MATT TIMMONS BLOG

This Sunday from 1-5 pm at Twin Peaks restaurant there will be a charity fund raiser bikini bike/car wash to benefit one of the charities that I support, Watermelon Mountain Ranch. The girls are coming out in full-force to wash your car or bike to raise donations to help the ranch obtain much needed supplies, food, medicine and  shelter upgrades for the animals in need of homes.  Why not come down , get your dirty car cleaned up and maybe even find a new friend to bring home- I’m talking of course about a cat or dog that would love to have you as their friend!  There’s also a charity raffle currently going on for a $100 gift certificate to Twin Peaks for $1- and all proceeds are going to WMR- ask your server for one!  Come out this Sunday and show the animals you care!

August 2nd, 2010

For those of you who attended last week’s Project New Day runway show, you know it was a great event.  Not only for the styles and production put into it, but for the cause as well.  Participating in a fund raising event for a well-deserved charity  is always high on my list of things to do.  I shot the “official” runway photos for the event, and am making the high-resolution images available to the models and their families for $25- and 100% of it is going to the New Day Youth and Family Services.  Check out the online gallery of the runway shots here: www.mtmstudios.com/pnd. If you would like to purchase the digital download of the file, which will be suitable for printing up to poster size, than email me the file name located below the picture (such as PND-253, etc.).    I will get back to you and we can go from there.  A couple of notes:

• There is a little white rectangle above the thumbnail images- click on that and you get a larger view of the photo, plus there are some forward/backward buttons too.
• The photos are $25 per full-resolution file- which means you can make as many prints as you want, at nearly any size.  100% of all sales are going to the New Day Youth & Family Services house.  I’ll make them a check at the end of the month so I don’t have to write a check every time someone buys a picture.  So you are directly helping them by buying a photo.
• All photos have been proofed for quality (took 3 days), some shots are a little soft on focus, but still good.  Anything that was less than usable was deleted.
• The runway shots are first, there are several hundred- I got everybody.  After those there are some backstage shots, hair/makeup behind-the scenes, and just general shots of the party.   It was a great event and everyone was looking fabulous!  It was fun to shoot it!  Oh- and sorry about the big, obnoxious watermark on them, you know how it is.

If you saw me running around with my camera taking pictures of you and friends, then I probably have shots of that too.  Check the end of the gallery for those.   Here’s a shot of me and my crew taken by Thatcher Dorn, who is also offering photos from the event taken front of the event signage and also donating 100% of the sales to the New Day Youth & Family Services.  Way to go Thatcher!  You can see those images by clicking here.  I also want to say a big THANK YOU to my assistants Bryan and Sarah for taking some of the extra photos and helping out that day.  You guys rock non-stop!  Had a blast!  More to come soon!

June 29th 2010

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Mike Ruiz, celebrity fashion photographer and one of my personal most favorite fashion photographers over the last few years. Mike has shot covers, editorial spreads, celebrity portraits and commercial ads for the largest magazines and companies in the world. You might have seen him on several cycles of Americas Next Top Model as photographer and judge. He was in town for the 2010 Pride events being held here a couple of weeks ago, and was chosen as the Grand Marshal for the event. I attended a fund raiser for New Mexico AIDS Services one evening in which Mike was offering to shoot photos of those who made donations to help find research for victims of AIDS as well as support for those living with the disease. I chatted with Mike a bit, showed him some of my work and just hung out and enjoyed the evening. He was a very friendly guy, and looks more like a model than a photographer. I made a donation and thought it would be more fun for me to shoot Mike instead of having my photo taken by him. He was up for it, gave me his camera and jumped on set. I snapped a few looks and a few days later received a couple of files from him large enough for high-quality print. I also saw that he used one of my shots for his Facebook profile picture- which really made my day! Here’s the shot he used, and I just want to say thanks Mike for the opportunity!  It was good fun and for a great cause.

June 25th 2010

Check out the July issue of Albuquerque the Magazine and you’ll find my first double truck ad for the Project Hew Day fashion show on July 30th. I was proud to shoot this ad for such a great charitable cause. All the proceeds from the show go to help A New Day Youth & Family Services, so check it out at projectnewday.org and come to the show!

May 27th 2010

I was commissioned and flown to Italy this month to shoot some commercial work for Podere Gli Scassi, an organic olive farm in Northern Tuscany.  The owner, Lars, has been a long time friend of mine since back when we were in flight school getting our pilot’s licenses (see it’s always who ya know, right?).   The business needed new advertising photos for their website and brochures that go all over Europe.  They have won awards for the quality and natural growing process of their oil, and the taste is above anything you’ve ever tasted.  I encourage anyone to buy a bottle of their award-winning, healthy oil, and use it on pasta, pizza, salads, anything where pure extra-virgin olive oil is good.

I also shot some advertising work for rental properties in the Tuscany area.  There are these absolutely beautiful places that anyone can rent for a week or however long you like, and they are situated in some of the most gorgeous countryside you’ve ever seen (more on how you can visit these places in a future post).  Although being in Italy is a vacation in itself, I didn’t find myself lounging around.  On any average day, I was up before sunrise, and the latest I ever slept was 7 am.  The best times to shoot are in the morning and evening, so I planned my days around best shoot times had to be ready when it was time to go.  Some areas could only be shot during certain times of day, because of the hillsides and sun angles, I had to be there when I could get the best light.  Then, the weather was also a factor.  It was beautiful most days, but sometimes we would get set up to shoot a location, and a huge cloud would come over and last for a couple of hours.  By the time it let the sun back through, the scene was in shadow.  So we try again tomorrow.

The time there was so educational, and I felt more familiar since it was my second trip to Italy.  My travels took me from Tuscany to Rome and Milan, and back to Tuscany.  The people are just so helpful and friendly, and of course the food is some of the best anywhere.  I would encourage anyone going there to at least learn some basic Italian, because they respect that you will try and most of them are happy to help you in English once you’ve reached the limits of what you know in Italian.

I also shot model comp cards for agencies and models in Rome and Milan, and will post up more about that in my next couple of posts.  I tried for the most part to avoid taking tourist photos, and therefore shot things that represented where I was and the stories of the real lives of the people who live there.  There are some tourist photos mixed in, just to document the location.