Casey Catelli Photo Blog

2012-02-20T17:47:00.007-05:00

LARA JADE SHOOT

Last month, I had the pleasure of assisting and shooting behind the scenes photos for Lara Jade's Cityist.com shoot, '31 Flavors' at Le Image Studio in Brooklyn. It was such a fun day with a great group of down-to-earth, talented people. Check out the shoot on Cityist here, and see more of everyone's work here:

-Photographer: Lara Jade

-Hair: Nelson Vercher

-Stylist: Erin O'Keefe

-Makeup: Deborah Altizio

-Model: Adrianna Bachlich

2012-01-02T23:05:00.008-05:00

VALENCIA FAREWELL SHOW | 12.28.12

It still feels like this couldn't have been the last Valencia show. Some of my favorite memories from the past 7+ years have been going to their shows. Whether it was at Sacred Grounds back in the day, home shows in Philly and the surrounding suburbs, or down in North Carolina through college, it was always great to reconnect with everybody. Going to this show and hearing these songs for (potentially) the last time was incredibly bittersweet and definitely felt like the end of an era for all of us. Best of luck to all the guys in the future. Looking forward to the next chapter. xx

2011-12-18T23:00:00.002-05:00

Model: Valeriya Romashchenko
Makeup: Dana Rae
Styling: Dana Rae
Thank you to Jhendi Castillo of Re:Quest Model Management :)

2011-12-06T16:25:00.008-05:00

Model: Helene Traasavik

Makeup: Grace Read-Carter
Styling: Dana Rae
Thank you to Jhendi Castillo of Re:Quest Model Management :)

2011-10-31T09:42:00.003-04:00

MELISSA + JOE

2011-10-06T19:48:00.010-04:00

INSTAGRAM-INSPIRED WHEATPASTE COLLABORATION EXTRAVAGANZA!

I always saw street art as intimidating territory. Everyone seems to have a name attached to their work, and being that I'm a photographer and not a graffiti artist, illustrator, or graphic designer, I never really thought there would be a place for my photography on the street. But when Mike Smith (Nom Now) told me about Linnea Vegh and Dietrich Meyer's Wheatpaste Your Heart Out project, I definitely saw an opportunity. Linnea and Dietrich put 30 blank panels up all over Philadelphia and invited anyone to have at it. That sounded pretty approachable to me.

I decided that whichever photos went up should at least have some kind of common theme that the people viewing them could relate to. Anyone who knows Mike and I, knows that we are Instagram addicts. Instagram is an iPhone app that's all about sharing your experience with people. I realized that between the two of us, we had plenty of Instagram photos from the past year of exploring Philly, (including a few from his awesome City Hall 365 project.) So, we put our Philly photos together and made it happen.

As we laid out all of the photos, we saw the Philly art community that we know and love come together. Artists like Nosego, Nom Now (hehe), Jeffrey Stockbridge, Aaron Draplin and Scott Albrecht are in there. As well as some of our favorite gallery spaces like TrickGo, Masthead, Part Time, and Space 1026. Classic Philly monuments have their place in there, too. Mosaics, murals, City Hall, and the Art Muesum. FDR, Love Park, Boat House Row, Logan Square, and The Divine Lorraine.

Check out Mike's post of the project on his blog.

2011-07-12T13:32:00.008-04:00

JULIET MARIE BOYER | 6.27.11

This past weekend, Aunt Toni and I finally had a chance to visit Baltimore to see our tiny niece, Juliet for the first time since she was born. My sister Janine is a champ...enduring close to 40 hours of labor to bring this little nugget into the world. Juliet has essentially been an angel baby thus far, sleeping 5-7 hours a night (!!!) and mostly crying only when she wants to eat. (I hope this continues to be the case...haha) Seeing the joy on my sister's face while I watched her with Juliet for the first time is something I'll definitely never forget. Being that 'Neen' is 8 and 11 years older than Toni and I respectively, she has always been like our other Mom: helping when she could and giving the love and support that only a big sister can. So, to finally see her with her own little baby and know that she's going to be an incredible Mama is such an amazing feeling. That may sound cheeeeesey, but with Janine, it's 100% true. Its only been a couple of weeks, but I can already tell that being an aunt is going to be incredibly fun :)

all photos © Casey Catelli

2011-07-06T11:00:00.007-04:00

DEREK + KATRINA

Back in the spring, I got a message from my hilarious/amazing friend Jenna, who lives in San Diego. She mentioned that she had a couple friends from CA going home to the east coast who would love to have engagement photos taken. She also mentioned that she thought we'd all get along splendidly. And right she was.

Mike and I headed up to NYC bright and early and met up with Derek and Katrina in Brooklyn, and walked all over the place from there. Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, and strolling around Manhattan. Derek and Katrina are an incredibly sweet, easy going couple so that made spending the afternoon with them an absolute pleasure.

Special thanks to JDubs for getting us all together, and as always, special thanks to Michael for helping me with the shoot throughout the day. Peep these beautiful pastes that he managed to squeeze in at the end of our long afternoon. Sneaky, sneaky.

all photos © Casey Catelli

2011-06-22T17:40:00.006-04:00

MS. DANA RAE

I did this shoot a few months back with the talented Dana Rae. Dana did the makeup and styling for this shoot, as well as the one with my sister during the same weekend. How lucky am I to be surrounded by such lovely ladies??

We started with an array of vintage clothes and accessories and narrowed it down to these two looks. I thought she had kind of a Joan (from Mad Men) vibe in the red dress, and loved how Dana's dogs Kiwi and Nugget added some quirk to the photos in the pink dress. The first two photos were lit with just one strobe + softbox and the second two were lit with just my Canon 430ex ii speedlite.

Special thanks to Robert of Hair Solutions for the wigs :)

all photos © Casey Catelli

2011-05-02T12:18:00.004-04:00

TRICKERY SHOW

This past Friday was the opening of the Trickery Show at Paradigm (2020 South St. Philly!) The first photo is a new one I shot month or so ago with the lovely Dana Rae and the second was a part of my thesis at Elon. The theme, trickery, was left open to our imagination and this is what I came up with. One of my favorite parts about creating images like these is going from picturing something completely strange in your head and then somehow, after lots of planning, making it happen in real life. I'm really looking forward to continuing with images like these, especially after I finally get some strobes of my own in a few weeks (woo!!!) Big thanks to Sarah McCorriston and Jason Chen for putting this show together and to Vic and Dave for leaving Uno at home to come see me! :)

all photos © Casey Catelli

2011-03-29T15:07:00.003-04:00

THE RETURN OF TOONIES

On Sunday, I shot some photos of my sister Toni Nicole. For anyone who hasn't known me since I picked up a camera...Toni has been my #1 muse. But, with her away in Barcelona in the fall, and finishing up school in Delaware this spring, we haven't really had a chance to do a shoot until now. Toni has always been fun to shoot because she's usually up for anything, and I've always loved how her smile really shows her energy and spirit. Makeup and styling was done by the talented Ms. Dana Rae. I trust this girl 100%. Not only is she great with makeup and putting things together, but she has a creative mind and is always one step ahead, collaborating and coming up with new ideas. And after the busy weekend I had, it was very much appreciated. Thank you to both ladies, my dream team :)

2011-03-23T10:34:00.007-04:00

RECOVER SHOW @ TRICK GO GALLERY

Saturday was Philly gallery Trick Go's ReCover show. The crazy kids over there had the idea to give 50+ old album covers to 50+ artists (first come first serve) and just let us have at it. It was really fun to see how many different directions this project went. They posted all of the albums on flickr first, which gave us all a chance to see what the covers looked like before we got to them.

I ended up using the back cover because I liked the text and after staring at the front cover for long enough, I just kept drawing a blank. So, this is what I ended up with. The table of contents page, (photocopied) image, and layered paper all came from an old issue of Interview Magazine that I tore up. The map I found stuffed in a drawer, and the drawing was something I did well over a year ago while coloring with a kid a babysat for and apparently kept because I found it in the mountain of papers on my desk (#packrat). Behind the girl's face I placed a mirror from an old makeup compact, and the rest is just paint, sharpie, and glue.

I really enjoyed doing this because it was completely for fun. I've always loved doing collage and it had been way too long since I'd put down the camera and just picked up some scissors.

When I first arrived at the show, Maxine told me that it had sold to one of the curators for Contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is nnnneat. Bonus!

Big thanks to Matt, Maxine, and Gab for getting this show together.

Maxine

2011-03-21T15:54:00.007-04:00

MAX + LINDSAY

A few weeks ago I went up to New York to take some engagement photos for my longtime homie Max and his lovely fiancé, Lindsay. Max and I went to high school together and he is probably one of the funniest people I have ever known. So, spending the day with him, Linds, and Mike strolling around the city (and running into more buddies?!) in absolutely perfect weather was a Sunday well spent. Here are a few of my favorites:

2011-03-10T15:12:00.016-05:00

CATELLI RESTAURANT

Recently, I had the pleasure of taking some photos of the Restaurant Week specials for Catelli Restaurant. As you can see, Chef Lou Imbesi has really outdone himself. And I mean....*cough shamelessfamilyplug cough* Catelli is honestly one of my favorite Italian restaurants. (No, really.) And it's one of Zagat's top three restaurants for Northern Italian cuisine in the Philadelphia region. Catelli is located in Voorhees, NJ. For those of you who aren't necessarily close to South Jersey...it's well worth the trip. ;-) Restaurant Week is from March 18-26th.