Brooks Wedding

Today I spent 16 hours (with a couple short breaks) photographing Dawn Campbell's marriage to Brandon Brooks.  It was fun and interesting and beautiful and exhausting as all hell.  Currently I'm importing the images to LightRoom, so will post a few shots in a couple days, once I get some rest.  Congrats, Mr. and Mrs. Brooks!!

Tia

Yesterday I saw two high school friends for the first time in nearly 5 years.  Tia came over to model for me - she's just starting out but does pretty awesomely already - and Adele, who was doing her makeup.  Adele and I rode the same bus in high school, and Tia was president of the anime club/prom queen.

After Adele finished Tia's makeup, she put on my curly black wig and this super cute little red riding hood-esque dress, and we did took photos using natural light (occasionally filled with my beauty dish topped speedlight) and this derelict white wicker couch that's on my back porch.  Oh, it's ugly and falling apart, but she rocked it for sure.

Then we went inside, and Tia changed her clothes and wig and because we were doing pinup and my kitchen hasn't been renovated since the 50s, Adele suggested we try something with my oven.  Which is pastel pink.  So I cleared everything off the top and away from the sides, moved my Alien Bee (softbox!!) and started shooting.  Angry Johnny, my year-old kitty, wanted in on the action, so I put her on top of the oven and took a couple minutes to convince her that she wanted to join Tia in seeing what was going on inside.  I adore this picture so freaking much.

Then we turned around and Tia got in front of the black backdrop.  I had her side lit with my softbox, and we'd grabbed a couple props, a chair, a telephone and a lipstick.  She raised the lipstick, looked into the light and I took a couple shots.  Eh.  It was pretty, but not WOW.  Then she relaxed for a second, turning slightly to something Adele had said.  THAT was the shot.  I actually did some post for this, because her face and hand were perfect, but her shirt looked weirdly poofy in that one, so I spent a while in Photoshop putting a shirt from an earlier shot.  It was kind of tough because they weren't lined up exactly and her arms and neck were different.  I think I may need to go back in and edit a little more, but am pretty pleased with the result.

And now I'm going to scout a church for the wedding I'm photographing tomorrow.

'Twas a busy day

Today I battled the mother of all traffic - Pittsburgh Penguins playoff game traffic (rivaled only by Steeler's game traffic) - to go take a couple pictures at The Opera.  I interned there about a year ago and when they emailed asking if I could come by today, of course I agreed!  The barter system, by the way, is pretty much the best thing ever because in exchange for maybe half an hour of my time total before and after The Marriage of Figero (and whatever editing I do), I got two tickets to the show.  Good tickets.  I gave them to my mom for Mother's Day, so I'm covered for that.  Thank you, Pittsburgh Opera, I love you!  You too, Mom!

During the Marriage of Figero, between shots, I went to hang out my friend/model Mary Beth and do a photoshoot.  We were going to hit up the Allegheny Cemetery but it was rainy and so we put up my white backdrop in her house and shot there.  She has a ton of clothes and we took some super cute pictures.  Sadly, her house (best house ever, tons of art supplies and awesome stuff all over) is old and only has two-pronged outlets so my Alien Bee could not be used, as it is three-pronged.  We used her huge windows to provide with some light though, and I had my speedlight handy, so all was well.  These shots are both utilizing window light, and in the first MB is wearing a wig I had in my car.  For the second, I'd wanted to photograph her tattoos.  She has 6, but the one on her back is probably my favorite.  So cute!

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!

Pinup - A new obsession?

So a couple weeks after I did the zombie pinup thing that was mentioned in the last post, my sister's friend called me. This worried me, honestly, because you can never know what Dani is up to. Turns out she was calling on behalf of a friend - Becka - who was starting out modeling and was very interested in pinup. Of course I agreed to shoot her!

Quick description of Becka - punk/goth kinda chick with black hair, multiple tattoos and a lip piercing. She's 18 and a senior at a Catholic high school. I adored her instantly.

I set up the black backdrop in the kitchen (my ghetto studio is super ghetto but totally works) with the Alien Bee and softbox and once we got Becka's hair properly fauxhawked did a couple test shots. I also made Kevin, who was playing assistant, go get a bar chair because it worked beautifully with the outfit we'd come up with. My lovely model wasn't too experienced, so I was giving her some posing tips and she seemed to really take this elegant one:



Yeah, I adore that portrait. It's so....classic, but modernly so. Anyway, outside for a smoke break for everyone but me. Now, outside is my back porch is the roof of a bowling alley. And I have this thing for cigarettes.  I may not smoke them, but I love the way they look and I love my roof, so of course we had to do a couple shots with the cig and some with the beautiful sky we had that day as background.

Went back inside, changed our backdrop to white and her outfit, and started some more pin-up like pin-ups!  I had printed out a bunch of pose examples, so we studied those and got to work.  The softbox is amazing for this sort of thing, let me just say.  I am SO glad I bought it.  Going to get another at some point!  Anyway, she had this cute leopard print outfit she wanted, so we did THE pin-up pose, as I call it, with that and then ended up with a sporty sort of look.  Pointing the Alien Bee down on a sitting/laying subject has such amazing light, it's just all around and lovely.

 

I really do need a new white backdrop though, as mine is paper and dirty and, after the zombie shoot, covered in fake blood.  It takes a ridiculous amount of post to make it look clean.  I'll probably just end up cutting it, as it IS paper after all and it's a lot longer than I need.  But here's to show just how much I have to do, editing-wise, on these.  Not even just the paper, but we had a terrible bright spot coming in from my kitchen window that was not co-operating at being overpowered - every time I upped the power on my flash and strobe it would blow out the image and seeing as I was already on ISO 100 at somewhere around f22...  Photoshop is my friend indeed.

Alien Bees and Zombie Pinups

About a week and a half ago I finally achieved a major photographic goal of mine and purchased an Alien Bee B800 along with a softbox, umbrella, and heavy duty light stand. It's great stuff - the softbox is SO easy to assemble and light works wonderfully. Such a great purchase. I did some test portraits for the first couple days, using my sister and friend Erich as models. This is one of my best shots of Erich. There are more test shots to be seen on my (fairly new) facebook page -
http://www.facebook.com/elenadeephoto




Over the past month, my buddy Kevin and I have been practicing our zombie makeup, which finally was used for a zombie pinup session featuring my sister/model Christiana yesterday. Kevin and I made wounds using liquid latex, while my fellow photographer Cassandra Grzybowski helped apply bruise makeup. She did a beautiful job on the face and shoulders, I must say. And Kevin's knee wound and the one I did on her thigh look especially decayed in the classic legs crossed pinup pose, as you can see below. I've never tried pinup before, but have wanted to for awhile. Personally, I think they turned out quite well for a first attempt. Christy is a great model, and if anyone is interested in shooting her, she can be reached on Model Mayhem - http://www.modelmayhem.com/christianacdd

NILMDTS

Today I got accepted as a volunteer for the Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep Foundation. NILMDTS is a group of volunteer photographers who can be called in to photograph, free of charge, stillborn or dying babies. The infants can be photographed while still alive, after death, or, if the mother knows her child has little to no chance of survival, while still in utero. Or all of the above. Whatever the family wants. It's to provide people with lasting, professional images of their child.

It's a beautiful idea and when I was took History of Photography in school, we talked about post-mortem photography in the Victorian age (often done of deceased children) and how no one really does that anymore. It seemed like a cool idea then and still does now. I'm very pleased to have my application to NILMDTS accepted and, even though I'm sure I'll cry, because it is terribly distressing and sad, I am glad that whenever I get called in to do this, I will be able to help someone's grieving process.

To read more about NILMDTS, you can go to their website: http://www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org/