Back in the day, the time when I had my music company, I was married to the ground-breaking ace tv commercial producer, Vera Samama. She had gotten her start at Ally/Gargano and had worked with many of the top shops and agency creatives. Consistently, she praised one standout individual. He was the most intelligent, most talented and certainly the classiest of all those she admired. His name: Ralph Ammirati. I was lucky enough to work with him once on a BMW commercial and everything she said was true.


Having the opportunity to photograph him for The One Club this year was a true honor. And it's all still true. He still even drives very hot cars! To find out more -- including which hot cars -- check out Yash Egami's interview with Ralph in ONE, The Magazine HERE.

Tags: The One Club, Ralph Ammirati, The One Club Hall of Fame, People In Advertising

One of the many perks about being a photographer is learning about other businesses and how they operate. More importantly, it's learning about companies that I might never have come across, like the hotel business, also known as the hospitality industry.

My latest photo incarnation was a campaign for Ken Leonardo of Commotion and Rich Warren, VP of Business Development of BuyEfficient (B.E.). Just released this campaign is a perfect example of becoming acquainted with extraordinary (but unfamiliar) companies.

My assignment was to travel around the country and photograph a series of hotel executives. This was part of a testimonial campaign for Buy Efficient, the hospitality industry's premier online purchasing solution.

BuyEfficient works behind the scenes for over 1,200 hotels as their premier purchasing partner - a partner that unites various suppliers into an all-in-one purchasing platform. With Buy Efficient, hotels can purchase all those little (but important) commodities that they must have in order to operate: linens, stationery, food, soap -- you name it. (Yes, all the stuff that us guests take for granted when we check-in, but which someone must constantly manage.)

However, beyond a single hotel, this purchasing task can be an enormous challenge to synchronize, as many hotel management companies know. Someone very familiar with this task is Russ Cox, CEO, of Rim Hospitality in Newport Beach, CA. As I found out during the photo-shoot, Mr. Cox oversees various hotel brands set far and wide across the country, in which BuyEfficient's platform helps alleviate his stress and consolidate the purchasing process.

B.E. is the first centralized, online purchasing platform in which hotels can order various supplies via a dashboard-style process. Through B.E.'s efficiency and online tools, this operational hurdle is manageable for executives like Mr. Cox.

The power of internet purchasing possibilities can marvel you everywhere you travel!

Actualizing a social network -- that's what attracted me to sNice Coffee Shop on 8th Avenue this morning. Noah Brier, co-founder of Percolate, was behind the get-together.

I first met Noah a few years back while photographing an EFFIES Award judging session, and then again at a " Big Business Breakfast" started by Benjamin Palmer of The Barbarian Group, where Noah was camped out at the time. LIKEMIND is another of Noah's co-iterations started awhile ago -- to get "online relationships offline" -- and he was instigating a re-boot. It had been somewhat withering on the vine even though it has an international set of followers. He explains it all on his interesting blog HERE.

Since so much of today's reality exists with us individually sitting in front of computer screens, it's good to get out and actually meet the people we're "talking" to; or maybe some of the people that those we're talking to are talking to. People who do things like online media publishing, or marketing 3D printers, or photographers . . .

At any rate, there were a considerable number of people there, especially given the early hour.

And the latte was VERY good.

Tags: Noah Brier, Percolate