It's a New Year! Time for a Flashback

Normally my first blog of the year is Imaging USA, which is in New Orleans this year!  I can't wait.  But I just noticed a blog by a photographer I know, Kenneth Rodriguez, who posted his 15 favorite images of his from 2011.  "What a great idea!" I thought.  "I'm totally stealing it!"  So here I am, making elena-dee's Eleven Best Images from 2011 (in no real order).  I hope you guys agree!!

First off, my little cousins Brian and Mikayla!  Their dad, my cousin Paul, asked me to do family portraits for them over the summer.  We did a lot of traditional portraits of the family but I also got some super cute shots of the B and Mik just playing around.  They're such great kids and I absolutely love them.

Rowan.  I've known her family pretty much my entire life and so got to take some fun photos of her with cupcakes.  She was psyched because she got to eat some of them.  I wish I remembered what her dad said to get this look!

Melody.  Crazy little model/musician, her shoot was SO FUN!  She had great ideas and awesome outfits/props.  I adored the lighting in this shot, and her angles.  Girl knows how to pose!

I didn't shoot as many live shows as I usually do this year, but of them, Livan's set at the Hard Rock Cafe definitely stood out.  Maybe because it this was the first time I used my new 85mm f1.4 lens, maybe because we talked to him for awhile and he had a lot of really interesting things to say.  Or it could also be because this is a freaking sweet picture.

A couple years ago, when Resistance 13 started up, I did their promo shots out I don't even know where.  Ohio, I think?  It was awesome and we got some really sweet pictures.  They've gone through a line-up change since so new photos were needed!  Once again we got a lot of great shots but this is definitely my personal favorite.

 A couple years ago, when I started doing senior pictures, a girl named Janelle had me take hers.  This year, her cousin Abbie wanted me to do hers as well.  She mentioned an abandoned train station that I had actually always wanted to shoot at and never had.  I love Abbie's style and at the station she managed to look straight out of the 1940s.

I do a lot of senior pictures and they're always fun and interesting and I get such great kids.  Allie's shoot was really special to me though - her aunt Whitney and I were best friends for about a decade before Whit died in a car crash three years ago.  When I was asked to do Allie's photos, I was thrilled.  It was like seeing part of a long lost family.  All the sad stuff aside, this is one of my favorite senior shots of the year.  She has her letterman jacket, nice background, great smile....  I love senior pictures!

Rick has been coming to my family's bowling alley as long as I remember, so when he and Lisa asked me to photograph their wedding, I was thrilled!  Weddings are a lot of work but the results tend to be beautiful.  They got married at Shakespeare's, this amazing restaurant/golf course/castle.  Yes, it's a castle with enormous (and heavy!) front doors.  I love all the photos from Rick and Lisa's wedding.

I had only planned on putting one wedding photo in this list because I don't shoot too many.  Then I remembered this insanely adorable shot from Jason and Danielle's winter wedding last February.  It's just too cute, you can't help but smile!

After the romance of the couple photos, we need a romantic location!  I went with my boyfriend's family to Niagara Falls in September (and actually again just a couple days ago for New Years!) and got a few photos.  The boats, the birds, the mist, I love it all!!

OF COURSE this is at the top.  It's my adorable little cat Trigger Happy Jack, cuddling with my bearded dragon, Kitten.  We very nearly were in Professional Photographer Magazine for this image and I was amazed at how good the vertical version of this photo did.  2000+ views and over 250 votes!!  Other photographers were emailing me saying they hoped I would win and people were posting the link to the magazine cover contest all over Facebook....  It was kind of crazy but so awesome.  Thank you to everyone who voted!!!  I'm so grateful for all your support.

Looking through this list one last time, I realize a couple things.  First off, I'm super indecisive.  I knew this already, but you have no idea how many photos were on this list and then weren't and then were again and I love so many it's hard to choose!!  I also realized that I absolutely LOVE my manual focus lenses.  The 50mm f2prime?  Yeah, that's definitely my favorite.  Pretty sure the new 85mm f1.4 is going to get a lot of use in 2012 too.  It's going to be a good year - I have a new job lined up photographing newborns that I'll be starting in a couple weeks and am going to try to build my senior and wedding business up more.  I'm feeling optimistic!!

Recap of last month

I know, I know, I haven't updated in a ridiculous amount of time.  Like, 6 weeks.  Ooops.  So let's recap!!

Mid-February, I photographed Danielle and Jason's wedding.  Beautiful wedding and you should see this dress!!!  Oh wait, you can.

Gorgeous, right?!

Almost immediately after that I got the flu, so was out of commission for about a week.  It was terrible, but I'm better now and ready to shoot!

Got a new Alien Bee B400 (it's pink like my hair!) in at the beginning of last month, so that's been crazy exciting.  So far I've taken pictures of my brother, myself, Trix, and my friend Artie's insanely adorable little girl Rowan.  Gotta say, February was (aside from that whole flu misery) a pretty good month!

First Shoot of the Year - Lady Sutton

As I mentioned in my post while in San Antonio (which was amazing!), I recently photographed a model from New York called Lady Sutton.  She's a friend of Trix Morgan's so of course she's pretty damn cool.  We had a Victorian Gothic-esque shoot that started out very prim and proper with a top hat and ribbons and then it moved into a bit of a love affair between Sutton and her hat.

We were shooting my new studio room because my friend Emily moved into the old one.  This room is larger, but has things like filing cabinets and a copy machine in the way, so it's a bit more difficult.  HOWEVER, I am able to do things like side light people in the new room, so I'm happy, despite the battle to put the soft box where the filing cabinet is.  Filing cabinet usually wins this fight.  Copier, however, is a little more movable.  And the new space has room for when I manage to buy another Alien Bee.  I really really want one and now that my trip to San Antonio is over,  I'm hoping to have enough money to get one soon.

I'm also hopefully moving in the spring.  If that happens, it will be to an actual house, not just an apartment and I won't have to compete with copier machines and filing cabinets for studio space.  Said office supplies also tend be exactly where I would really like to put a light, so I kind of hate them.   Having a whole room all to myself is going to be super exciting (and professional!), guys.

Kisses!!!

ImagingUSA 2011 - San Antonio

I'm writing this from the Emily Morgan Hotel in downtown San Antonio.  Loving the name of the hotel, as two of my best friends are Emily (aka werewolf girl) and model Trix Morgan.  San Antonio is a pretty awesome city with great places to go to, and because we got here a few days early to stuff the bags that all the attendees get, I got a chance to explore.  There's an AMAZING sushi restaurant called Sushi Zushi; the Korova, a bar which gets its name from A Clockwork Orange; and a pretty intense mall.  There's also the Alamo, which is directly across the street from the hotel (super weird that it's just this little building in the middle of a big city and right next to the mall.  I'd kind of expected it to be secluded in the desert), and the River Walk.  Everyone was saying "oh, you have to go to the River Walk while you're there!!"  Yeah.  It's true, even if partly because it's pretty difficult to avoid.  For example, it's easier to get to the mall food court from the convention center by using the River Walk than by taking the street.  It's a pretty neat little walk though, and I'll probably take some pictures of it tonight.

Speaking of shooting, earlier today I got out my tripod and photographed a bit of the ImagingUSA Expo (trade show).  Once I get back to Pittsburgh, I'll put the pictures up.  Also when I get back, I'll do what I meant to do before I left for San Antonio and put up a nice little blog about my first photoshoot of the year with Lady Sutton.  She's a friend of Trix's from New York and super awesome, so of course the two of us had to combine forces and make great images.  But she'll get her own blog post, so back to the photo conference.

I've been learning a good bit at Imaging.  Some of the classes have been kind of lame - a lot of it's basic stuff that I already know (like have a facebook page and tag clients in images of them), but it's good for refreshers and reminders, and I've gotten some cool ideas too.  It's also pretty nice to see when the speakers go over things I've been doing, because it gives me hope that I'm doing something right and once I get my name out there a little more, clients will come calling.

Confession: I'm really REALLY hard on myself and because photography is so much who I am, I tend to get  depressed when I have troubles building my business.  Not sure you guys knew that.  But coming to ImagingUSA is definitely a spirit lifter - a reminder that I AM just starting out and WILL succeed.  I'm good, and I'm on the right track.  This might be my last year as a member of the Student Photographic Society and as student volunteer, but there's no way it's my last year of Imaging.  Tomorrow is the last day of the conference, but New Orleans next year, yeah!!!

Seniors 2011 - Briann

Today I photographed a girl from Moon, where I went to high school, Briann.  She and her mom were both super cool and brought all sorts of fun things to take pictures with - pillows, a doll and teddy bear, and a blow dryer and brush because she's going to school to hair.  Her first outfit matched the pillows which was awesome!

She did her hair and put on a hat for yearbook headshots.  I should probably have taken some fliers or something to the high schools at the end of last school year.  Maybe I will this year, maybe I'll just do the senior portrait business card thing again.

We also went outside for a bit and to the park, where Briann played in some leaves.  Super cute pictures from that.   I have a shot on my facebook page where she looks kind of like a Final Fantasy ad, her eyes are glowing so beautifully.

I just a day or two ago got a rabbit fur coat from my aunt, and HAD to make use of it.  Old Hollywood, yes please!  I asked Briann to model it and a vintage hat for me, so after the park we came back to the studio and set that up real quick.  Quite pretty if I say so myself!

Seniors 2011 - Jason

My "first" guy senior portrait session!  "First" is in quotes because my first senior session, like 3 years ago, was a guy.  This was before I started shooting as elena dee photography and I wasn't as good back then, so Jason gets to be the first official guy senior portrait for me.  He goes to Freedom and is the boyfriend of Cheyenne, whose pictures I did last year.  He's a sweet kid, just joined the Marines, so of course we needed some shots of him in uniform.

We did some of those inside as well, and then he changed into his formal outfit.  This kid takes the BEST headshots!  Seriously gorgeous.  I was excited to be able to use dramatic lighting - it doesn't work as well on girls and they tend to prefer the soft all over sort, but Jason specifically told me (and his mother) that he wanted to look "badass."  Dramatic lighting for the win.

After the studio, we hit up Hopewell Park.  I really gotta find a new location - the park is tried and true, but I don't want to over use it.  It's fall now though, which is new and exciting, and we photographed in a couple spots I haven't used much.  Again with the amazing headshots!

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!!

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.

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.