Way outside of our normal scope of portraiture and photography, we had the fun opportunity to photograph Benj Heard while he was in town over the weekend. He’s releasing a new EP and it was a blast to come up with some creative, fun ideas that would suit the music on the album. We started at my office, projected photos and video on his face and body for portraits, before donning a tuxedo and getting really crazy. =)

I love this old-school barber chair of my friend Clayton’s. It’s sitting in the Illuminate Hair Lounge at the moment, which adjoins my own office space, so we took advantage of what we had on hand to create something unique and classy.

Fast forward about an hour and we end up here… Fire was involved, and not just the Fireball in the tumbler. Check out his sleeve…

Of course, as one would expect, security would not be very happy with such antics…

That last photo somehow has a bit of a James Bond feel, or at least it does to me. Maybe James’s brother Vaga… Vaga Bond. ;-)  Or, perhaps, the most interesting man in the world.

One of the funniest things was watching the reactions of those passing by as we photographed. It’s not every day you see someone with a fresh haircut and looking like Benj wearing a totally thrashed, burned and otherwise destroyed tuxedo. Besides the clothing, nothing else was burned, damaged or destroyed (that we know of). Okay, the pipe actually got thrown when he jumped out of the water and ran away, so hopefully it survived.

Special thanks to Holly’s cousin Hart Jacquez (Instagram :: website) for hanging out for the shoot and sprinkling some of his extra creative magic here and there when he saw the need.