Up Early with Liv

I'm mentioned my model Liv many times.  We've known each other since she was in elementary school with my sister and is home from college for winter break right now so we decided to do a shoot.  Liv wanted something kind of vintage, which reminded me of a senior picture shoot I did over summer.  We decided to revisit that location with some great thrift store finds.  At sunrise.  Getting up early is not my strong point but something I really need to work on, plus the light is always beautiful.


Of course, switching between lenses made it difficult because I was using the f1.4 and the first frame or two after switching would be either too dark or completely blown out.  HOWEVER, there is this magical thing called camera RAW which allowed some saving.  Check out how awesome this before and after is!

The top is straight out of camera.  The bottom is after some tinkering around in LightRoom.  Sometimes mistakes turn out really well!!  Now for the intentional images....

I just had to edit this all old-timey.  The fall-off from the f1.4 is beautiful and I love how the necklace and lace of the dress look.  She looks straight out of the 19th century.

Love her poses!

The light and lines in this makes it a favorite.  Plus Liv has a stunning profile - having a good model can make or break a photo.


Of course, I had to go and love the vintage look in black and white which took out the lovely colors but there's an image on my facebook page from this shoot in color.  Go love it!

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.