SullySullivan Photography

Scheisse it’s been a minute since I have done a blog! A ton has been going on! I recently did a branding seminar with Beth Taubner from Mercury Labs, uhhhhhhhhh.. it was incredible! For those of you not sure about Branding, I will try and give you a brief synopsis (and when you are finished reading got get yourself Branded!).
Branding yourself is an intense, emotional, thought provoking, in your face strategy that guides you as a business to be able to market who you are for what your are. In my case my photography as a business “Sully” needs to be a brand so you remember me for Sully and when you hire me you are hiring me for “Sully”. So basically after the seminar I will have an entire new brand of Sully Sullivan photography so I can market my self to target Audiences. New website, business cards, promotional pieces, portfolio, etc! A big part of this though is realizing who I am as a person and applying that to my work. So on every shoot Im applying me, sully, my brand, my heart and soul into every photo. Alright it’s getting to deep, and Beth will kill me if I give out any more info check out Mercury labs if you need to find a direction and brand yourself. Its the smartest thing I have done!

The shoot in this post is from Hampden Clothing, a little fashion story we worked on together! It was amazingly hot and windy! Thanks to everyone for their super awesome help! Stacy at Hampden, Ashley Perryman for the awesome hair and makeup, Kyle and Kate for being awesome assistants, and Zoe for being a wonderful model to work with! The original place we built the set was to windy so we had to break it down and find a new location! My next blog I will explain a little more of set building and following through with your ideas on shoots!

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Greetings everyone. Quick update, these are some photos of Designer Julie Wheats new collection. Her line is called Cavortress. These are just a few polaroids from the shoot. Im so in love with shooting film, I am making myself shoot it everytime I pick up a camera. I used to only know film, even when the big “popular” switch to digital was made. I love both but Im in love with film way more. It slows me down, makes me concentrate on whats in front of me. I should have the rest of the photos up soon. I shot digital and film so as soon as I get out of the dark room and “digital” dark room aka computer land! I should have some photos up for everyone to see. Thank you to Mike Grady my new stylist/set prop designer who rocked out with me all day to get our swing together as well as Kyle Morris rockin out as my assistant! Its so important to have a good team that you can trust to help you make your vision come to life. I cannot stress this enough, without all of this help us photographers would be lost. I know this, as a full time assistant as well. Here is a little insight for what help is worth in our industry and the amount of work that goes on before, during, and after a shoot (worth reading, I dont expect these terms by any means they are just industry standards). It was a crazy night but we got some rockin stuff! Thank you to all the models for being patient and rockin out! You ladies effin’ rock!

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Greetings all! The photo attached with this post is from the 1st Annual Southeastern Beard and Mustache competition held in charleston SC. This is an outtake from the shoot, Im not sure quite yet what I want to do with the photos… Im thinking to do a little preview show at my house, sort of like an indie rock art show, good ole’ house party style. Just something low key and super fun for everyone. (so be on the lookout for an update on a secret art show!)
I recently gave my first lecture ever at the Charleston Center for Photography, I want to say thank you to everyone who came out, I spoke about the importance of being an assistant as well as going over a little bit of my work and creative process. Pretty basic stuff, but hopefully informative! The reason I am mentioning this is that in my lecture I talked about making sure you shoot your ideas you are thinking about and always pushing your work forward. Always keeping your work fresh and shooting things that could get you great photos, even if it means spending your own money on renting equipment, paying for models, hair and makeup, stylists, whatever! SHOOT IT! Thats what I did with this beard and mustache competition. This also means not just shooting it just to shoot it but making yourself try new things, new lighting set ups, props, sets, whatever it takes BE CREATIVE! Make yourself try those crazy Ideas you have! The harder you work at something the better results you will have. Who knows, maybe a client will call you one day asking for that style that you did a test shoot with, and boom, you already know how to do it!
Alright, its back to the website updating for me! More news soon! Keep being inspired and push yourselves to new levels of freakin awesomeness!
Let me know if there are any other creative questions you have! Im thinking that maybe once a week on my blog I will answer questions that anyone has about assisting, photography, whatever! Ask away!

mother fuuuuudger! Love that song! Hello to all! Things are starting to get a little crazy in my world. Work is picking up, phone is ringing quite a bit! Hell yeah to 2010! Bring it! Just got home from a shoot last week in Atlanta for a company VersionOne doing some portraits for the main people in the company. Thank’s to my boy Aubs for hooking the work up! Had a good time, it was kind of my first bigger corporate job traveling with assistants. Glad my trusty Toyota made it! We had that thing packed down with equipment! Thanks again to my assistant Kate and John for helping to rock out a good shoot.
On a side note if anybody is interested, I will be giving a lecture at the Charleston Center for Photography this coming Monday, February 8th at 7PM. I will be going over the importance/daily routine of being a photo assistant as well as a little history of my work. If you want to come out and laugh at how terrible of a speaker I am or hear some lame attempts at some jokes, then come on out. It should be a good time and hopefully informative.

OHHHH k! So my incredibly great friend Jess Antonini who is amazingly talented has her first big show being released this month, January 18th @ 10:30 on MTV. She has worked on several other projects with MTV for quite sometime now, but this is her baby! Its gonna be an awesome show about a rebellious little girl living in small-town Texas. Anyways, watch the trailer, watch the show, enjoy the show, and then watch it again! Soooo excited for you Jess!!!

Hello all! Im in love with this image I posted! I found a bunch of old tin type and Daguerreotype photos at the flea market. Such a great place and a wonderful place for inspiration. I’m always down to go if you would like to join! At the end of this you can read more and see the rest of the photos I found.
It’s always good to have places to go for inspiration! What do you do for inspiration? Where do you go? What inspires you? How do you keep yourself inspired? I ask myself these questions all the time. Being able to create all the time is difficult, so you need to make sure you take the tame to keep yourself inspired!

Any of you who attended Kulture Klash this year and made it the photo booth I now have a website where you can see the images here. I had such a blast doing this! Thank you to everyone who made it happen. A special thank’s to my assistants Kate Hohorst and John Gaulden! Two amazing people I have working for me. Makes my life a lot easier!
Tons of new stuff in the works! New shoots, new ideas, New cameras and equipment added to my arsenal to help keep my shooting creative and changing (canon 5d mark II, as well as a Hasselblad 503cx with 6 film backs and 2 polaroid backs). Can’t wait for 2010 (twenty ten!!!! it sounds better and is easier to say. ha!) Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Years! I sure will! Love you guys

Sully
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Hello Everyone! I just realized its been a long freaking time since I have posted anything on this blog! Crap! Sorry about that! I have been incredibly slammed with work, which is totally a good thing. The above photo from is from a huge art show they have in Charleston, SC called Kulture Klash! I did a floating portrait photo booth for the event and I had a blast! Thanks to Gus, Amber, Scott and all the other amazing people involved with the event, it was amazing! A HUGE thanks to my assistants Kate and John, despite the crazy lines, people yelling to get their prints and line cutting they did a fantastic job! Hopefully if I do the event again I can figure out a better way to organize the line to picking up prints ratio. It amazes me how fast people expect photos today with digital, I could have sworn I was working at 5 Minute photo lab! ha! Jokes everyone To any of you who bought prints, emails will be out before christmas of your photo. The photo booth was a personal project that I did for myself and for you guys. I appreciate everyone being patient with getting things during and after the event! Photography is how I make my living so don’t think I have forgotten about you, If i’m not in my office crankin’ out editing then Im on the road traveling with work. I cant be everywhere at once, (although I wish I could) I gotta work so I can bring wonderful photo shoots to you guys like the one at Kulture Klash again!
Anyways the reason I have been slack on blogs, despite busy with work, is also I want to know what you guys want to hear about. What do you want to know, what topics would you guys like to read about? I could ramble all day about nothingness, but I would like you to take something from this…. Send your feedback my way as well as anyone who wants to receive random postcards from me…. Thanks for stopping by!

Sully

sully sullivan photography

So….. I did not realize how much was involved with transferring over an old domain to a new server!  A LOT!  Getting all the right permissions, redirecting old site to new one, setting up email aliases, blah blah blah, and making sure everything works!!! Well, everything is working!  A huge reason why everything is working is because of my absolutely amazing domain hosting company Media Temple .  If you need a hosting company or you are sick of the one you have, dont even think twice!  They have hands down the best support system I have ever encountered with anything!!!!  They are there 24 hours a day 7 days a week, rain or shine. They walked me through every troubleshooting issue I had and even helped write my redirect code all over the phone and online.  I want to give a big thanks to all of the support staff there.  You rock!!!  It’s nice to know that you will be taken care of in any situation and not transferred to some third world country that does not even speak the same language as you! uhmmmm airline’s you should jump on that, thanks! Who is your web hosting company? Do they kick butt like Media Temple? Think about it!

Now, on to other things.  The September issue of Vogue…… (more…)

The below image is still a continuation of the art show I had.  I sold this print and I didnt get a chance to scan it, but this image said “… so that’s what it feels like”

sully sullivan photography

Its Sunday!!! Hope everyone has had a great weekend. We actually had some amazing surf here in charleston, the report said 12-17 feet! It was awesome and now I have a terrible rash on my stomach from surfing 3 days in a row! Totally worth it!

Saw Inglorius Basterds the other night, one of the best movies I have ever seen. Loved it!!

Seth, RJ, Bergen and Myself had our first official meeting about our special project we are working on. Things are starting to come together, Im super excited and cannot wait to share it with all of you!

The last post I said I would finish after kickball, but we lost and I was in a terrible mood. Who knew kickball could get you so worked up.

I woke up at 5 AM in a bit of a panic… (more…)

Sorry its been a while guys.  Hope everyone is doing well!  All is well here, been shooting a lot, which is wonderful.  Now I need to sit down and actually go through all of this film.  Digital is soooooooo much more work.

I need to release some thoughts I had this morning when I woke up in a rush of anxiety this morning at 5AM… read more after the image… and after I get back from my kickball game around 7:30….