One of my greatest pleasures, is creating promotional and branding portraits of other creative people.

It’s incredibly satisfying, because photographing people within the creative industries, makes you dig deep as a photographer. You want to create an image or series of images that will not only endure, but that will define a moment in that creative person’s history.

The other reason I was glad to be able to make the trip, was because it’s actually lucky that Jennifer is still fully with us at all.

Whilst painting one of her building murals in downtown St Pete’s over a year ago, Jennifer’s ladder slipped. Crashing down and catching her head on a post, splitting it open, Jennifer was lucky to only walk away (figuratively speaking. She was carted away in an ambulance) with a concussion and now almost vanished scar. In fact, that mural remains unfinished. The unfinished work is now included on St Pete’s popular mural walking tours, and Jennifer’s story is going into tour folklore.

Not only does mark serve excellent food in a welcoming manner, but go there enough times and you’ll more than likely end up meeting most of his family. It wasn’t long ago that you’d sit in Swn Y Mor, and multiple generations of Mark’s family would be at a table or two, enjoying the atmosphere and each others company

I’d got to Harlem about 20 minutes before Flamekeepers opened, so I found the nearest coffee shop for a drink and soaked up the atmosphere. It was a perfect pre portrait shoot preparation. The jazz artwork on the walls, the tunes over the sound system and people watching again. This is the other thing that’s different from Manhattan, people in places like Harlem, Brooklyn etc. are living their lives, real lives, honest lives.

So this project is about those people. Friends, acquaintances, strangers we’re lucky enough to share a few moments of our lives with. My hope is that it not only shows those people how much I appreciate our meeting, but maybe you, dear viewer, will take a moment to think about your appreciation for your friends and acquaintances.