Congratulations to Shannon Cooper, Miss Hampton University 2008-2009.  She was crowned on October 11, 2008 and will serve as an ambassador for the University for the current academic year.  The day after the pageant, we held a portrait session in Hampton to capture some promotional images.  The 2009 “Black College Queens” issue of Ebony Magazine will feature a photo from this session.  Good luck to Shannon, as she will compete for the title of Miss Virginia in the Spring 2009 pageant.

Earlier this year, I photographed gospel artist Naomi K. Thomas for her debut CD project.  Her live CD is now available, and features some images from the session.  Portraits by Benson Blake Photography are also used throughout her new website www.naomikthomas.com. Naomi’s CD “Best Offering” is available online at CD Baby and iTunes.

www.naomikthomas.com

On last week, I held a portrait session on location with gospel artist and pastor Dr. Peggy Britt. For this session, I setup at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Methodist Church in Portsmouth VA to create some promotional images for her.  We started with a few in the sanctuary to give a church-like feel, then ended with some headshots to show more personality.

I recently held a studio portrait session for Amber, a music major at Hampton University. We created lots of great images to be used for her upcoming vocal competition. Hopefully we can narrow them down to just one for the program.  Here are a couple of my favorites.

On Wednesday, I held a studio portrait session for a few members of the Miss Southeastern Virginia Pageant committee. I thought it was neat how they just happened to show up wearing red, white & blue. Their solid-colored clothing worked great for these promotional images. Here are a few from our studio session.

I recently had the opportunity to photograph Bishop Ted Thomas Sr., pastor of New Community Temple COGIC. This session included studio portraits and images created on location at his church in Portsmouth VA. Here’s a sample of images from that afternoon.

I recently had the honor of photographing Ciara in the studio. She is a contestant in this year’s Miss Virginia Pageant, and currently holds the title of Miss Southeastern Virginia. The goal of this session was to have a couple of strong images to use for the pageant’s publicity. Well… we got more than a couple. Thanks to Ciara’s pageant director, makeup artist and other supporters for helping to make this a success. Here are some of my favorites…

Ciara

Makeup artist, Natalie

I was recently asked to photograph gospel artist Naomi Thomas for her upcoming CD release. We were able to capture lots of different looks for her CD packaging and promotional materials. Part of her session took place at our studio, and the rest on location at New Community Temple COGIC in Portsmouth VA. Here are a few of my favorites.