Kayla Deconstructed

Today was a really beautiful day! The temperature was great, the lighting perfect on my front porch so I decided to take advantage of it. I had my hubby help me drag my background outside, and we did the entire shoot out there. I wanted simple shots, something reminiscent of old Calvin Klein ads. I went into the shoot planning to change everything in black and white. One look at Kayla in that lighting though and I totally reneged. LOL. The lighting was soft and really gorgeous. As always at the end of the shoot, we took the wardrobe down to the bare minimal and did the last frames super simple. Here are my fav shots.

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.

Isla Desierta

So a few weeks ago Sherry, Marissa, Marlene and I took a trip to the east coast for a wonderful location that I'd found prior. The location was gorgeous, and according to the tide charts, should have been perfect. Except...I didn't count on the full moon the night before. To say it was high tide was a huge...HUGE understatement. The hotel that was '20 mins' from the beach turned into 45 minutes, so we started a lot later than planned. Not to mention the wardrobe snafu we had as well. Seemed everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.  Luckily for me I'd chosen an amazing team for the trip, so between Sherry, Marissa and Marlene we braved the elements and had fun doing it. :)

Here is video from our trip, as well as some of my favorite shots.

Dress by KHendrix

Dress by KHendrix

Top by KHendrix

Top by KHendrix

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. :)

Year's nearly over, time to catch up...

So I've been terribly lax in my blogging. Hopefully with me going full time in October will give me more time to attend to this. So to catch you up with my year, I'll so with a series of behind the scenes pics and videos. :)

All about state of mind

With every artist, their work will usually reflect their state of mind, at least at the time they create. I'm pretty sure that's universal. You get to express what you can't quite vocalize to others in a way they'll hopefully understand. It puts a piece of you in everything you do. Yeah, you can take pictures or paint, or dance just to do it, but when you feel something as you're doing, it makes the experience that much richer. So anyway, on to my point. I came up with the idea of this shoot when I was in a somewhat introspective mood. I called it 'The Edge of the World'. I couldn't have found a better model to portray what I envisioned for this shoot than Ariana. I mean, the energy of this girl is amazing. the way she moves, her daring, it all helped bring this shoot to life for me. I'm so happy and excited for what we created. Here are my favorite images from the shoot. Stay tuned for the short film we created for the shoot. Big shouts out to Mike Van Every for directing and shooting it.