JT Keel, Guitars, and me channeling Dan Winters.

When I was back home visiting this past time I spent the majority a day hanging out with my friend and Big Kettle Drum's guitarist / banjo player Jeffery Todd Keel. We met up for breakfast and just talked about music and art and general -- just kinda feeding off each other as creative people tend to do with each other. We decided to get together later that day-- he was gonna teach me some tricks when it came to playing slide guitar, and as I wanted to do a portrait of him. As I sat their having breakfast with him I saw in my head what I wanted to do. The colors of the shirt and hat he had on reminded me of the overall aesthetics of Dan Winters work.

So a little later that day we spent  a couple of hours just messing around on the guitar. He shared some of his musical ideas with me and taught me some cool stuff, and then I set out to doing some portraits of him. I'm not sure if he knew what he was in for when it comes to me doing portraits of someone, but two or three hours later I suppose it was clear to him. I rearranged the den area of his house to set up the lighting I wanted and went to shooting, and did end up getting the Dan Winters type feel that I was looking for. Please note that I was not attempting to outright duplicate his look, but just give it the same feel. I got the look I wanted, and it suited JT's look well:

Click on each image to view it larger.

Both this and the shot just below this one really gave me the Dan Winters type feel I was looking for to begin with.
Everything else was just playing and having fun with it to get some diversity. I guess it was all just playing for me.

This one is my favorite from the shoot.

It's no surprise to me that he looks most relaxed and at ease here in these shots of him playing.

Great expression here.

Deliberately totally blacked out the background on this one to give the appearance or look of him playing live somewhere.  It's no lie people -- that somewhere just happened to be his house, and I was his audience! 

Please check out Big Kettle Drum and buy their music everybody. They've got a great gritty blues / rock tone with some gospel mixed in. Just click here to listen to it, and then buy their EP if you like what you hear. Also check out Dan Winters website, it's photographers like him that push me to become a better photographer. I aspire to do work as gorgeous as his --- it's worth checking out -- so please do.