WellKrafted
For the last few weeks I have been having a blast photographing artisans for Maggie Jones WellKrafted website
Beyond the obvious reason that I just love photography and working to create pleasing images, I like meeting new and interesting people.
This is one of the coolest thing about WellKrafted. Maggie had the great idea to create a website that would promote the wares created by artisans who were passionate about their products. In fact I would venture that product isn't an accurate word, it would be more truthful to say work of love, so I am going to replace the word product with work of love for this entire article. Yes work of love, that seems to be it. Maggie has talked about the wonderful artisans she and John Parenteau have met since they began this work and they all have one thing in common, they love what they do and it shows in the quality of the works of love they create.
If you are interested in finding about a bit about John check out his page on IMDB and see all the movies and television series he has worked on. Yep, Maggie has an Emmy winning talent right here working on this wonderful enterprise with her.
Okay just a tidbit, they were sweet on each other since grade school then finally got together later in life, it is a beautiful story that I will not spoil by attempting to tell. I am sure that they will get around to telling it sometime. :)
My first assignment for them was to shoot Mt. Hood Coffee Roasters. Rick the owner and guy who does it all is so passionate about what he does it is contagious. Heck I was in love with his coffee before even tasting it and tasting it was far from a let down, he is great at what he does.
Maggie's pension for finding interesting characters for her site was definitely running full tilt when she found Rick. He has the whole area of Rhododendron interested in what he does even when he is not working on his business. You see Rick spent many years in Army intelligence and while he insists that Mt. Hood Coffee Roasters is a more than full time business the roomers floating around that small mountain village still create a bit of wonder at Rick's quiet mountain life.
Rick has created a small alpine retreat with his shop, store, house and cottage. He has created a wonderful life out of his love for coffee and people. Rick truly is an artisan worthy of display on the WellKrafted Website.
It is hard to think of an artisan shoot that would compare to a coffee roaster living on a mountain but Maggie came up with one and I got to shoot a friend and his business as well.
Maggie, John, Darla and yours truly got to spend the day hanging with Jeff Desantis one of the owners of Seven Brides Brewing. Seven Brides was already a favorite of Darla's and mine we love their beer and the food they serve at the Tap Room.
Jeff's love of brewing becomes instantly apparent as he begins to talk about the whole process from brewing beer in his garage with the other owners to having a very well received work of love that is gaining fame across the country.
Earlier that morning Jake and I got to shoot the brewing of their latest batch of beer and I found that fascinating.
In the evening we began the work of love shooting in earnest. We shot the three varieties of beer that will be sold on the Well Crafted Website and a couple glamour shots for the Tap Room and of course Jeff himself.
You can always find Jeff hanging with the customers and talking beer and food when he is not off on a customer service trip across the country. He loves what he does.
The very cool thing for all of you out there in the world is that you can now get Seven Bride's world class beer sent right to your home and at the same great price that you would pay for it a the Brewery.
That is the genius of Maggie's idea, to work with artisans, just the ones she has personally tried their works of love and found them to be superior, and then sell them without a markup of their original prices and then ship them right to your door. Yep pure genius.
Oh and yes they are selling some of my framed prints on their site as well.
So far this has been just a wonderful experience meeting and working with creative people from various walks of life and for me personally it just fits into what I like doing most, well right up there with rafting and hanging with my family not necessarily in that order hahah.
Please check out the WellKrafted website and if you see something you like give it a try. Their Website and Facebook page links below.
https://www.facebook.com/WellKrafted http://www.wellkrafted.com/