I’ve known Addison’s uncle, Todd, for almost all my life. He’s a lifelong friend. We go spend time with him at his camp up in Pittsburg, NH a few times a year. We have dinner nights at his house. He remains one of my oldest friends.
When Addison was thinking about some Senior photographs, Todd gave his sister Kerri my contact info and she wanted to hire me. Awesome.
portrait
Todd
Todd is one of my oldest friends. I’ve photographed him a few times in the past, but this most recent time was a little more special.
Todd’s a very outdoors kinda guy; mountain biking, snowmobiling, paddle boarding, kayaking … he does it all and he does it intensely. He gets out there and really enjoys himself and gives it his all.
One particular day a few years back, Todd was giving it his all while mountain biking, and he gave it his all right off a cliff with his bike and fell a considerable distance. Luckily he was with someone and they were able to rush him off to the emergency room.
While there, the doctors discovered he had two Aneurysms in his brain. One was fairly teeny tiny but the other one was pretty large and the doctors said they needed to keep an eye on it.
Cut to 2019: the larger aneurysm that doctors had been worried about was indeed growing and they knew they had to get it out of there. So Todd went under the knife. They removed a piece of his skull and they were able to successfully remove both the aneurysm’s he had in his brain.
Three days later (!!!) they let Todd go home, and on the fourth day of him being released I dragged him over to the studio so I could make a few portraits of him.
He was totally up for it.
I wanted to shoot something simple that really focused on the scar and sutures he had on his head. I blew my background totally white and I took a single studio strobe with a grid to control the light spread so that it focused right on his wound. The rest of him went dark because he wasn’t lit from the front. I photographed most of him in a dark profile while the gridded light caught the top of his head.
Since making these photographs with Todd he’s had some complications from surgery; the piece of his skull that had been removed and then put back in became infected, and he had to go back a few times for them to reopen his wound and take the skull piece out. As of this blog post, he’s been without a piece of his skull while everything inside his head heals and chases out the infection, and once everything is good he’ll be getting a new, synthetic piece of skull that they will put back into his head (scheduled for April of 2020). He’s been doing awesome through this whole process, although I know he’s frustrated because he can’t go out and mountain bike or snowmobile as much as he wants.
It’s scary when you see dear friends going through such physical trauma.
I’m glad you are still with us, Todd.
Michael Bellar & AS/IS Ensemble
Over the years I've developed a friendship with Michael Bellar and the boys of the AS/IS Ensemble. I've shot them a few times now. I took some images for Michael the last time they played in Nashua for their upcoming album. The album is still being prepared, but I wanted to share some of these with you all.
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