Thursday, April 26, 2007

Ashlea's Swan Song

Check below for a behind the scenes look at make up artist Joe Platia's transformation of Kasey Kauffman.




On Conceptual Photography: In my dreams I visualize my own concepts and execute them, sometimes I have to execute the concepts of others, even if I find them uninteresting and fruitless. In this case, I executed a concept in which I owe a tremendous amount of credit to Ashlea Halpern. Without her this photograph wouldn't exist. She put together a wonderful group of make up artists for me to work with in this week's CP. I was reluctant, uninspired, and basically shot down her idea when she approached me about a Street Style Issue. Mostly because Alt Weeklies in this town have butchered them in the past. Plus, the budget tends to be enough for a car wash and a back rub from your local homeless guy. Being that we're both creative prima donnas prone to fits of moody depression, we both fumed, entered an angry stare down, ignored each other for 2 weeks, and ended up inspired. In this case, our Editor-In-Chief Duane Swierzynski went to bat with some magic beans and supplied us with a budget to execute this package.

Ashlea has accepted a position at The Cleveland Scene as Managing Editor. This package is her swan song, undoubtedly the best CP Style Issue I've ever worked on. She'll end up with a plush magazine gig in NYC one day, and hopefully we'll be able to execute big ideas without hearing Hickey's famous line: "yeah right, and I'd like a pony."

2 comments:

fatherlessbronx said...

aw, mike! so sweet. i love the package — you did an awesome job. just one minor, itsy thing: it's cleveland scene, ha, not free times. they're the competitor! xo a

Michael T Regan said...

For Real? You mean they have 2 papers in Cleveland? Who knew?