Beauty Shoot

Today I had an "event" sort of thing that turned out really well!!  I'm quite proud of my organizing skills, actually.  My friend Jessica North is a hair stylist/MUA but due to health complications hasn't been able to do much recently.  To celebrate her recovery, we had a beauty day and some models came over.  She did hair and makeup and I photographed them.  It was really fun!!

First shoot of the day was with Alex.  I did her senior pictures last year, so it was fun to see her again and talk about how college going for her.  She brought her sister Kacie with her too, who was my helper in getting great smiles out of Alex.  Kacie also stepped in for a few cute sister pictures.  Jessica put Alex's hair in these beautiful soft curls and gave her bright red lipstick.  I think she ended up looking a bit like Sandy from Grease, when she gets the makeover.  It was great!

Second model of the day was Kelsey, one of my sister's friends.   I love Kels, she's an AMAZING model, despite the fact that she doesn't actually model much.  She's also a pretty cool kid, and works at the tattoo shop I got my camera half-sleeve at.  And where I need to go to get it finished.  Kelsey was, by the way, my vampire pin-up, which remains to this day one of my absolute favorite photoshoots ever.

Next was Olivia, another of Christy's friends.  I did her senior pictures, too, actually.  Liv is adorable, and can pull off the 80s look amazingly well, so we put her in a pink sweater I just finished knitting last night and Jessica gave her this poofy side pony-tail and bright eyeshadow to match the sweater.  The total effect was too cute.  At one point during her shoot, my punk rocker friend Adam wandered in to pick Kevin up for band practice and I made him pose with her for two quick frames.  He wasn't really sure what was going on, but it looked pretty sweet.

Last official shoot of the day was Kara, who is erich's DJ friend Trix (not my friend Trix)'s sister.  She messaged me on Model Mayhem awhile back, so I invited her to our event.  She has a super cool asymetrical haircut, so Jessica put the longer side in tight curls, slicked back the other side and spiked out the back.  It looked gorgeous.  She ended up holding Kaleigh's dog Mickey for a little bit and it turned out really cute.

Mickey also got his own little photoshoot, which was extremely difficult as he had no desire to stay on the background.  I managed to get a couple insanely adorable pictures of the little pokemon though.  http://www.serebii.net/pokedex-bw/506.shtml  <-- click this link.  I'm telling you, this dog looks JUST LIKE the pokemon Lillipup.  And yes, I'm 23 and still play Pokemon.  It is awesome.

Jessica left after Kara's session - she was exhausted after a long day!  I was tired too, but after taking a quick look through the day's images, got my energy back.  Trix (my friend, not Kara's brother) did makeup for herself as well as me and we had a dance party to Lady Gaga and Kesha and took pictures of each other.  It was was really silly and very fun, and we got IHOP after.  Definitely a good (and productive) day!  I am going to sleep well.

PS I'm super in love with this pic Trix took of me and my tiger rug with her iPhone (I WANT ONE!)

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!

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!!

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."

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.

Death Scenes - slightly gory

Last night, my friend/handyman/assistant Kevin and I got bored.  This happens more frequently than people would think, but sometimes our boredom inspires more than just Kev cleaning the back porch.   Last night it inspired murder.  We've been talking about this a bit recently, having some people over and doing some gore makeup (if you've seen my zombie and vampire photos, you know our love for this) and staging some kill scenes.  Trix Morgan, who modeled for me once before, was IMing me on Facebook discussing a future shoot, and she ended up coming by.  Kevin's friend Bolea stopped by, and this kid Ricky I knew in high school, who brought my cousin David with him.

Our first kill of the night was Trix.  She's a wrestler and dancer, so can contort her body into some amazing angles.  I pulled out the liquid latex to scuff up her legs and hands, as her death was by falling down my front stairs.  Put a grid on my speedlight (no outlets around for the Alien Bee), mixed some fake blood with water, and positioned Trix on the stairs.  It didn't look to comfortable to me, but if my model says she's good, then awesome! 

We took a couple shots where I was at the bottom of the stairs, and had a shadowy figure (David - who would only kill and refused to die) at the top.  After doing that for a bit, I went up to the roof and shot down.  Her leg wound looks especially gruesome in that shot!

While Trix was cleaning up, I cut Ricky's throat open.  This involved a lot more layers of liquid latex because there needed to be flaps of skin, and a decent amount of blood gel was smeared in the"wound" to make it look extra gross.  After some discussion, I decided I wanted to shoot this through my kitchen window, so we took a chair outside to stand on and fake blood was sprayed on the window.  My Alien Bee B800 was set up inside next to them and awesomely, my totally cheap remote trigger did it's job through the window!  Ricky had some pretty entertaining facial expressions, even when his mouth was covered.

Last set of the night was Bolea.  Kevin did a great job bloodied up Bolea's face, as his scene was that he went splat.  Splat!!  They mixed up this totally disgusting bloody mess to be his smashed in brains.  I especially wanted to shoot this one from the roof, and after doing that, went down to the parking lot where he was laying and got some shots there.

 And of course, a snapshot of his face, to showcase Kevin's wonderful work!