Mack Sam

I have to thank model Anthony Priolo for making this happen. Anthony and I have done a few shoots together over the years and he recently contacted me about shooting again. Anthony is one of my favorite models to work with, he knows what it is to perform and just gives and gives, always great stuff from him. He mentioned that he knew this designer, Mack Sam (Mackenzie Sam) who was amazing and that he'd be willing to let Anthony use some of his fall collection for a shoot. So, Anthony contacted me.
I checked out Macks website (and you can too): http://www.mack-sam.com/www.mack-sam.com/home.html and I was really impressed. Anthony really brought it home this time, Macks work is incredible! Very conceptual but realistic to wear I really liked his sense of textures, working them together in layers that have a very ad-hoc feel but deliberate in their combination. Mack also works largely from a grey scale palette preferring blacks, greys and earth tones, which lend themselves quite nicely to black and white photography and thus that shaped my vision for the shoot. 
In speaking with Mack, we seemed to see the shoot the same way, very clean and open space and just let Anthony and Macks designs carry the shoot. We wanted things really simple in terms of lighting and I lit the shoot in a very open way which gives a very contrasty feel to the pictures, strong bright areas off of deep shadow areas, very much like daylight. 
If bringing Mack in wasn't enough, Anthony also provided a make up artist, DarDra Coaxum, who did a wonderful job of keeping Anthony looking, well, like Anthony. When shooting men, for a make up artist, the mission is the opposite of that for women. With men, unless the concept calls for something different, you want them to look natural and the use of the make up the be as undetectable as possible. You want to reinforce features and try to hide distractions but the end result should be un-made up looking. DarDra did this perfectly.
Mack is an exciting new talent and I'm really looking forward to what he does in the future.