The Andy Aupperlee Explosion 5000

Welcome to the heart of Movember. This is the time of year when mustaches become thick. It’s the few weeks when women can’t help but swoon for their favorite Tom Selleck or Albert Einstein. It’s an opportunity to revel in double-takes and constantly be the butt of jokes around the office. It’s MO season. To document this phenomenon, some friends and I staged the second annual MOPLOSION photo shoot to raise awareness for the Movember MOvement. What is Movember? It is the eleventh month of the year (formerly known as November) where men grow mustaches (“mo” in Australian parlance). Mo-bros form teams and put their best mustache forward to campaign for donations in support of testicular cancer and prostate cancer awareness & research. If you’re like me and think this is an awesome idea, please consider making a donation.

Earlier this month, we announced details for MOPLOSION 2010 right here on the Andy Aupperlee Explosion 5000. If you haven’t seen the video, cruise over to the archives and check it out. The 2009 Movember shoot was a small affair and a lot of fun, so for 2010 I decided to open it up to all of Seattle. On Sunday, Movember 21 we gathered at Buckleys in Belltown and threw down one hell of a photo shoot. I was stoked to have several dozen mo-bros and mo-sistas jump in front of the lens.
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All they wanted was a simple group photo. Desiree, a good friend and stylist extraordinaire, sent me a message on Facebook asking if I would take a shot of the folks that work at her place of business, Steven Cole Salon (an upscale salon in Seattle’s hip Greenwood neighborhood). This was April of 2009. I immediately responded saying I’d love to do the shoot, but things were slow to take off. Several months passed and I discovered the likes of David Hobby (the Strobist), Zack Arias and I even met Chase Jarvis. The influence of these photographers lead me to radically change my approach to lighting and portrait photography. By the time we scheduled a shoot for Steven Cole Salon in September of 2009, I was fully immersed in off camera flash, watt seconds and soft boxes. The simple group photo was now going to be the culmination of hours of blog reading—it was, in no short order, going to be an Andy Aupperlee Explosion 5000 Production.
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Seattle based designer and entrepreneur Stephanie de Villa contacted me earlier this year about doing some photography for her baby onesie line, baby deVILLE. After talking about some creative ideas and quickly Googling “onesie,” I put the full resources of Explosion 5000 Photo, LLC into the project. Earlier this month Stephanie launched the baby deVILLE website, featuring photography by yours truly.
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