Trix the bathing beauty

Trix Morgan is awesome.  She's one of my favorite models, and super cool to hang out with.  Last weekend, we had a shoot for Zivity.com on which she's pretty popular -  ranked #36 or so out of the 1000-ish models on the site.  My friend Kaleigh came to do makeup and brought her friend Jessica do to hair, so we got to feel all kinds of professional.  Our first set of the day was for a summer contest on the site, so after hair and makeup, Trix put on her metallic pink bathing suit and we grabbed a case of PBR and went out to the boat in my parking lot (yeah, there's a boat in the parking lot, it's kinda weird) to shoot.  Her idea was "White Trash Summer" and what's more white trash than drinking PBR in heels on a crappy looking boat that obviously isn't even in the water?

She worked it beautifully and titled the set "I'm On A Boat."

Second set of the day ended up being in the studio - it WAS going to be on the roof, but my flash trigger wasn't cooperating and refused to work outside.  My main problem right now with my studio is that it and my backdrop are WAY too small.  There's a lot of post put into these to fill it in.  Nevertheless, I really like this set.  It's adorable and I'm calling it "Lollipop Lollipop."

Pin-up - Brandi Woodhull

I've been meaning to write this blog for awhile now, but I wanted to finish the pictures first.  Ever since we first met, Brandi and I have been discussing doing a pin-up shoot.  6 or 7 months later, we finally got around to it.  Hair and makeup was done by the lovely Kaleigh, and I shot these in studio using my softbox.  It was insanely hot during our shoot because my air conditioner is broken, but trade is a wonderful thing, and Brandi, who is a roofer, brought me an extra window unit air conditioner she had and installed it as payment.  MY HOUSE IS NO LONGER 120 DEGREES!!!  I love the barter system.

I stole a chair from The Fallout Shelter...it's a nice vintage-y looking prop.

This black and white with the classic pose is my favorite from our set without a doubt!

*mwah* Ta-ta, dah-lings!

Verona Rock in the Park for BarSmart

About two years ago, I did some freelance work for a website called BarSmart.  It's a pretty cool site, so when founder Paul emailed me earlier this week asking if I could shoot at a concert for him, I was all about it.  Despite being there for 4 hours, I only photographed two bands - Sunday Morning (a No Doubt tribute band I did promos for last summer) and a set featuring Billy Sheehan and Reb Beach.  They were ridiculously awesome.

I got there, hung out with Sunday Morning for a bit, met another photographer named Wes, and took pictures.  Sunday Morning rocks at what they do, and they're all over the stage, which makes for a super fun show.

And then....it started raining.  The band took it quite well, and continued playing.  The horn player, Steve, is pretty much my hero - he got a woman in the audience to give him an umbrella to cover his laptop.  Once a tent was rigged to protect the back part of the stage, Steve started running around, giving the other band members momentary shelter under the umbrella.  One of the best moments at a concert ever.

 Rain slowed as Sunday Morning was finishing up, but keyboardist Mary Beth, who is a model of mine, and I went to my car to acquire umbrellas because we knew it wasn't going to hold off.  We were right.  It rained.  A lot.  Of course, it's hard to hold an umbrella while shooting, so I kind of gave up after awhile, especially since the crowd was huge.  Like I said before, the guitarist and bassist are pretty well-known, but the I think the singer and drummer are local.

As you can see, it's raining.  I was impressed that they didn't cancel - everyone was real troopers.

Beer might have helped.

Yeah, it was awesome.  I mean, I was completely drenched, and could not wait to drive the hour home and put on dry clothes, but it was a great show, and the rain made for interesting photos.  I'm happy.

Seniors 2011 - Roman

Roman, another student at OLSH, is a friend of Leah and Janelle, and loved the pictures of I took of them, so contacted me to do her senior portraits as well.  [Real quick, before I forget, I have to get the Garbage music video for "I Think I'm Paranoid" on my computer.  I have loved this song for years and the video is currently on TV and it is awesome.  Back to Roman.]  She's Indian, so brought some absolutely beautiful clothes and showed me traditional Indian dance poses while we talked about the Hindu religion.  I've always been into religion, so hearing about the Hindu gods from someone who is actually Hindu was really cool.  It was fun to photograph, too, because I hadn't seen such poses before.

After the studio we went outside, where clouds were amazing.  And I'm totally into the color scheme!  Bright yellow outfit + blue sky = win.  I might have to start bringing my Alien Bee outside and hooking up an extension cord though, as the sunlight doesn't always do what I want and my speed light just doesn't cut it.  Anyone want to buy me a Vagabond?!  After getting some pictures on the roof, Roman, who told me she's named after a male soap opera character (something I would do), changed into a cute dress/jean jacket combo.  We then hit up Hopewell Park to finish off our shoot.

Not long after we first got to the park, she decided she wanted some pictures on the swings, so once we hit some other spots, Roman and I ended our shoot at the swingset.  It was different, and definitely adorable.  I played with retro toning some more in post, which worked perfectly with this image.

Empty Spaces

My model friend Trix, who I met on Model Mayhem, is also in the Top 40 on this site called Zivity - a pay site celebrating art and female beauty.  There's some pretty gorgeous stuff there, and when she IMed me last week saying she knew of an empty and unlocked apartment, we decided to make it a Zivity set and I'm now in the process of uploading it to them.

We weren't entirely certain what we wanted to do, so I packed a bunch of props into a bag, took my Alien Bee and cameras, and headed off to Trix's.  Of course, I couldn't find the driveway at first, but I got there.  We hung out for a bit (she has the prettiest cat!) and decided on a vintage phone and Brownie camera as our props, and a  mini hat I had brought as an accessory for this gorgeous purple cabaret dress and shoes she has.

The empty apartment had electricity, which was great, and we shot in the kitchen, a bedroom, and the bathroom and then the bedroom again.  In that order.  It's totally not the order our set is arranged in, but I was trying to tell a bit of a ghost hunt story with the pictures.

Of course, these are only 4 of the 15 image set, but you get the gist of it.  She gets ready, grabs her camera, finds some scary stuff and ends up terrified.  In a totally sexy way, of course.

 I do really enjoy the vintage-esque post production I did on these, by the way.   I learned how to fake rounded corners in LightRoom, and did some color toning to give the pictures an old style feeling.  Matches with the outfit.  I like it, do you?

P.S.  This set airs on Zivity on September 16th.  My profile is: http://zivity.com/users/elenadee so if you have any interest in checking it out, click my link.

Seniors 2011 - Leah

Seems a bit late to have my first senior shoot for 2011, but this Saturday it happened!  Leah is a friend of Janelle who I photographed late last year.  She was super sweet, and though a bit shy about getting her picture taken, definitely opened up as the session went on.  We started out in the studio using my white background and the softbox (note to self: buy another light).  She brought a sword!!  How cool is that?

After the indoors session, we took some pictures outside.  I'm a big fan of natural light, so mostly used that, though did pop my speedlight on occasion to light up her eyes.  That night, while doing post, I starting playing with different effects in LightRoom (note to self: upgrade to LR3) - this started with downloading some free presets and then figuring out how they were done and changing them to suit me.  For example, one preset faked rounded corners, which I tweaked and combined with a 1970s preset that, once I was done, didn't actually look much like the original preset at all.  I haven't used the split toning option to do much more than sepia (see above), so had way too much playing.  Yeah...I love LightRoom so much I spend my Saturday nights with it.

Anyway, enough of LR.  Back to Leah.  We also went to Hopewell Park, the back way because the main road there caved in, so that was different.  We hit up a couple spots that I've shot in before - they're good spots - but also some different ones, which was great.  I mean, I've never shot anyone sitting on a rock in the creek before, so it was a great idea on Leah's part, and definitely turned out adorable.  Go, Leah!!

She loved the first bridge (as do I, this is one of my favorite shots!) and, after some lighting issues on the covered bridge, we found this cool fallen tree near the creek.  She had told me earlier that she wanted a tree shot - they're pretty stereotypical for senior shoots though, so we tried for something a little different and this was it.  Especially with the glowing forest in the background, it made for a beautiful scene.