editorial

Clay Cook - Creative Space

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Clay Cook is a portrait and editorial photographer from Louisville, Ky. Clay has a very polished and beautiful look to his portraits. He works out of his beautiful naturally lite studio.

Clay started his journey in photography back in 2010 after his band split. With a constant drive to create, Clay built a successful photographer career in a rather short period of time. He has had opportunities to photograph for Livestrong, NFL, Papa John's Pizza, Red Bull, Forbes, Adweek, USA Today, ESPN, Waterboys Initiative. His most recent campaign was Wings of Kilimanjaro for the Waterboys. 

Clay has built a successful career in the advertising and editorial world of photography over the past few years through his strong social media presence - @ClayCookPhoto

January Update

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This one is definitely a little late, but each month this year I'm going to try and give a brief update as to some of the projects I've done each month. January was a crazy one. I was coming out of a slow month of work (the holiday's always slow things down). The month started out with an instagram connection to local filmaker, Mike Vance (Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/mikevance). 

Next, was a shoot I did of one of my wife's friends. Her name is Neema, and she is a refugee from the Congo. You can read her story here: Neema. I did this and Mike's shoot right after I got my first canvas backdrop. I loved the tones and feel of it.

This next shoot was one for TOPs Magazine. This is a portrait of Renee Murphy. She is a news anchor here in Louisville for WHAS news. She was as nice in person as she is on TV!

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Next up was a concept shoot I did with my friends new Subaru STI. We wanted to capture some images that look like they could have been used in an advertisement. I love the look and feel of this image. This one shot took about 1 hour to shoot and 2+ hours to edit. I light painted with a Phottix Indra strobe and stacked the photos in Photoshop. I think the PSD (Photoshop file type) was over 3GBs. 

This was another shoot I did for TOPs. It is of "Super Mom" Chesson Hazelwood. Read the story here: http://www.topslouisville.com/Read/8939/Supermom%3A+Chesson+Hazelwood

This next shoot is for my friend's new company, Spartan. He is making awesome lid organizers and lid organizer mounting plates for Pelican 1510 and 1535 cases. I couldn't just have one photo because this product is awesome and I give it my highest recommendation. Seriously check it out! 

This was one of my favorite shoots. I wanted to challenge myself with lighting and I normally shoot with artificial light. This was all natural window light. I had a scrim up on camera right to diffuse the light even more. This was shot for the Voice Tribune's food issue. The restaurant featured here was the 502 Bar and Bistro.

Close to the end of the month now, I connected with local artist Mallory Mesiner. She makes lots of awesome drawings and paintings and does custom portraits! We did a few photos and a short promo video!

Last, but not least, we did a part 2 of my friends Subaru STI. This time the focus was one the car's details. I had to include a couple photos here cause this thing was a beast. 

Honeymoon

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Six months ago today on August 13th, I married my best friend and we took one of the best trips together. We went to Catalina Island in southern California and San Diego. First off Catalina Island is one of the most beautiful and sweetest little places I've been to. We also spent some time in Disney and I shot a little video on my iPhone documenting the trip (so please excuse the image quality). Check out the photos below, they were all shot with either a Pentax 67 and a Nikon FE. The film was developed and scanned at State Film Lab

We stayed at the wonderfully adorable Catalina Courtyard in the city on the island, Avalon. We were on the island from Sunday afternoon until Thursday morning. Thursday afternoon we fought rush hour traffic for four hours and made it to San Diego where we stayed in the "Little Itlay" district at an adorable little boutique hotel called Hotel Vyvant. The weather was wonderful, people were friendly, the food was amazing! We had some of the best Italian food I've ever had! We also took a break from social media for the entire time which was great! 

Below is a video I made, I really had no intention of making a video, otherwise it would've been better. However here is just a little bit of the highlights from our trip! I hope you enjoy! Please disregard the image quality.

Food Photography is the Best!

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I don't get to photograph food nearly as much as I would like. This shoot was for The Voice-Tribune's feature about some of the awesome restaurants around Derby City (that's Louisville long-standing nickname thanks to the Kentucky Derby). My assignment was to photograph the 502 Bar & Bistro's signature dish, Pan-Seared Diver Scallops with Heart of Palm Salad and Yuzu Crème Fraiche, along with Executive Chef Ming Pu. 

For this shoot, I photographed the entire shoot with all natural light coming in first through a window, then through a diffuser to create a nice natural polished look to both the food shots and the portrait.

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Food photography is something I rarely do, so that's why it's not included in my portfolio, however, it is one of my favorites! Not for the art form, just because I am a nut about good food. Moving to the Highlands neighborhood was probably influenced mostly by Louisville's food scene. There are some of my wife and I's favorite Bardstown Road restaurants right around the corner from our apartment. We also are close enough to Nulu, Germantown, and Clifton/Cresent Hill to enjoy some of the best food in our city. 

Here is a list of some of my favorite places to eat in Louisville!

Highlands Neighborhood:

  • Louvino - Italian Small Plates and Wine Bar
  • Stout Burgers and Beer - between 5 PM and 6PM, all food is half off!
  • Holy Grale/Gralehaus - Amazing burgers and brunch (brunch is at Gralehaus)
  • Game - amazing burgers with exotic meats 
  • Highland Morning - Delicious breakfast at reasonable prices
  • Ramsi's On the World Cafe - International food from all over the world

Nulu:

  • Feast/Royals - Both owned by HiCotton, both amazing!
  • Mayan Cafe - authentic Mayan food in the heart of Louisville
  • Harvest - amazing farm to table restaurant featuring local farmers
  • Rye - amazing American food and cocktails

Germantown:

  • Hammerheads - The sister restaurant to Game
  • Four Pegs - Super underrated burgers and Chicken-And-Waffles. It's amazing! GO!
  • Eiderdown - European Inspired Southern Comfort Food
  • The Post - New York style pizza only a neighborhood away

Clifton/Cresent Hill:

  • Varanese - Mediterranean and New American. They have an awesome Jazz band!
  • Volare - Amazing Italian. I've had the pleasure of photographing here!
  • Blue Dog Bakery - Go try their Egg Pizza, it's not what you think. Also best bread in the State
  • Irish Rover - Cozy Irish restaurant in an old converted house turned Irish pub
  • El Mundo - some of the best Mexican Food in town!
  • The Grape Leaf - awesome Middle-East food on a budget!

Subaru WRX STI Part 2

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Last night, I finished up my Subaru shoot from a couple weeks ago. This time we focused on the insane details of this car. All these shots were photographed with one strobe, almost always overhead pointing down. I was going for a super dramatic look to give this car a really dark and mean look. I hope you enjoy the photos!

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Here are the photos from the other shoot