Beauty Shoot

Today I had an "event" sort of thing that turned out really well!!  I'm quite proud of my organizing skills, actually.  My friend Jessica North is a hair stylist/MUA but due to health complications hasn't been able to do much recently.  To celebrate her recovery, we had a beauty day and some models came over.  She did hair and makeup and I photographed them.  It was really fun!!

First shoot of the day was with Alex.  I did her senior pictures last year, so it was fun to see her again and talk about how college going for her.  She brought her sister Kacie with her too, who was my helper in getting great smiles out of Alex.  Kacie also stepped in for a few cute sister pictures.  Jessica put Alex's hair in these beautiful soft curls and gave her bright red lipstick.  I think she ended up looking a bit like Sandy from Grease, when she gets the makeover.  It was great!

Second model of the day was Kelsey, one of my sister's friends.   I love Kels, she's an AMAZING model, despite the fact that she doesn't actually model much.  She's also a pretty cool kid, and works at the tattoo shop I got my camera half-sleeve at.  And where I need to go to get it finished.  Kelsey was, by the way, my vampire pin-up, which remains to this day one of my absolute favorite photoshoots ever.

Next was Olivia, another of Christy's friends.  I did her senior pictures, too, actually.  Liv is adorable, and can pull off the 80s look amazingly well, so we put her in a pink sweater I just finished knitting last night and Jessica gave her this poofy side pony-tail and bright eyeshadow to match the sweater.  The total effect was too cute.  At one point during her shoot, my punk rocker friend Adam wandered in to pick Kevin up for band practice and I made him pose with her for two quick frames.  He wasn't really sure what was going on, but it looked pretty sweet.

Last official shoot of the day was Kara, who is erich's DJ friend Trix (not my friend Trix)'s sister.  She messaged me on Model Mayhem awhile back, so I invited her to our event.  She has a super cool asymetrical haircut, so Jessica put the longer side in tight curls, slicked back the other side and spiked out the back.  It looked gorgeous.  She ended up holding Kaleigh's dog Mickey for a little bit and it turned out really cute.

Mickey also got his own little photoshoot, which was extremely difficult as he had no desire to stay on the background.  I managed to get a couple insanely adorable pictures of the little pokemon though.  http://www.serebii.net/pokedex-bw/506.shtml  <-- click this link.  I'm telling you, this dog looks JUST LIKE the pokemon Lillipup.  And yes, I'm 23 and still play Pokemon.  It is awesome.

Jessica left after Kara's session - she was exhausted after a long day!  I was tired too, but after taking a quick look through the day's images, got my energy back.  Trix (my friend, not Kara's brother) did makeup for herself as well as me and we had a dance party to Lady Gaga and Kesha and took pictures of each other.  It was was really silly and very fun, and we got IHOP after.  Definitely a good (and productive) day!  I am going to sleep well.

PS I'm super in love with this pic Trix took of me and my tiger rug with her iPhone (I WANT ONE!)

Senior Season Starts

It's spring!!  This means the start of senior picture season and, hopefully, the start of a lot of work for me.  I just took photos a few days ago for Alexandria, who is actually a 2010 graduate, not 2011, so I'm going to have to get them done quick quick.  She's a student at OLSH, and loved the photos I did of Dani and Janelle.

 I went to their house to shoot because they have tons of land and horses, which is she wanted in some of her pictures.  We started with some outdoors shots around her yard such as the one above.  It was bright but cloudy out, so I was using natural light for the majority of the shots, though I would occasionally pop my flash to brighten Alex a bit.

I recently realized that instead of duct-taping my backdrop to the wall like I had been, I could use some old stage light stands we had in the garage.  They work beautifully and made me feel quite professional!  So I packed up the stands and my Alien Bee and softbox and such into my car (a 20-year-old Toyota covered in bumper stickers from local bands) and was able to set everything up and shoot some nice portraits in their living room.  The image below reminds me just how much I love black and white.  I also love my softbox, which for this shot was off to the side to provide dramatic lighting.

After the indoor portraits we went back outside to finish up our session with the horses.  There are three of them total, but Annie is Alex's and she especially wanted photos with her.  Beautiful creatures, horses, though they weren't cooperating very well.  One kept nudging me - I think he was trying to figure out what the camera was!  Or maybe I was just a new person he wanted to play with.  It was difficult, but I ended with some absolutely beautiful shots of Alex either standing by or interacting with the horses.  I sepia-toned one with Annie in LightRoom (LOVE LightRoom!) and it looks great.  Alex's eyes are covered by her hair, but the tenderness in her expression and her hand on Annie's head make the shot really work.

Tomorrow I'm going to photograph at The Pittsburgh Opera  - it's just a couple shots before and after the performance, so during I'll be running down to my model Mary Beth's to do some pin-up and hopefully start on a nude/semi-nude tattoo project!  As for this blog thing...I'm really bad at updating it regularly, so I'm going to try to do so more often.  Describe my shoots in more detail and provide pictures, like I did just now and with Becka's shoot last time (incidentally, Becka and Alex go to school together).  Next step:  getting people to actually READ this thing!