here’s a little slideshow of my favorites and outtakes:

It’s always fun to make pictures in a building as beautiful and historic as The Academy of Music. For a photographer used to making pictures of “real people,” as we call them in the news biz, having the opportunity to photograph a beautiful and professional ballerina in a 153-year-old opera house is like shooting fish in a barrel. Abigail Mentzer, a principal dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet was lovely to work with as was her artistic director, Roy Kaiser. Together, they gave me some wonderful poses and stayed patient as we tried to time Abigail’s jumps with my shutter release.

If you’re in the market for dance wear, check out Abigail’s designs.

And as always, thanks to Jess Hawkes, at Philly Mag, for all her help. Here’s the online version of the story.

And just for fun, who remembers that The Acedemy of Music was featured as a stand-in for a vintage New York opera house, in the opening sequences in Scorcese’s Age of Innocence.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that Abigail (and a some other members of the PA Ballet) were recently featured in the Darren Aronofsky film, Black Swan. Pretty cool, huh?

The place was a photographer’s dream to shoot in: zombie bunnies, real zombies, collapsed churches, fog machines, killer clowns. Come to think of it, it was like most of my shoots.

Wayne and his actors were awesome. I don’t know how they can spend so many hours trapped in a sweaty suit, but they were awesome.

Thanks also to Shayla Hunter and the team at Money for the assignment and as always to my great assistant Matt, who endured hours of running back and forth through an the darkened and haunted former Elk’s Lodge that housed the Scarehouse.

Here are a couple more images from the shoot:

With my recent beer and cheap eats features for Philly Mag and then this great assignment for the killer magazine, Imbibe, my summer was filled with great food and drink. I couldn’t be a happier photographer.

The only way this assignment could have gotten better is if I hadn’t had to drive back to Philly the same day. My assistant Craig Oppenheimer and I were introduced to some unreal cocktail artisans in DC. We were treated to (little, I swear) tastes of some of the best cocktails I’ve ever had. Who knew DC was such a innovative drinking town.

Next time you’re in DC, make sure you stop by The Passenger/Columbia Room where Derek and Tom Brown serve some of the tastiest (and potent) drinks around. Derek told us about bar tending for the Obamas all the while making a Philly Sling.

Then there was The Gibson, where the boys behind the bar treated me to what might possibly be my favorite drink ever, which involved Old Tom gin, a bunch of liquids that seemed to come from a turn-of-the-century apothecary and a floating scoop of artisan, locally-made beetroot and green peppercorn gelato! It was a summer drink for a fall issue, so it didn’t make the cut, but man was it good. Check out the image in the slideshow below.

Thanks to Kat Topaz and her team at Topaz Design for making my images shine in some wonderful design. I can’t wait for the next assignment!

Here’s some more pages from the feature and some outtakes: