with autumn closing in....

I love learning about photography. Some of it is very technical, things like "light fall off" and focal planes...I start hearing this stuff and think, "can't I just take a pretty picture of a flower??" And yes, I can. I know that stuff is out there to be learned. Someday. But for now I'm sort of trial-and-erroring my way through. And that's fine, too! In the end, a pleasing picture is a pleasing picture, no matter how you got there.

But I definitely love to give myself challenges and...assignments. That's how *I* learn - by doing. By making mistakes and trying again a different way. Lather, rinse, repeat. Until I achieve the look I was going for. 

For last week's shoot, I had a theme - The End of Summer. In my mind I was loosely imagining Mother Nature a little somber at seeing her magnificent summer come to an end. Sometimes themes come across a lot better in my mind's eye than they do through the lens of my camera! I think this kelly green dress, which seemed very Mother Naturey to me back at my apartment, was far too contrasty with the muted hues of the sand and ocean. I'd wanted the model to almost disappear into her surroundings and instead she really stood out. So, I learned to pay more attention to colors in wardrobe and their relation to their surroundings. I'll hold onto the dress for the time being and maybe use it again in a forest shoot, where it's closer in color to the environment. 

In an effort to subdue some of the images, I used texture overlays, a process I've not used much. Someone that has been really inspirational to me is Brooke Shaden, a fine art photographer who does amazing work using compositing and  texture overlays. I'm still pretty tentative with my use of them, but I'm challenging myself to experiment and go a little further each time. What do you think of my overlay images?

I also played around with long exposure shooting, trying to create a ghostlike effect with the model walking back and forth in front of the camera set to very slow shutter speeds. I still need to work on that! *I* know that's the model in the green dress, but it probably just looks like a green blur to all of you. 

So in the end, do you think my pictures give a sense of the ending of summer? Why or why not? 

by the lake, part II

Since I'm stuck living back on Long Island for the time being, I thought it might be nice to really explore it while I'm here. I've lived on LI since I was 9 years old (read: many many years) and there are still *so* many places I've never been to. I'd even lived in the town of Lake Ronkonkoma for awhile when my ex-husband and I first moved in together, and I had never actually been to The Lake. There was a restaurant there, The Bavarian Inn, which I knew to now be abandoned and all grafittied-up (bettye-ism), a setting which is much to my liking. Sadly, when we got there that day we discovered that the restaurant was newly fenced-in (urgh) and not in a "oh, *I* can get in THERE" way, but...yeah. We were not shooting there. So we moved to Part II: The Lake.

My thought for the lake portion of the shoot had been a) capturing backlit and sun flare-y photos and b) evoking soft femininity in this vintage nightgown. It was a big fail on the sun shots (!) as I miscalculated our time, AND had been unaware of the tall trees around the lake, which knocked off 15 minutes of our sun-time. Live and learn! I should download one of those sunset time apps! It's amazing how much earlier every day the sun sets. I always sort of thought it set one minute earlier each day...but it's more like ten! So the difference from one week to the next is pretty drastic.

I like the softness of the water and sand shots...and so enhanced their paleness and fragility in post-processing. The images with the trees in the background, however, were a little more contrasty so I edited them with stronger tones. What do you think?

Even though we didn't have the sun directly, it was *such* beautiful light that evening, even after the sun dropped down below the trees, its glow lit the model's face so nicely. 

  

by the lake, part I

I'm so glad I'm finally getting back to doing personal photography projects. I try to have a little something in mind to learn, a technique or camera feature...and then create a styled shoot around it. This part of the shoot, up the hill from a lake, I was shooting in a bit of a challenging situation - lots of dappled light - which meant lots of camera adjustments.

It's funny, I still get nervous during shoots with other people...I fumble around with my camera, and I get self-conscious about directing and posing. Then driving home afterward I'm always like, oh that was awful, they must think I'm such a beginner, I've wasted everyone's time...and then I get home and start playing with the images and find I have some really lovely photos. Yay.

I love soft focus, hazy photos...sun flare, backlighting, sort of a dreamy ethereal look...don't you?

It's nice, in-between doing photographs for other people, to allow yourself the freedom to photograph *your* vision, to nurture your own sense of creativity. I think it's important to spend time on creating your own style. It's what will set you apart from other photographers. 

Stay tuned for Part II...down on the beach.

skulls and bats and lungs, oh my!

I'm really excited to have done a shoot this weekend with Bat House Design - they're making super cool graphic tees. I especially love the girls' crop top - it's such a different (sexy!) silhouette - girls, this is not your boyfriend's tee!

I had a lot of fun shooting up by the train, even when random motorcycle guy vroomed in...walked past us without saying a word...did *something* on the other side of the train (gah) (ha), then left. 

 

And I'm *SUPER* excited to see my photographs on their website, woohoo, I'm famous! :-) 

I know it's a little silly, but...yeah, I'm excited! 

 

the train whistle melody wove through the trees....

Still looking for that hard drive disc with all my photos from the past couple years on it...but I did find some more pictures I'd squirreled away on my computer at work (thank goodness!)

here's a little photo shoot I did with my daughter at an old train station on Long Island...

loser's weepers....

I'm just sick about something I seem to have lost in my latest move. Last year I'd FINALLY splurged on an external hard drive as I'd practically filled a 230 gig computer with pictures over the past few years. I excitedly moved EVERY picture over onto the external drive, allowing my computer to run faster once again. Let me repeat myself. Every. Picture. Every photo shoot. All the pictures of my house (now sold and belonging to someone else). The animals. My daughter's Sweet 16. Jr prom. Sr. prom. Graduation. EVERY. PICTURE.


Somehow, in the move, it has disappeared. I packed up the electronics on the very last night. All the computer stuff was the last to be packed up. All the computer stuff was the first to be UNpacked in the new place. I have the external hard drive docking station. I have every other thing. But I cannot find the DISK. It's not like a cd, it's thicker and heavier. Not easy to accidentally throw out. And yet....? Four months later, it still hasn't appeared. I'm starting to try to accept that all those pictures are just GONE. It makes me
heart-sick.


Of course I have pictures saved on websites here and there - flickr, picasa web albums, facebook, etc. So I'm starting to gather those together...here are a couple shots from a little shoot my daughter and I did a couple Novembers ago out on Long Island. I dragged her out of bed with the rising sun. She was thrilled. Hee hee.

snips and snails and puppy dog tails...

so, I got a request through Model Mayhem to do an editorial-style shoot with....a GUY!!! ha. other than relatives and the occasional in-studio head shot, I've really never shot guys! i feel like I don't even know how to do that! when I visualize doing a photo shoot, I always visualize girly things. so I went to my flickr favorites to see if I could find some inspiration there and...not much luck.





by marieclaire roman



by parker fitzgerald





by bite_photography





by david urbanke





by crystin moritz





by corinne golabek





by dusdin condren





by nirrimi





by benji ashley


I'm more drawn to the softer, more sensitive (I guess?) male photos...but the model who wants to do the shoot is very athletic and like, cut. I'm thinking to add something a little different to his portfolio, but...maybe one of you has some great "guy" photos you can refer me to for some inspiration?? 

back to business....finally

I've been sick again the past few days...but I managed to squeeze in a little Dragonfly shop photo shoot over the weekend. I worked with one of my fave models that I've shot with a couple times since moving to Brooklyn - Shelbi. She's very sweet and lives nearby. Isn't she just angelic?? She sort of reminds me of Alexis Bledell - Rory from Gilmore Girls. 


I'm not done setting up "The Studio" (aka The Office, aka The Dining Room!) yet. I still need to get supports mounted on the wall so I can hang background supports - for either my grey paper or fabric. I've been looking for some cheap (or preferably free!) indian looking rugs to put on the floor for autumn and winter. One of the runway shows in 2009 used a variety of smaller Indian rugs hanging as the background and it was quite lovely, but I would guess they have a little bigger budget than I do! 


In the meantime, I close the tall double doors between The Studio and The Bedroom, and use the doors as a backdrop. It's not ideal as all those lines are hard to keep straight in the heat of shooting and the paint on the doors is pretty reflective so I get sort of a glare off the doors on the side nearer the light. As with most things, it's a work in progress. But it was fun to shoot with Shelbi again and I'll finally have some new auctions up in the shop starting this Friday night. Yay.

and on the bright side....

and on the *bright* side, I finally got a little photo shoot put together this past weekend, and a really darling model, Justine, was kind of enough to traipse and spin around the woods for me. I was going for sort of a dreamy soft focus flowy end of summer feel. I was a little disappointed in myself - we were shooting late in the day in the woods on an overcast day...and I failed to remember some key guidelines about shooting in low light and ended up with a LOT of really blurry shots. For this sort of theme I do like a soft focus, but some of them were just plain BLURRY! I always feel so bad when I botch a shoot because the models are doing it for pictures for their portfolios, and when they spend a couple hours of their time and don't end up with that many good pictures......eek. I feel really bad. we also did some street style shots back on my street but I didn't get to edit them yet.


so tonight I've been mopping up my apartment from a flood! apparently the upstairs neighbor was cleaning...something...and knocked over what HE says was a 5-gallon bucket of water, but...my daughter had a 5-gallon fish tank for a couple years and this seemed like a LOT more than 5 gallons of water! I've got shoes and clothes and hats and my daughter's artwork hanging up all over the place to dry, as every box (I'm still not done unpacking!) that was on the floor was SOAKED. and THEN I'm getting ready for an ebay catalog shoot tomorrow night...so I have miles to go before I sleep, and mucho work to do! was nice to have a good excuse to sit down for a couple minutes and post this...