Dave Oates, Principal at Stalwart Communications, is changing the way people think about public relations. His “pay-on-performance” business model is ruffling plenty of feathers in the PR world, which for years has built itself on large, up-front retainer fees and very little in the way of measurable results. Stalwart has only been in business for about two-and-a-half years, but already has a laundry list of clients and continues to grow at a rapid pace, when many other large PR firms are closing their doors.

Dave has referred a lot of work my way, so when it came time for some new portraits of him and his new employee, Allison, I was pumped. We shot the images on the beach in Cardiff under the hot sun of the last Santa Ana we had. In an effort to limit their exposure to the sun in their suits, we kept the shoot to about 10 minutes.

I have been a full-on laggard when it comes to blogging. I just noticed that it’s been well over a month since my last blog post. And it’s not like I haven’t had anything to blog about–I’ve just lagged. No excuses, I lagged. Did I mention that I lagged? But I digress…

United Through Reading is a great local non-profit with the mission of “uniting families facing physical separation by facilitating the bonding experience of reading aloud together.” I was asked to photograph the board of directors as well as the organization’s CEO, Sally Ann Zoll.

The Board of Directors was photographed in the lobby of a large office building in the UTC area. Lighting was fairly simple, with one main light in an octabox high and centered above the group, and two monolights in softboxes on each side and towards the back.

The CEO was photographed just outside the main entrance of the headquarters in Sorrento Valley. There’s a nice metallic facade that made a cool background.