Seniors 2011 - Katie

I was really excited about photographing Katie, not only because she sounded super cool, but because she found me via Facebook ads.  Glad to know people actually checked that out!  And she WAS really cool, so it was totally win-win.  This was one of those interesting shoots where I go to their house to photograph, which I always enjoy.  Keeps things exciting and eases my occasional worry of things starting to look too similar.  Katie's pictures are a breed completely of their own, so yay!

We started out in her backyard, which is gorgeous.  VERY well kept.  My dad would love it.

I set my backdrop up under their deck, and because the shade there was lovely - not glaring but not too dark - I didn't even have to use lighting!  Always good, if I can get nice lighting naturally, I'm going to utilize that.

We then went to this abandoned house down the street from theirs that I had noticed on my drive there.  Katie's mom, being awesome, totally encouraged this venture, and while we were there, discovered this...I don't even know what, some barrel thing that had "1993" written on.  I checked with Katie, and that was indeed the year she was born, so we took some pictures with it.  1993 and graduating from high school.  Geeze.  I just turned 23 a few days ago but this makes me feel old!

I couldn't help but post process some of these to look vintage - they did without any work already!!

River Runs Scarlet - Zosia West's shoot

A couple times over the past week, my friend Zosia West of River Runs Scarlet has come by to do a three-part photoshoot.  If you know anything about my photography, you probably know that RRS is a band I photograph quite frequently, even going to California with them in July to document them recording their EP.  Anyway, Zosia's in this magazine thing (not sure if I'm allowed to give details!) and needed three looks, two of which had to be a girl-next-door kinda look and a sexy look.

The first shoot happened on Thursday and Zosia brought a male model friend, Joe Costa, along with her.  We're both huge TrueBlood fans so wanted to do a vampire theme, with poor, clean-cut Joe as her victim.  He's such a good sport.  Didn't even have any problems with me applying coats of liquid latex to his neck - speaking of, I'm really proud of my skin tone matching on that!  I also did a LOT of post on the first image, as the fangs Zosia ordered managed to not be in yet.  Had a good time (really!) in PhotoShop copying and rotating bits of teeth of create a fang for her.

I had work Thursday night though, so we finished up the more "normal" parts of the shoot on Saturday. Not that vampires aren't normal, they certainly are for us!  First we did a cute, girl-next-door kinda thing.  Jeans and tank top.  The black and whites are my favorite, but I wanted to show you guys a color one too.

Aww, ain't she adorable and totally metal?  Of course, as all girls-next-door do, she gotta have a sexy side!  We tried a couple different things, but my favorite is probably the hair metal picture.  You'll see.

I wanted to keep consistent with the black background, but all the black in her outfit kept getting lost, so we switched to white to make her pop.  It looks super dark on the blogspot thing, the background isn't AS gray in the actual image.  Maybe it could be a little brighter, but geeze this looks dark!  Huh.  So yeah, anyway, hair metal picture = WIN.  Which do you guys like?

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.