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!!

Creeps and Cars

A couple weeks ago, I photographed horrorpunk band Blitzkid.  Yesterday, I photographed a pretty girl with a sexy car.  Let's review!!

Blitzkid played at The Fallout Shelter, where I bartend.  It's fun when they come through - they bring a big crowd and are pretty cool dudes.  This time around was singer/guitarist TB Monstronsity's last show, which was a huge deal and kind of depressing.  I got to take some portraits of the rest of the band.

It was the first time I got to use the gigantically long black backdrop Trix gave to me (aside from test shots with her earlier in the day), so I was excited.  Plus two light setups are still kind of new and shiny.

So yeah, there's that.


Yesterday, I did a super-gorgeous shoot with a model named Shannon and an Audi R8.  This translates into:  I hung out at and got to shoot in the Audi dealership.  COOL!  They even gave me tea.

And yes, I know that girl-with-car shoots are amazingly cliche.  But this one.....this car.....well, see for yourself.

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!!!

Happy Thanksgiving from elena-dee and Trix Morgan!

My lovely model friend Trix models for this website called Zivity, which I believe I've mentioned before.  They had a Thanksgiving contest and Trix came up with an amazing idea of what she's thankful for.  The shoot set was titled "What Makes Me Beautiful."  She put on things (shoes, makeup, etc) that women use to make themselves beautiful and I wrote on her.  Then we circled some of her imperfections (scars, scratches) and wrote those.  It isn't just the usual things that make us beautiful - flaws are part of who we are and you better love us for them!!

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.

'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!

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.

Muse

Today I got a LensBaby Muse from my Uncle Jeff for Christmas. (Yes, we all know it's March, but it's still my Christmas gift.) I suspect I can use it for some portraits and whatnot, and who knows, maybe I can get some amazing music photographs out of it! Can't wait to test it out - Saturday will probably be the best day to experiment because I'll be downtown and also at the Children of October show.

Speaking of testing, I used my K20D for a shoot last Wednesday. The model was Mary Beth and I just adore her. Here's a sample:

Fashion Final - Stephani

Just got back from a shoot for my Fashion final with a model named Stephani (http://www.modelmayhem.com/slezatoff ). She was so sweet! We shot in the church her father is a pastor at, so that was a pretty neat setting. The dress wasn't as ripped up as I would have liked, but I got some silhouettes that I'm really excited about and am currently loading into LightRoom.

Another thing I'm really excited about is my thesis. It's on the local music community and I shot the cover for the book this weekend (getting the title in the process)! It, in my opinion, looks amazing. I can't wait for it to be done!