Portraits - Jen

Last week my graphic designer friend Jen came over to hang out and take some pictures.  We actually went to high school together, and were cool, but not really friends.  Now that we're both in the arts, we talk online sometimes and share cool things we've found.  She does really amazing work (I want her to redesign my website!) so check out her stuff at www.jendorman.com.  I suggest you look under the "Projects" section, in which there is a very cool Evil Dead 2 patch.  After you do that, be jealous, because she gave me one and it is AWESOME.

So anyway.  Jen has pretty cool style, and is especially interesting in that she wears a lot of skirts and dresses.  Do girls really do that anymore?  I don't know, I wear jeans.

First off, she wanted to be in my body mod project with her back tattoo(s).  There's a photo in the album on Facebook of the bigger one, but she also showed off her semi-colon tat, explaining that she designed it herself and that the semi-colon is a favorite punctuation mark.  That's slightly random, but ok.  Semi-colons are pretty cool, yeah.  Also, I'm really aware of my punctuation now and feel the second sentence in this paragraph may require a semi-colon somewhere.....

Yay!  I love this picture.  Backlit by softbox.

Classy.

 

And classier.  In the glass, by the way, is grape gin, which is surprisingly good as I generally find gin rather foul.  Jen also is a fan.  Cheers!

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!!!

Studiooooo!!!

Today, Kevin and I were very productive and finished cleaning out the furnace room to convert into a home photography studio.  It's something that's been being worked on for a couple weeks now and most of the junk was gone.  There were still shelves and ceiling tiles and a desk though, so we took those out and made....A STUDIO!!  I am so excited about this it's kind of ridiculous.

This is it.  My studio.  Photographed with the fisheye, on a tripod, using a remote shutter release while I'm holding my second camera body.  It's not all that impressive (ok, it kind of is), but having a room dedicated to shooting is really exciting for me.  Now I don't have to rearrange my kitchen every time I want to set up my backdrop.  It's a PERMANENT SETUP.  How cool is that?  I have my backdrop on it's stands, my Alien Bee with softbox and unbrella, my speedlight and accessories, my white backdrop (not in the shot) and some reflectors.  And of course my cameras.  Hopefully I'll buy a bigger backdrop or two soon, because these ones are no where near wide enough.  I'm totally psyched about the whole thing, because it makes me feel way more professional.

I think I'll get a sign.  "elena dee photography"  Yeah.  We're open for business.