The TV Cop...

In December, I shot this ad campaign for the 100 Club of Chicago, which is a non profit org whose mission is to provide for the families of Police and Firefighters that lose their lives in the line of duty. When an officer dies, they come in, write a big check right off the bat, and help take care of the family and the kids of the fallen officer. The concept of the campaign was to photograph actors from Chicago, who play cops on TV. The copy was very simple tag lines like "Real first responders have more to worry about than low ratings", and "real first responders dont get body doubles". It was cool to do a very well written, simple portrait campaign like this. And very cool that it ran in black and white. It wasnt supposed to run black and white, but on set between actors, i was editing and messing with my selects and converting to black and white as i felt thats what would make them graphic and strong. The creative director, Joe Stuart from Downtown Partners in chicago, was on set and loved it so they went that direction with the whole campaign. The actors i got to shoot were Gary Sinise, Dennis Franz, Joe Montegna, and Dennis Farina. These guys are all friends in real life, and the best part was listening in to them all catching up and gossiping as they dont all get together like this very often. It was like the rat pack, very quick witted, giving each other a hard time, and the language these guys were using made even me blush. Farina in particular was one funny dude, giving everybody a hard time and having a good laugh all day. These will be running in local chicago mags and on bus shelters this year, so hoping to get there soon and see them on the bus stops...