Confidence = Choice

 I have many more miles to travel on this Photography road and I will always be learning, trying new things.  In these attempts I may fail, but I will also learn.    Usually after a photo session I am exhausted and feel beaten up, so I don't do this for my ego.

  I do Photography because during and after a photo scene I love how the girls react to seeing themselves in a new way.  

 I see their confidence build.  And yes, confidence is sexy, but it is fundamentally more important to have real confidence along with attributes such as intelligence, creative, nurturing, hard working and grace.  Confidence is the catalyst for career choices, marriage choices, Lifestyle choices, even the choice of where you will live in the world.  It is a powerful statement when a woman with tears in her eyes says to me "I never knew I could look like this!"  I usually respond with, I knew it all along.  

Project Houndstooth,  Model Jessica Stark

Project Houndstooth Model Jessica Stark

Project Houndstooth  Model Jessica Stark

LOVE humor in an image

Model Madi Roberts helped me break in my new lighting and lens today. She is incredibly FUN and can laugh at herself. LOVE that about her!

Bubble Gum!

Model Madi Roberts helped me learn my new Alien Bees 800 lighting and my new Sigma 85mm lens. The camera loves Madi.  She is incredibly photogenic.

The Camera LOVES her!

Model Madi Roberts was generous in helping me play with my new Alien Bee 800 lighting and new Sigma 85mm lens. This image is straight out of the camera Canon 60D.

Brutal Foto Scene 2013 Part I Model: Andrea Jones

Just 2 days after arriving home from a 2 week trip to Russia and Ukraine I set up 3 fashion photography shoots!  I had seen a Vogue Fashion Photography contest campaign open to ALL photographers and I thought it was worth a shot.  My 3 models were Andrea Jones, Jessica Stark and Soraia Pargali. With Andrea Jones, we designed a dress out of a 15 ft of sheer black fabric which was inspired by a tornado.   Creating the dress took several hours of thought and creativity, but we came up with a dress that was unique and would convey our vision of Mother Nature - tornado and empowerment.

Feeling pretty good about our results we then began the actual photo shoot.  Andrea is a skilled model; she is active in various film productions and modeling gigs.  She worked the dress and her expressions brilliantly while I yelled: “Be the tornado!”  It quickly became apparent that the images were out of focus.

Fast forward through the hours of standard, and then not so standard, camera and lighting adjustments and we painstakingly managed to get a few workable photos.  I still have no idea what happened.  Why the camera could not focus on her face and eyes is still out of my realm of photography knowledge.    Maybe the light was absorbed in all the black?  One thing I can say with certainty is it pays to have creative, reliable, never say die models.  Andrea worked incredibly hard and the process was brutal!  She did everything she could. The failure was on my side.   She is the one who was able to make it happen and get the stellar photos that evening.