Ronnie Heart is Blowing Up.

For months I've had a note in my phone that just read "Captain Morgan pose on a box of TNT." The time finally came to make that a reality. First I made a crude mockup in Photoshop. While I was at it, I thought it'd be good to get another photo of someone lighting a cigarette with a stick of dynamite.

While I was at it, I thought it'd be good to get another photo of someone lighting a cigarette with a stick of dynamite. For the box of TNT, I enlisted the help of my friend Dave Weaver, who at the time built sets & props for a living and owed me a favor for shooting some scenes in a music video for his band, Mountain Song. He built the box with a working plunger, and roughed it up so it'd look like it'd seen better days. Once I got it back to the studio I stained it a darker color and spray painted "TNT" on it. For the other photo, I also cut some wood dowels and painted them cherry red, drilled holes in the top of them, cut some real fuses, hot glued them into the sticks, and used black electrical tape to hold them all together.

I knew that to pull of the silliness of this photo with ease, I needed the suavest dude in Fort Worth, which means DJ & musician, Ronnie Heart. He was totally down for the idea, so I started scouting good locations with a hint of destruction that matched the color scheme I wanted. Luckily there was a street not too far from my apartment that was under construction and had a beautiful old warehouse next to it.

Erin Summerlin was my assistant on the shoot, and held the 7' flash umbrella so we could overpower the sun with soft, bright light and get some real moody lighting. Ronnie was a total trooper with the stick of dynamite too. Even though it's safe to have that particular lit fuse that close to your face (I tried it multiple times before I asked him to do it), it certainly doesn't feel comfortable. Here are some of the photos we got from the shoot.

We ended the shoot by sneaking into the burnt down remains of the Rainbow Lounge, a well-known gay bar in my neighborhood that had burnt to the ground about a month prior. We weren't able to get too many photos inside because the sun was setting and Ronnie's all black outfit made him disappear into the destruction.