3 0 I N T H E I R T H I R T I E S

This shoot was by far the most involved dbusiness shoot I’ve ever done. For our “30 in their Thirties” shoot this year, I did a vintage yearbook theme - and actually got (most) of the 30 people to dress up in character and play along… everyone had so much fun. On top of that, I got to hang out with an adorable bulldog named Duncan (he was the 30’s school mascot), and my best friend Amy was nominated as one of the 30 people to be featured in the story (for her work on Detroit Soup). We shot over three (extremely hot) days in July at Christo Rey High School in southwest Detroit - it had that perfect vintage high school look.

My original idea was to shoot the cover as a horizontal, so we could do a gatefold cover (which folds out) - and fit all 30 people on there. Unfortunately that fell through at the last minute, so we had to go with half of the 30’s… plus a bulldog:



Photographs by Joe Vaughn

Styling by Stephanie Potts (I’m still impressed that she managed to talk one lady into wearing a very short vintage cheerleading jumper for the entire shoot. Not only that, but she also convinced a business man to try on the shortest basketball shorts I’ve ever seen… which he didn’t end up wearing for the shoot, but at least she tried!)

Hand painted banner and type designed by Neil Tasker

The full layout can be found here.

The day before the shoot I went to the location to prep, and to do some chalkboard lettering. My lovely friend Erin has some major hand-drawn-type skills, and helped me with the lettering:



Duncan is hanging out between shots:



I screenprinted and sewed this pennant, for the opener:








Thanks to my friend Ted for bringing Duncan the bulldog to the shoot, and for being nice enough to offer himself up to wear that ridiculous dog costume in 100 degree weather:



The guy that’s hanging was originally supposed to be sitting in the upper bleachers. He decided it would be fun to swing from the upper level while we were doing a test shot, which totally scared me… I asked him if he could do it again (without falling) for the actual shot and he did! It’s the unexpected things like this that make me love my job:







Amy is reliving her high school dance team days:



I will leave you with a shot of the giant dog mask, which was a hit around the office: