A Visit From Our Singapore Photographer

Friday January 15th, 2010

We had the pleasure of a visit to Wonderful Machine HQ from Jessie Morgan, one half of the Morgan & Owens travel photo duo who work out of Singapore. She was in town for a teaching convention, at which she presented a paper on the influence of the photograph on Hawthorne’s creative nonfiction.

A sample of their work:

Over lunch, we grilled Jessie about how she and her husband ended up in Singapore (they’re both Americans), and how they’ve worked out their professional identity as a photography team.

The couple moved from Brooklyn to Singapore for a change of pace and a teaching opportunity for Jessie. Both have brought their travel magazine clients (Travel + Leisure, Budget Travel, and others) with them to Singapore, and they’re also doing work for local hotel clients who, fortunately, want them to apply their editorial style to advertising work.

How did they end up shooting together? First off, they met while working in a cafe in New Orleans in 2000. They later moved to Brooklyn and worked in the publishing world doing photo editing. After they became travel photographers, Jessie joined up with James professionally because they were often competing for the same jobs.

Jessie and James created a “Morgan & Owens” style that they both took great effort to achieve. So their work as individuals is not exactly the same as when they are hired as the M&O duo. Having two shooters is helpful because one of them can get the “safe” shot and the other can run off to get a more ambitious sunset shot from a hilltop that may end up being an opener or cover shot. She says that James may branch out at some point to showcase his food photography, as well.

A few other tidbits:

• If they hadn’t gone to Singapore, they had considered buying an Airstream trailer and traveling the U.S., following travel assignments in sort of an endless vacation-shoot.

• Jessie says that Singapore’s cost of living is Similar to NYC’s.

• They love shooting on film, and find that some of their editorial clients still prefer it. Of course, they shoot digitally as well. [On a side note: we were surprised to discover that Wired magazine also prefers film, while visiting them on a recent trip to San Francisco]

Jessie also brought us biscotti from Termini Bros., a great bakery in downtown Philadelphia (not far from our offices). I mention this because, like most travel photographers, she knows how to find the best food/travel resources no matter where she goes. We hope that James will visit soon and bring some other local treats!

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4/13/10 UPDATE: We’ve since videotaped Jessie and James’ portfolio, which looks great! Here it is:

-Neil Binkley

The Fruitcake Has Landed

Wednesday December 23rd, 2009

We have to hand it to food photographer Teri Campbell on his unorthodox holiday campaigns surrounding fruitcakes. In years past, he’s challenged his clients to do something clever with the fruitcakes that he’s mailed them, and send him the resulting pictures. One such example (photographed by his client):

In the first year, Teri says he was “a bit concerned when the  first three entries …all showed a fruitcake in the toilet.” Things progressed, however, and last year he held a contest offering the winner $1,000.00 to come up with the best use for this holiday dessert.

My particular favorites are videos from someone who jammed his fruitcake into a model rocket and shot it into the stratosphere, and a film of a dog eating one in its entirety:

This year Teri’s created a book of past favorites as an alternative to shipping the cakes, and he’s using the prize money instead to donate to a charity, Feed America. While I regret the delay in continued fruitcake debauchery, the charitable route is to be applauded. However, Campbell indicates that he’s willing to bring back the cake in the future.

Teri’s day job is photographing more delectable subjects (no offense to fruitcake lovers) for packaging and menus:

Teri shoots out of his palatial Cincinnati studio, which houses almost 10,000 square feet of kitchen, shooting space, rec. rooms with treadmills and pool tables, and this impressive prop room filled with probably thousands of plates of every color and style imaginable:

I plan to share more holiday cards after Christmas, since we’re still receiving them.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to All!

-Neil Binkley