Principles: Steve R by Chris Teel

With FH now in it's 5th year it has become one of my goals to not only introduce readers of the blog to new and exciting artists, but to continue to showcase the work of artists who have shared their work, and their stories, with FH over the last five years. Toronto's Chris Teel has been sharing his time and his images for four out of those five years.

Although the search at the top of the blog is pretty much useless, when I as the blog owner search in my dashboard, 67 posts come up when I search for Chris on FH. In addition some of my features on his work, including his shots of Samuel Boux, are some of the sites most popular. Two of the most popular posts of all time included Chris' work with Matt Eldracher at the conclusion of the Model Search Chris and I conducted last winter. (Encore: & Culmination:)

I was really excited to see the results when I found out Chris shot Steve R last year. Steve is another favorite of mine and has been featured numerous times in the past couple of years as well. (Fight And Flight) Steve is one of the most interesting and talented guys to feature and his modeling is just a minuscule part of the various ways his passion and artistry are released. Although Steve lives in Greece, he also has Canadian connections and met up to shoot with Chris when in Toronto last year.

Chris beautifully blended his shooting style with the passion for martial arts, physical strength and movement, Steve assimilates into all he does. Steve has studied taekwondo for over 14 years, kickboxing for 3 years, and free style fight for 2. Some of the main principles of taekwondo are to teaches it's students self confidence, self respect, physical and mental discipline. Steve uses these within his own life to help strengthen discipline and confidence.

'I'm always on the lookout for models with dance, gymnastics, acrobatic, yoga and martial arts backgrounds as they're capable of creating the most interesting poses. Though I'd seen some of Steve's other work, I'm glad that although we were shooting martial arts, that the final images were dissimilar to anything else that he'd done and still reflected my style of shooting.'
Chris Teel