Downtown Raleigh Alliance Ambassadors // Business Branding Photography

I’ve done work for the Downtown Raleigh Alliance for many years, and I still get asked questions about what they do for the city. The DRA is responsible for fun events that happen downtown (like First Friday, Downtown Raleigh Restaurant Week, and partnering with local artists to decorate storefronts and make murals) but they also provide Ambassador services! These (and many more) friendly folks wearing blue DRA ambassador logos patrol downtown, helping locals and visitors. They keep an eye on the cars in parking garages, provide directions and assistance, check on shop owners and local businesses, and they even jump your car for free if you need it! If you’re downtown late at night and would like an escort back to your car, you can call them and they’ll walk with you. They provide an immense and helpful service. I was happy to photograph the ambassadors in their new uniforms this year!

Jodi Foy // The World’s Nicest Dentist

Jodi Foy is the World’s Nicest Dentist. I can vouch for this based on her ads in the Indy Week (which drew me to her practice when we moved here in 2008), but also because she is, obviously, my forever dentist. That’s like when you adopt a cat or dog and they find their forever home, but instead it’s when you find a dentist that somehow makes you enjoy going to the dentist, and you then follow on Instagram as they hold celebrations for the Royal Wedding (bouquet toss included) and go to Backstreet Boy concerts, and you decide that you’ll never go to another dentist even if you have to drive on 40 and sit in traffic. Jodi Foy is that forever dentist for me. And the Foyettes! Gahh the Foyettes. The Foyettes, and every Foyette that I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, have all been wonderful – every single one of them. They are equally as nice and hilarious as Jodi, and somehow they all remember me and exactly what plans I had six months ago when I last saw them.

So I was overjoyyyyed to be asked to do promo pictures for this wonderful, wonderful crew! They needed new headshots and group shots, and I drove there and we did them and we laughed and bit some unsuspecting patient’s hand with a plastic alligator and made her pretend like she has no idea how to brush her teeth (sorry, Sunny). It was fun and it always is. She is 100% and without any doubt recommended by yours truly as a dentist. She’ll talk to you about The Walking Dead and photography and hockey and the Foyettes will remember all your vacations and your husband’s plans too. I love these women with my whole being.

Big Dog Little Bed Productions // A Promo Shoot

We did a shoot with Janice Smith of Big Dog Little Bed Productions way back in 2015 (see it here!) when I was just starting to become the creepily obsessed stalker of her dog named Toby. She wasn’t super concerned about my drooling over his fluffy adorable fluffness at the time but I think over time she’s come to realized just how serious I am about him. I call her from hotel rooms at 11pm to say things like, “Hey Janice! We just made it to Blacksburg! Are you still awake? Can I come see Toby? What’s your room number? Oh… you just got in bed? Okay…I guess I’ll see him tomorrow.” And then I call at 8am to say things like, “Hey Janice! We are awake! Are you awake? Can I come see Toby? You’re downstairs? Okay, we will be right down!” And I’m not totally sure what she thinks about my constant comments on her Instagram regarding him or my texting her to ask about him occasionally but you know what? I don’t really care. Toby is my dog soulmate. My love for him is broken down into several parts:

50% Unreal orange fluff
30% Playing like a total spaz with arms straight out in what I’ve come to call “invisible casts” and romping around like he’s done five lines of cocaine
20% Unrequited love (he does tolerate me and occasionally seek me out for head pats, but part of me enjoys the fact that every single photo I take with him involves him literally rolling his eyes or actively trying to escape)

Anyway, Janice told me that Toby doesn’t like it when girls come on too strong to him, so I’m trying to refrain from making this entire post about him. Janice is a dear friend of ours, an extremely talented female bossy lady videographer, a Durhamite, a lover of pups big and small (the small, also adorable, far more loving and friendly doggo in these pictures is Murphy), a trusted colleague, and a wearer of vests and fanny packs. We have a little too much fun photobombing her at weddings (there are probably many minutes of footage she’s accumulated and cut out) and we love her dearly. It was with great pleasure that we photographed her new promo photos for her wedding and commercial videography company Big Dog Little Bed. She is hilarious and charming and adorable and beautiful and intelligent and can rock 1977 dad glasses like there’s no tomorrow. This shoot makes me smile because Janice makes me smile. Also Toby.