A Day With May: Q&A

Shannon Greer has an eclectic mix of friends who oftentimes serve as subjects for his work.  This latest video, A Day With May, was shot for his friend May Luk, a ceramicist who was recently accepted to Etsy and needed a promo video for the site.  From the music to the editing, the film is filled with personal touches that show off Shannon’s ability to capture great portraits.

 

AP: What inspired you to make this video?

 

SG: May is a friend of mine.  She’d seen the video I’d made for Charlotta.  May just got accepted to Etsy and wanted to do the video for that.

 

AP: You’ve done a few portrait videos – this and the video of your wife creating her portraits of the Freedom Riders.  You also have the portrait series of photographs of friends of yours.  What attracts you to portraiture?

 

SG: I like showing eccentricities of people and their personality.  It’s funny; everyone loves the portraits except for their own.  It’s not an idealized person.  It’s not a headshot.  It’s my personal work, not something commercial.

 

AP: What do you try to capture in a video in order to communicate your subject’s character?

 

SG: With May, I wanted to capture her ceramic ability, but also her lightness and humor, her gaiety.  I edited to keep her laugh in.  It was a priority to keep that in – more parts of her – and not play it straight like an educational video.

 

AP: I love the music in this.  Who is it by?  How did you select it for this video?

 

SG: I didn’t select the music.  May was worried about the rights of music – that Etsy wouldn’t put it up if we didn’t have the rights.  So the music is from a local musician from France, Alex Jacquemin, who is also May’s karate instructor.

 

AP: How did you elicit the monologue for the video?

 

SG: The monologue was conducted and recorded by Jamie Courville, who is a professional sound person.  May met her fortuitously, as I had wanted to re-record our earlier interview, but I became too busy.  You can see some of her work on her website.

 

Jamie did a really amazing job.  With Charlotta, it was easy, because she is a talker and raconteur.  May can be shy and needed to be drawn out more.  Seeing Jamie’s website, she was perfect for eliciting a monologue from May.

 

Jamie came onto this project several months after I had filmed it.  I just ended up getting too busy to re-record May.  I think May finding Jamie was wonderful for the project.  I look forward to working with Jamie on future projects.

 

AP: What advice do you give to people you’re filming or photographing if they’re not trained models or actors, like May or some of your friends you’ve worked with?

 

SG: I think the luxury in filming artists is they can get lost in doing what they love to do.  It’s the ultimate prop.  Even though they might at first be hesitant, once they start working, I disappear.

 

AP: What is different about working with people you know vs. models on a set?

 

SG: Models are taller.

 

AP: Same with creating a product for your own portfolio vs. for a specific company or campaign?

 

SG: With my own product, I get to do what I want, without worrying about not seeing this button, or that pocket.  It’s quite liberating.

 

AP: Do your style and approach differ in video vs. photography?

 

SG: I have to move a lot more with video.  Between panning, zooming, and changing camera angles, it’s a lot of work.  For every one action of my subject, I might shoot it three different ways so that the images dance when they are edited together.

 

AP: In comparing video vs. photography, would you say there are benefits of one over the other?  Especially for portraiture?  Do you feel that you can get more with video?

 

SG: In a video, one can say a thousand words.  In a truly great still portrait, the face can say a thousand words without uttering one.

 

 

In either form, Shannon certainly knows how to speak the language.  Be sure to check out May Luk on Etsy as well as on her website.

Getting to Know Shannon Greer

Shannon Greer is a New York man.  Aside from being born in Fayettville, Arkansas, he’s been in the Empire State his whole life.  He grew up in the city, in Soho, and went to college at State University of New York at Purchase.  He now lives in Brooklyn, NY, with Charlotta Janssen, a painter.  He enjoys the traveling feast of location photography and is currently working on a portrait project for a book.  In his free time, he frequently walks over the Manhattan Bridge, studies at Brooklyn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on Myrtle Avenue, and likes to kick back with a really good Malbec.

And here are some FABULOUS files from the vaults- back when Shannon was modeling…

Shannon Greer Portrait Series

In May, we posted a story on Charlotta Janssen’s portraits of the Freedom Riders.  Shannon Greer, her fiancé, shot the video that was posted on the Oprah website – and the project left quite an impression on him.

 

He began by taking a simple portrait of a friend of his, Jason Salkey, who was in town visiting from London.  (Fun fact: Salkey is used to taking headshots.  He’s an actor who has appeared in Memphis Belle, About a Boy, and played Rifleman Harris in the Sharpe series opposite Sean Bean.)  Shannon set up a gray seamless in Charlotta’s studio, which he says, “has beautiful north light.”  After taking Jason’s portrait, he called in Charlotta and took hers as well.  He left the seamless up, calling other friends over and taking their portraits.

 

At first, Shannon thought he’d come up with a novel idea: mug shots of all of his friends.  But then he realized that this idea had sprung from Charlotta’s portraits of the Freedom Riders.  She had been working on over a hundred paintings the previous year, all from the mug shots taken of the Freedom Riders at Hines County Jail in Jackson, Mississippi.

 

We’re so happy Charlotta’s work inspired this project, because we love the results!  One of Shannon’s friends, Walt Cessna, even asked to use his portrait for the cover of a book he had just written (pictured below).

Check out Shannon’s portraits here:

http://www.shannongreer.com/#/PORTFOLIO/Portraits/1/

 

Here’s our original post on Charlotta’s portraits:

http://www.alyssapizer.com/blog/inspirations/236/

 

THREADS OF A STORY w/ Shannon and Charlotta

OPENING JUNE 18, 2011 AT 2 PM: THREADS OF A STORY, NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY

PLEASE JOIN ME THIS SATURDAY IN NASHVILLE AT 2 PM FOR A VERY SPECIAL EVENT. IT’S 82 IMAGES STRONG AND TOOK ME THE MOST PART OF THIS AND LAST YEAR TO PAINT, RUST AND COLLAGE. WHAT ELSE CAN YOU DO WHEN YOU COME ACROSS SUCH A GREAT SUBJECT MATTER AND SUCH A GREAT VENUE. FREEDOM RIDERS, A BRIGHT LIGHT IN A BLEAK HISTORY, WELL WORTH PAINTING AND CELEBRATING ABOUT. THIS WORK WILL BE ON DISPLAY THROUGH OCTOBER 9 2011.

Threads of A Story: June 18. 2:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Location: Special Collections Center and Courtyard Gallery

NASHVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY, NASHVILLE TN

Artist Charlotta Janssen will be at the library to talk about her powerful portraits.

Film clips about the Freedom Riders will begin at 2:00, followed by the artist’s reflections on the paintings.

Sponsors: Nashville Public Library Foundation, Friends of Nashville Public

Library

THREADS OF A STORYHERE ARE A FEW PRESS LINKS TO THE SHOW:

http://ecosalon.com/the-freedom-riders-traverse-time/

http://www.library.nashville.org/artgallery/art_home.asp

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Artist-Pays-Tribute-to-Freedom-Riders-Video

PLEASE EMAIL ME IF YOU HAVE FREEDOM RIDERS TORIES TO SHARE, ARE INTERESTED IN PRINTS OR ORIGINALS.

Charlotta Janssen
Most Serious Painter of The so so Abstract, It’s Concrete
www.charlottajanssen.com
Check out Shannon Greer’s video on the featured artist Charlotta Janssen:

 

 

Shannon Greer Takes Chalk to a New Level with Isabel Spahr

If you haven’t seen Shannon Greer’s chalk images on our website yet, go check them out now!  They’re too cute to miss.  So cute, in fact, that we decided to make a cross-country phone call to this creative photographer in his New York studio to find out more about these photos.

 

It turns out that this whimsical idea was a project Shannon did just to spruce up his portfolio.  I don’t know about you, but I want to see more!  Luckily, it sounds like Shannon does, too.

 

AP: How did you come up with this idea?  Did something specific inspire it?

 

SG: I’d seen something.  Something like a chalkboard at a restaurant.  Then I looked up chalk drawings online and found a few more things for inspiration.

 

AP: Who did the drawings?

 

SG: Aimee Cavenecia was the artist for the drawings.  I just put an ad on Craigslist and Aimee responded.  She had good experience and lived right in neighborhood, so she was familiar with the area where we’d be working.  We met for the first time the morning of the shoot, so it could have gone horribly, but everything worked out really well.

 

AP: What was the process for creating the images?

 

SG: I had to borrow the flats for the shoot and paint them myself.  The drawings are minimal because it took time to draw each set, and it keeps it childlike, which I liked.  It was a fun day.  The most crucial part was that Aimee worked out.  It all hinged on her.

 

AP: Is this for a particular client or is it just an idea for future use?

 

SG: Just an idea.  You always wants us to build our books and I needed more studio work in my portfolio.

 

AP: Do you have a favorite chalk image?

 

SG: The smoking one.

 

AP: That was my favorite, too!

 

SG: A lot of people have responded to that.  The clutch was added at the end.  The image was top heavy before, but the clutch really balanced it.  I was thinking of Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s.  The little animals were fun to have on set, too.

 

AP: Hmm…the birds were fake, right?

 

SG: Yes.

 

AP:  Okay, but the dog’s real.  How did the dog end up there?

 

SG: That’s my assistant’s dog.  She just ends up in a lot of shoots.

 

AP: I’ve seen some of your other work and would say you tend to add an element of humor to your photos.  Is that something you consciously try to do?

 

SG: Yeah.  That makes it enjoyable for me.  Work should be fun.  Something I look forward to.  I try to have fun on set, so a lot of what you see is natural.

 

AP: Does the humor get amped up or taken out depending on the client?

 

SG: Sometimes shoots don’t call for humor, so I pull back for the job or genre.

 

AP: Do you have a favorite genre to work in?

 

SG: l love lifestyle and I’ve been doing a lot of portraits lately.  Travel photography used to be more fun when you could bring an assistant, but now they’ve cut budgets so much you have to go alone.  So you have dinner by yourself with honeymooners all around.  It’s very lonely.  An assistant makes it fun.  Someone to help you carry your bags or just bounce ideas off of.

 

AP: What photo shoots do you have coming up?  Anything more with these chalk images?

 

SG: I have an exterior shoot in Savannah, but that’s not related to these.  I definitely want to do more with this project, though, and would love to work with everyone again.

 

Find out more about Shannon here:

http://www.shannongreer.com/

 

Find out more about Aimee here:

http://aimeelovesme.wordpress.com/

Here are some fun shots from behind the scenes 🙂

 

Greer’s Boxing Photo Shoot

Devon Cormack helped Hillary Swank prepare for her role in Million Dollar Baby.  Now, he is training a real-life female boxing champ, Heather Hardy.  Photographer Shannon Greer recently captured the two in action.

 

Don’t be fooled by Hardy’s cute rainbow socks and pigtails.  At twenty-nine, she is the regional boxing champion in New York and is competing in Nationals next month in Colorado.

 

In addition to training, Cormack himself has had roles and stunt parts in a few films, is a certified Pilates instructor, is a sixth degree black belt in karate, has a total of twelve kickboxing titles including three world title belts, just to name a few things on the list.  Definitely a resume that packs a punch!  Where can I sign up for classes?

(FYI: Cormack teaches at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, NY.)

 

 

Shannon Greer: Charlotta Janssen Paints Freedom Riders

May 4, 2011 marked the 50th Anniversary of the Freedom Riders, a group of protestors who rode a bus across the country to
protest segregation. Shannon Greer directed this video that captures artist Charlotta Janssen’s passionate response to this
event.

Janssen’s work focuses on the Freedom Riders’ mug shots as a sort of celebration of their story. Instead of hiding the mug
shots away in shame, she wants to commemorate these incredible individuals, spending a lot of time to get each portrait
just right. In this video, Greer returns the favor by capturing Janssen’s unique character, highlighting her passion for the
subject as well as her artistic technique.

Janssen’s portraits will be open for view on June 18th, 2011 at the Downtown Public Library in Nashville, TN, where the

Freedom Rides originated.

http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/Artist-Pays-Tribute-to-Freedom-Riders-Video

Shannon Greer: Charlotta Janssen Paints Freedom Riders

Shannon Greer: Charlotta Janssen Paints Freedom Riders from Alyssa Pizer Management on Vimeo.