Locally-Grown Fashion

Last week Diana Jaye Coluntino stopped by my studio for a photo shoot. Diana, who studied fashion, metalsmithing and sculpture at Mount Ida and MassArt, ultimately teaching at MassArt, spent a decade designing in Venezuela and ended up in Lowell, Massachusetts as the Artistic Director of the Revolving Museum. A number of years ago, Diana founded New Vestures, where she is the Creative Director. 

New Vestures provides “support, space, resources and classes related to the creation of fashion and textile projects”. Located in Lowell, New Vestures recently moved out of their Merrimack Street location into a temporary one in the beautifully renovated 110 Canal Street building, which houses the UMass Lowell Innovation Hub. What a cool location!

I visited Diana yesterday to get a tour of that space, where she is working while waiting for the buildout of New Vestures’ new location to be completed. That new home will be just up the hill, still in the growing Hamilton Canal District, at Mill No. 5. That space, on the building’s 5th floor, just above the city’s cool new retail space on the 4th, will give New Vestures 3000 square feet of work space, not to mention a bunch of big windows overlooking the district.

So here are some of the shots during my tour and the portraits we did in my studio. Thank you Diana and best of luck in your new location!

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A Mill, a Radio and a Fashion Shoot

The current issue of Merrimack Valley Magazine (May/June 2015) features a couple of pieces that I worked on that include a few people or places that are close to home, all in different ways.

Having moved to downtown Lowell last year, my wife Amy and I have become frequent visitors to Mill No. 5, a very eclectic destination in an old textile mill, (No surprise there!), with small shops and not so small events. Made in Lowell, a new initiative founded by Tobias Marx is located in Mill No. 5, and was started to “cultivate a movement to transform communities”. Tobi is incredibly passionate about the organization and its possibilities. Here is their web site to learn more: http://www.madeinlowell.org. Liz Michalski's story is well worth the read. You can find it on-line here: http://www.mvmag.net/?p=15211

Another piece is on a resurgence in local radio. I was really into radio when I was a kid. My father would build electronic things from discarded parts, at the kitchen table, using an old brownie pan as a chassis, after having sketched out the schematic from scratch. Seriously! But a few weeks ago I had the opportunity to snoop around 3 radio stations for this story, one of which was WXRV (The River). It is housed in the old WHAV art-deco studios where, if I remember the story correctly, my father actually worked as an engineer, probably right after the war. Seeing the old, discarded turn-tables and tape decks, one can imagine  the old-days of radio and the live performances that occurred there. While that station still has a wall of CDs (for backup), and The River does host live performances, all three stations that I visited now play streamed digital music day to day.

This story is a natural fit for writer Dean Johnson too. Dean is a Sunday nighttime fixture on WBZ radio.

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And back in early April, when the snow was actively melting, we took over the Stonehenge Inn & Spa in Tyngsboro, MA, for a Couples Spring “Peek” Weekend fashion shoot. You may recognize Christa Brown, one of the models from a shoot that I did in my studio last year, and whose writing was recently featured in Seventeen Magazine.

This was a fun day. This piece is on-line too (http://www.mvmag.net/?p=15233). Thanks go to the rest of the team too. It was a real group effort: writer and style editor Alyson Aiello, Yolanda and Stephen for their creative direction, Regina for her hair and makeup work, and for Christa and Joel for looking marvelous!

Stay Tuned for Style!

It may be raining here as I write this, but it was sunny in the studio last month when I was joined by Ani, from Humanity Lowell, a cool little boutique for women on Merrimack Street, my style collaborator Grace, as well as Christa and Monika who clearly lit up the studio with their modeling talents.

We are looking forward to better weather here in Massachusetts that will be allow for another shoot, this time out on location. Watch for our work here in a few short months. Hmm…maybe another studio shoot is in order before then!

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A Photo-Shoot Full House

I can’t believe it’s been over a month, but on July 7th Grace, my stylist collaborator from Grace Professional Cosmetics and I had the pleasure of photographing Amy and Vee. It was a very warm, Massachusetts summer day, but they were good sports, and I think we all had a good time. At least I hope so!

These are another in my set of Fashion-Inspired Portraits. Since this kind of shoot is quite different from my editorial and commercial work, I have a new web site devoted to showing it off: http://www.adrienbisson-portraits.com

Also in the house that day was Liz, of Global Click Photography, who helped out by shooting some behind-the-scene shots. You're just going to have to go over to my special web site to see those though! Maybe next time she can do some video for us! Hint, hint!!

If you like this work, please let me know. I crave attention :-)

Photo by http://globalclickphotography.com

There are more shots. Just click here: http://www.adrienbisson-portraits.com/blog/2014/8/11/a-photo-shoot-full-house

Loving Both Sides of the Camera

More often than not, I am at a loss for something to write about in this space. There are some times though that I simply have work to show. Work to show off and to share, that I hope people will find compelling. I am constantly striving to do more significant work because I usually feel that it is competent but not that important. In any event, I do sometimes feel that it is good enough. Digressing... The week before last a colleague of mine, who has moved to Richmond, VA, came back to the Boston area to shoot a couple of weddings and we both wanted to reconnect and, I was hoping, get in a photo shoot. While she is a very talented and up-and-coming wedding and portrait photographer, she also loves to be in front of the camera. That quality in people usually comes through.

This then, is one of those times in which I simply want to share some work with you. Nothing earth-shattering or terribly important from a photographic or story-telling sense, but just some fun photos of a friend on an enjoyable afternoon in the studio. I hope you agree!

The excellent work of Melissa Desjardins, of Desjar Photography, can be found here: http://desjarphoto.com

Style... On the Cover

For this month's Merrimack Valley Magazine, I was part of a small army of creatives that were assigned to produce the magazine's fall fashion cover and cover stories. It was a fun day, with stylists, hair and makeup artists, creatives from the magazine, as well as photographer Meghan Moore and myself all working together with our two models to create something beautiful, interesting and hopefully informative. I'll show my cover shot here, but to see the rest of the spread, you will have to check out the magazine. Here though, are some of my favorites, both posed and unposed from that day at historic Coburn Hall, at the UMass Lowell campus in Lowell, Massachusetts.