Kibwe Brathwaite | Photographer

This clip from Veep shows a scenario that is way too familiar.
 

A few months ago I met an MUA via twitter, @Jaleesie.  A while after we teamed up to do a quick photo shoot because… well because there is nothing else to do when a guy with a camera meets a lady with a case of make-up.  You know what I’m saying!

Anyone who follows my tweets should realize already that I now work for a design and branding company named Abovegroup. Within Abovegroup there is aG.  What is aG?  Simply put, aG is a part of Abovegroup that facilitates low budget / high impact marketing. Like everything in Abovegroup and aG, it’s all about materializing fantastic ideas and having hella-fun doing it.

For yours truly, every Carnival Monday & Tuesday is met with a series of events that is spun out from a concoction of  spontaneous decisions made merely a few days (or hours) before.  I have seen such episodes of randomonium as leaving home for a roti at 5pm on Carnival Sunday and not  returning home until Ash Wednesday, or the episode that led to the alleged puncheon-induced nap I took in a Sutton Street pharmacy’s car park during J’Ouvert.  Some episodes are not as precarious as others but equally as enthralling. Carnival 2010 was less extreme yet still applied to the rule of randomonium.

So I got a call from designer Christophe Pierre of designbyspirit.com to shoot the album cover for artist Marvin Harrison aka Mention.  Christophe had a concept and mood he wanted to be emulated in the shoot, and threw at me a few items to make up a mood board.  Items making up the mood board included screen shots from the video “Dead & Gone” by T.I. featuring Justin Timberlake.  So you know what that meant… yup, time to go trespassing in the name of location scouting.

I am possibly one of the worst people in the world to maintain a blog. However, in my defense I must admit that academics has been a contributing factor, along with this tornado called life that I deal with on a daily.
Things have been relatively slow by choice due to the reasons stated above. however another contributing factor was I running into issues changing up some of my hardware. Firstly I switched out the ‘ole ye faithful XTi with the grip for a 40D with grip from Gary Jordan. It’s similar resolution, but it’s a much better system overall. Also, I finally copped some wireless triggers (Pocket Wizards Plus II) to break down some of the limitations inherent in Canon’s wireless system.
So, I’m good to go!

On the very same week the R3 shoot was scheduled, I was to render my services to another company that I had some difficulty with taught this novice a good lesson about retainers and down payment. The result of this was that I had 5 days to utilize a couple pieces of rental equipment; a 580EX flash and a 17-40mm L. Unable to generate a paying job to compensate the cost of the rental, I contacted my friend Mark Gellineau to see if he had any ideas… which he did.