Portfolio Shoot with Mindy

I love helping new models get start their portfolio. I had so much fun on this shoot with BMG model Mindy, makeup was done by Tina, at FaceForward with TRob.

Test Shoot-Tristan

Recently I did a test shoot with Elite Miami model Tristan with Tina from Faceforward with Trob for makeup. Beautiful and sweet model. here are my favorite images from our shoot.

Test shoot with Hannah, BMG

Here are my favorite images from my test shoot with BMG model, Hannah.

Bts with Kayla

 I had a very fun test shoot with Kayla and T Rob the other day. It was one of those shoots where I saw a video and got inspiration. This blog post was supposed to be a simple behind the scenes look, but it reminded me that I intended to do a few blog posts on staging.This shoot is a simple example of staging. I'm a firm believer of working through your circumstances. Especially when you're first starting. Regardless of the size of your budget staging allows you to shoot beyond your space. Any one who has been to my house knows how small my living room is. It's never stopped me from shooting, and I refuse to let it limit what I can shoot. A good portion of my portfolio was shot in my living room or around my house. It's an unspoken rule that anything in and around my house can and will be used as props. :)  I'm a beauty photographer, so I don't need a lot of real estate to shoot. My sets are generally not too elaborate and can be on a small scale. But with some creativity, some odds and ends from the craft store and determination you can transform any size space into what you need.   For this particular shoot, I started with four poster boards and some crayons. See below, my lovely American flag I made. According to my husband even though I was doing it with crayon I couldn't half-ass it, so even though it's cut off in the picture there are fifty doggone stars and 13 stripes. :)

Here is what I did with a little, well...a lot of help from photoshop to bring out the color of my flag.

 

Here are some behind the scenes pictures from our shoot as well as more final images. I'm obsessed with these images.

Abbey-Deconstructed

Recently I had another shoot with Abbey Leblanc from Emerge, and we did a wide range of shots. We tried different looks, some different lighting, and it was great. For Abbey's deconstructed shots, we did them in between looks. She was playing around the bunny ears while we decided what the next look would be and I decided to shoot. These are fun shots, those who know me and have shot with me know I'm not much for smiley shots, but these were about showing Abbey's silly side. I left the retouching alone, only changing the pics to black and white and adding a little noise. Love these shots.

Ari-Deconstructed

So lately I've been making a concentrated effort to get my work published. Small magazine, online magazine, and everything in between. While that's a great personal goal and certainly helps you get your photography out there, it makes posting your work and sneak peeks impossible. I know I have a short attention span, and people on the internet even shorter. What that means for photographers like myself who're just beginning and trying to build a following is that you're easily forgotten. Curiosity seekers move on to the next big thing, no one is discussing your work and new fans are harder to acquire. Social media requires constant effort and lots of shiny objects to gain attention. :) Not to mention I, as a rule, am super impatient, and I always want to show my work immediately so as to say, look, look what I've done today. Recently on my shoots, I've taken the model out of our 'set-up', taken down  their hair, softened or removed the make-up and shot some really simple black and whites portraits. This does two things, it gets simple headshots for the model, and allows me to get simple shots for myself. Well, I wanted to take it a little further with this recent shoot. The word deconstructed rang in my head, and the concept of literally deconstructing what we've done on the shoot intrigued me. No strobes or fancy lighting, no overt posing, no touch ups on the make-up, I wanted the model exactly as she would be after a long shoot. More than anything I just want to see if I can get any real type of emotion or feeling if the model is tired and ready to go home. lol.  Once you say you're taking pictures, the model's going to pose tired or not, lol, so it should be interesting to see what I'll get. Ari's my first experiment with this.
  
This Sunday I shot with Ari, where we did a crazy beauty editorial. (Stay tuned for that behind the scenes.) Afterward I took her hair down out of the last style, and had her change into a simple shirt. Right on my front stoop, we did natural lighting and a blank wall. (Prepare to see a lot of that wall.) I'm going to make an effort to get portraits of the models I use in my shoots, after the shoot is done and will call these portraits  'models Deconstructed'. So check my facebook page, www.facebook.com/OhSnapStudiosTampa, and here for 'models Deconstructed.' Here are my fav shots from Ari.

Behind the Scenes-Abbey Leblanc

Did a shoot with Emerge model Abbey Leblanc and makeup artist Sherry Restifo. I had a whole plan in my head of what we would shoot, but was quickly distracted once I got to our location. Sherry's house has a huge window in the front that let in a ton of beautiful natural light that I just had to use. Here are some behind the scenes shots, as well as some of the results of that natural light.

Texting with one eye barely open. Abbey was a pro. lol

How the make-up table looks at the end of the day. :)