I had someone post on my blog today a link to the radio interview I did on creativity for the religious show, LDS Radio. I thought I’d post it here so it’d be easy to find.
The interview was of me and two other people, all creative in our trades, asking about our thoughts and procedures in creativity. Here’s a direct link to the show, here.
It begins with the quote from President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Second Counselor in the First Presidency of the LDS Church:
“The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. We each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exhist before. The more you trust and rely up the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create.”
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s my sister’s wedding is in the morning and I thought I’d put up some of the images I’ve been working on for her display tomorrow. These are from her engagements and bridals.
BryCox - Engagement #1
We did some in the studio, and some in the leaves here at my outdoor garden studio…
BryCox - Engagement #2
…and finished at the State Capital building where they got engaged.
BryCox - Engagement #3BryCox - Engagement #4
And then for her bridals, these are some of her favorites. These were at the studio…
I’m very excited for my sister’s wedding tomorrow. As far as the weather, it should be warmer than it’s been lately (the high is supposed to be 32º F), and there’s a strong possibility of snow too. I hope it does snow because that will mean some very fun outdoor portraits at the temple after the wedding. I’ll put some images of her wedding soon.
I also need to post some of the wedding album designs that I finished for clients for Christmas. I was very excited about them and feel they were some of the best albums I’ve ever created. They were so fantastic!! Now that the holidays are over and I’m back to a regular schedule again, I’ll get the up online.
Every year at this time, I give all my clients a Christmas CD with their orders, and this years album is absolutely fantastic! I am excited for you all to get a copy. I have not only finished the design work, but have the finished products back in my hands and love how they look and sound.
This is Wasatch Christmas, a Christmas CD that I design every year for one of my best friends, James Conlee, the producer of the project. In fact it is a joint project of friends in many ways because the cover painting is by a friend of ours, James Christensen, a famous painter with Greenwich Workshops, and some of the tracks are by our other good friend, Ryan Shupe (Ryan Shupe and the RubberBand), as well as some tracks by James Conlee himself.
Here is how the album looks. The name of the cover painting is, “Angels of My Village.”
BryCox – Wasatch Christmas 2009
Now there are other recording artists on the album, but my favorite tracks are by James and Ryan.
The absolute first thing I would do when you get this CD is to play track #7, Pie Jesu, recorded by James Conlee with the Prague orchestra. It is a duet with James and an incredible boy soprano, and I believe that this is the last recording of this boy before his voice changed. This track is so moving that it may bring tears to your eyes, and I am not exaggerating. I find it to be emotional every time I hear it. It is such an incredible recording and is so well handled, that it shows just how talented James Conlee is, not only as an incredible singer, but also with his producing abilities, bringing together so many talented people for one wonderful and moving piece. For that reason it is symbolic really of the entire CD project.
If you don’t know James, he used to sing on Broadway, and is responsible for the yearly Wasatch Christmas concert series in Utah county. This is now about the 10th album that I’ve designed for him including past Wasatch Christmas albums and his Sunday album — each one is so wonderful. He puts his whole heart and soul into these projects and I’m very proud to be associated with him and to call him my friend.
So for all my holiday clients that are ordering this time of year, whether you get a large collection of wall portraits or even just reorder one small print, I am giving away a FREE Wasatch Christmas CD! The cover painting is phenomenal, the music is phenomenal, and the whole production is worth owning!
This weekend was both the state and regional (multi-state) convention for professional photographers. Every year, professional photographers are allowed to enter 4 prints for critiquing and possible awards, and the judging is done by out-of-state affiliated judges from the Professional Photographers of America.
I received NINE new image awards, including what is considered ‘the Best of the Best,’ the ASP State Elite Award! To even be eligible, a photographer must first me be a Master photographer, which is why it is called the best of the best – the highest scoring image by a Master photographer.
I also won TWOKodak Gallery Awards, one of the most coveted awards available.
Here are the images and the rundown of awards for each image.
ASP State Elite Award
Kodak Gallery Award (Wedding)
1st Place Multi-State Regional (Master Wedding)
1st Place State (Master Wedding)
3rd Place State (Master Pictorial)
2nd Place State (Master Illustrative)
Kodak Gallery Award (Portrait)
3rd Place State (Master Portrait)
Also, as one of the top scoring photographers, I won the ‘Court of Honor‘ award – an award that goes to the top 10 photographers.
Now these images will go on to the national level where I expect them to win even more awards. I will now also be awarded ‘Photographer of the Year’ at nationals, but I’ll have to wait until then to receive that. 🙂
If you’re looking for some fantastic images of your family for Christmas from one of the state and region’s best Master Photographers, give me a call! I’d love to create something award winning for you!
Last week I was hired to photograph Kenny Loggins & Jim Messina. They were in town for an exclusive concert, and I was there to artistically document the concert and then create some studio portraits backstage.
Here’s one of the studio portraits of the two of them together…
BryCox – Kenny Loggins & Jim Messina
And here’s a few from the concert itself. One of Kenny Loggins…
BryCox – Kenny Loggins
and one of Jim Messina.
BryCox – Jim Messina
It was a fantastic show and I was proud to be apart of it. It was all apart of a great fundraiser to raise money for children needing dental work provided by the Caring Foundation for Children.
I do a lot of business portraits for people, but it was really fun to photograph my uncle, Bob Cox. He has reinstated his real estate license (something he used to do many years ago) and needed some new business portraits.
A lot of people tell us that we look alike, which I always like to hear. There have even been times when I’ve been stopped on the street and asked if I’m Bob Cox’s son.
Anyway, I really liked the suit and finished the image as a nice, classic business portrait.
BryCox – Bob Cox 1
With this finished image, I designed up and printed his business cards. Here is the finished card design. I opted for a more artsy look, bold and light colors on black rather than the stuffy and traditional look of black type on white. I finished them as a glossy card 4/4, with an extra layer of coating for a nice tactile feel and some real punch.
BryCox – Bob Cox 2
I’m excited with how they look. If you are a business person and need a new portrait, give me a call.
It was a real honor for me to photograph a wedding for a very well-known photographer and PPA Master, Gary Weitzeil. Gary’s son Anthony, was getting married and I was their choice as the wedding artist.
Photographers, more than anybody, know just what to look for in another photographer, and they also know how important photography is as both an art piece as well as an heirloom. Needless to say, it was a real joy to be apart of Nikki and Anthony’s wedding. And this couple was very fun to work with and had a joy and excitement about them that was incredible.
BryCox-Weitzeil
Here is one of my favorite images from the wedding day. Their wedding was the only day that week that didn’t rain, but we still had the ominous clouds. I was going nuts because I absolutely love storms and turbulent air, especially as a background. I love the drama of a great stormy sky, especially on a distant establishing image like this. Their wedding was fantastic.
Yes, as some of you know, I was asked to go back and speak to the photographers in China again! My last visit a month or so ago was for speaking at an international convention, but this time it was a multi-city road show. Me and Louis Tonsmeire, Jr (next years PPA President) would speak to a group of photographers for an entire day, then we’d take a taxi to the airport, fly to the next city and arrive at out hotel around midnight, get up and speak all day to a new group of photographers, take a taxi to the airport, and so on from city to city.
It was a very rigorous but exciting schedule. One of my favorite photo shoots came in Beijing, where I had an absolutely stunning model named Surui. Normally when groups line up a model for me order for me to do a live demonstration, it tends to be a pretty normal person. I was very excited to have such a captivating girl as my model.
Bry Cox - China Surui 1
I had a very limited amount of time to photograph her, and didn’t have the best backgrounds to work with either, and had to really improvise with other areas of the room to create better backgrounds. I’m happy with how these turned out but would have loved to have had more time on this shoot. 😉
Bry Cox - China Surui 2
Because of the tight schedule, I didn’t get the chance to get out and photograph a lot for myself. But Louis and I did take one morning to go walking and photographing people for about a half hour after breakfast. I didn’t get a lot of what most people would consider as art prints, but I did get a lot of very interesting images because everything was so different than what we are used to here in America.
Keep in mind that we were in all of the biggest cities in China too, the smallest having 15 Million people and the largest having 36 Million people. In comparison, my entire state of Utah has only 2.7 Million people. So needless to say, these cities were very dense and very dirty.
Bry Cox - China 3
I really like this old man framed by the public street toilet. And this next image is very strange! I found it very interesting all of the things that were just laying on the streets and in such interesting ways too.
Bry Cox - China 4
And here is a little boy playing outside his house. I really is interesting to see such vast extremes so close to each other in China. In each city we stayed in absolutely top of the line hotels. But literally just across the street would be pure poverty like I’ve never seen before.
Bry Cox - China 5Bry Cox - China 6
This image to me really shows the contrast. I framed it so that the old and impoverished woman is in the strongest part of the photograph. Surrounding her on both sides are some young, beautiful mannequins and some fancy stores. She is actually sitting in front of her home, the little door between the two stores.
The constant extremes were everywhere.
Bry Cox - China 7
And here is a man working on the street, as most people do there. He was a cobbler, and would fix and resole shoes. You can see his sewing machine with a shoe hanging in it. The little parts of people on the edges of the image are people waiting for their shoes.
There’s a lot more to tell you about China, but I’ll finish it in the next post.
Tonight while I was dressed up, I did a new self-portrait of myself. Some of my contacts for speaking gigs have asked for an updated photo, and I can also use a new image of myself on the professional photography forums that I’m a contributer for.
I specifically did a photo of me smiling this time. On a couple occasions people have told me after meeting me, that they were suprised to see that I’m a happy guy. Somehow they thought that my serious self-portraits meant that I was a dark and brooding type of person. That’s so funny to me.
Yes I do smile a lot, but tend to photograph myself serious. So this time I made myself laugh for a real genuine smile, and this photo turned out to be my favorite.
As far as the blog goes, I’ve got a lot to tell you all, and will get some of the highlights up this week.
I recently did the cover photograph for Katherine Nelson’s new CD, called “Most Requested.” It is a beautiful album, released with Deseret Book under the Shadow Mountain Label and contains 10 of her most popular tracks from past albums.
BryCox – Katherine Nelson CD
Many of you will know Katherine as “Emma,” in the LDS movie “Joseph Smith, Prophet of the Restoration,” as well as the followup movie “Emma Smith: My Story.”
Here is the entire image from the design. This was created on my road, out in front of my studio, with the sun behind.
BryCox – Katherine
Katherine has a wonderful voice! She has sung on a lot of LDS albums, sometimes as the lead and sometimes as backup. I’m sure that if you do not at first recognize her name, that you would for sure recognize her fantastic voice as she has sung on many EFY CDs as well as for Kenneth Cope and other LDS artists.
It was fun for me too to see that she either wrote or co-wrote most of the songs on the album too. Congratulations on the new album, Katherine! I’m glad that you had me be a part of it.
I was interviewed recently on LDS Radio which is KSL’s HD 2 station, and is also an internet radio station found at radio.lds.org with podcasts and mp3 downloads. That interview just aired today at 1:oo pm. I got an email from someone that I was on the radio and turned it on to hear the last half of the show. It was really fun!
LDS Radio - On Air
I didn’t have a lot of information about the show, but just knew that the subject was ‘Creativity.’ This is a good subject for me because aside from working creatively as an artist, I’ve really had to analyze my creative approach over the years so that I could better teach creativity at the photographic workshops that I do all over the US and Canada (and now China). I was glad that it was a subject that I felt prepared for.
When I arrived, I was happy that I knew the host already, Nancy Hanson, a local musician. I’ve done design and portrait work for her over the years and have gotten to know her well from that as well as having mutual musician friends. Here’s one of my favorite images I did of her a while back.
BryCox - Nancy Hanson
Also being interviewed was Vaughn Armstrong, who recently created a new LDS trivia board game. I also know Vaughn personally because we were in the same singles ward a few years ago. There was one other person being interviewed whose name I don’t remember now. (I’m sorry!) She has a blog and podcast about playing the ukulele all over the world. The idea was to get us together and discuss and compare creative approaches in our different fields.
Me at LDS Radio (1)Me at LDS Radio (2)Me at LDS Radio (3)
Thanks again to LDS Radio and Tamilisa for inviting me over and having me on. It was a great experience and a real honor. I hope to find the MP3 and link over to it when it is available for everyone to listen to.
After I was done speaking, I took some time to create some art images of the people and places there. A few of us photographers chipped in and hired cars to take us to some remote places in China so that we could see some unique things.
I hope to do an art book of just Chinese art images similar to my Italian art book I did a few years ago. I will first need to sort and choose my favorites, as well as do some slight artwork on the images and adjust for contrast and proper cropping.
For right now though, here is an early preview of some of my favorite images, before post-production artwork. It was a fantastic journey and I’ll be excited to show these images after they are finished.
By the way, feel free to let me know some of your favorites!
BryCox – China Art Images 1BryCox – China Art Images 2BryCox – China Art Images 3BryCox – China Art Images 4BryCox – China Art Images 5BryCox – China Art Images 6BryCox – China Art Images 7BryCox – China Art Images 8BryCox – China Art Images 9
