Human Disco Ball.

On the final warm days on summer, you want to soak up all the sun you can. Not reflect it back into space! Man oh man.


North Avenue Beach. Saturday September 17.

Bag check for Pan Am.

Pan Am is back, but not exactly how you might remember it. Pan Am airways landed for its final time, bankrupt in the 90's selling its assets to Delta. After several reorganizations and name rights sales Pan Am has been reinvented as a brand that will harken us back to the glamorous days of flying, when hot food was set upon your tray table and you dressed-up for the airport.


Some of the bags we had on set.

Now selling travel accessories and gifts, Pan Am even has it's own TV show starring the lovely and strange Christina Ricci. It focuses on the lives of stewardesses and their adventures in passion, jealousy and espionage at 30,000 feet.

I was commissioned by Pan Am to help promote their line of retro travel bags by tying onto our memory of sleek, 60's era travel, though not with jumbo jets, but classic cars.


I was very young in the 70's just when all the great 50's and 60's design styles were being remodeled out. Though the memory of those clean rich lines are forever engraved in my mind as a kind of feeling. I remember flying those now defunct carriers like Eastern and Braniff and getting to visit the cockpit, mid-flight. The copilot pinning a pair of plastic wings to my proud cardigan. Making pictures with these design styles sure brings back some fuzzy feelings, like the muffled sound of afternoon soap operas filtered through shag carpeting while I napped. Oh, the age of innocence.


I'm not really that short. Really.

Shooting at a small airport outside of Chicago, we slathered on sunblock and shot images about a woman in a hurry to get the hell out! In the image above, she hits a snag in her plans on her way to who know where. Clothes were styled by the ever over-delivering Heather Brooks. Hair and make up by my new friend Cindy Schute.


A pristine 60's MGA with blood red leather interior. Droool.

Retouching and production stills by Tim Blokel

Pink my ride.

In the waning days of summer I find myself drawn to the open-air markets that springs up in empty lots on the west side of Chicago, selling everything from air fresheners to zebra skin rugs.


Pink Pony Bicycle $30. No tax

I especially love the kids bikes. Minimally bubble wrapped and displayed to be advancing like baby armies; their iridescent tassels waving in the wind like Chinese jewelry shimmering in the sun. I checked out these beauties near a mini-mall at the off-ramp of the 290 expressway at Sacramento Ave.



And for the money you just saved, they sell pop culture cartoon piggy bank heads .

No gnocchi. Solo pesce.

I had the gastronomic good fortune of shooting restaurant mogul Scott Harris, "the Don" of the growing empire of Mia Francesca Italian restaurants for Chicago Magazine. We shot him in the back room of his newest endevour, Salatino's in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood.



Food was styled by chef, Joeseph Farina. The 6 pound lobster (estimated to be +/- 25 years old) was eaten with butter and lemon. Lost to the crop were a dozen giant shrimp, pasta marinara, lobster tail and 6 other drop dead seafood dishes. On top of it all, the restaurant sent the whole crew home with their choices off the menu for dinner. Maybe being Calabrese myself does have its perks.


Styling: Angela Finney
Hair and Makeup: Morgan Blaul
Photo editor: Megan Lovejoy
Retouching: Tim Blokel