Burst Mode On

Quiet again, I know. Life keeps getting in the way. I went through a little spasm of photographin' there for a minute, then we decided to try to buy a new house. For various reasons I won't get into this is kind of hard on me. I doubt I'll have time or energy for photography until at least a few months after this is done (which with any luck will be sometime in July.)

But I did manage to take a few pictures.

This is an aspiring model named Brittany. (Not Britney. Brittany is a fine old name. Britney is... not.) Yet again, high-ISO fast-lens madness.



The backlighting is a streetlight: it was absolutely pitch-black outside other than streetlights. Here's a picture I took of her where I literally could not see her through the viewfinder.



Here's me gettin' all Ryan McGinley, except that it was kind of cold to ask her to run around naked. But it's Cute Young Person In Hip Yet Unstaged Circumstance With Direct Flash Lighting, so that should at least get a C for effort.



M More after the jump - click here!

On Model Psychology

Well-known model Elyse Sewell (her blog is linked on the right) mentioned that she'd had a bit of a skin breakout recently and that she was subconsciously convinced that everyone was repulsed by her monstrous visage. (I'm paraphrasing here.)

Here are a few responses I made, one of which has a funny little story about my photo shoot yesterday.

Response One, to Elyse's original post:

As I'm sure you know, it matters not how lovely the lady, as soon as she gets in her head that she has a problem, it immediately equates to her being actively repulsive. You are one of the most beautiful women in the freaking world, not to mention crazy smart and funny as Hell, and some rough zits convince you you're unfit to mingle with normal, decent folk. I see this with models a lot and it never fails to confusticate me.

The really funny part is, a man can be balding, scraggly-faced, and have a pot-belly peeking out under his "Def Leppard '89" t-shirt and honestly believe he is a good haircut and a nice jacket away from being Brad Pitt. God is an iron.

Response Two, to another poster's comment:

The model I shot yesterday had, for reasons known only to God, eaten an entire bag of carrots the day before. Although she had never had an issue before, she had a food reaction and broke out in blotchy red hives. (Her trachea also started to spasm, but she took some Benadryl and it went away pretty fast.) I suspect the carrots may have slightly contaminated with a mold or something, as I've never heard of anybody almost dying from eating carrots before. On the upside, we discovered that she can now see in total darkness.

In any event, it all appeared to be gone by the time I saw her but she was still semi-convinced that her face would scare small children and dogs and insisted on putting up makeup to run to the freaking store for a last-minute wardrobe addition. (The stylist didn't have anything plain enough, so we went to Target.)

This woman is beautiful, charming, and intelligent (she speaks several languages - some of which are non-Romance languages) as well as being an accomplished model, but for a solid half-hour I swear I saw her looking around to see if people were masking their horror at her appearance. The mind boggles.

M More after the jump - click here!

Chicago Shoot! The Day

Well, nobody fell off the roof or got run over or anything, so it was a qualified success. We'll see how happy people are with their pictures. There sure was a lot of running around, I'll say that much.

We were at one studio all morning, then some of us went to another studio, and a makeup artist met us there, and then I took one of the models home, because she lived two blocks from the first studio, and hadn't got a car anyway.

While I hope some of the pictures turn out I think the high point of my day was either showing up at my studio and introducing everyone to my fabulous studio partner, who doesn't believe in clothes, or taking one of the models in full makeup to the drugstore on an emergency supply run. She stopped a lot of traffic. :) Here she is:



M More after the jump - click here!

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, It's Off To Work I Go

Well, actually, I'm not at my "day job" today. I telecommute sometimes. But photographically, now that I've got most of my images in my Lightroom database, I'm "mining" the older stuff for stock. Like I said in my previous post, I'm seeing a lot of images that I haven't thought about for a while.

Here's kind of a cool picture I took by the light of a neon sign at a dry-cleaner's about 8 O'Clock at night.



The nice thing about these pictures is that while I wasn't thinking "stock" when I took them, I did get full releases from all the models. If anybody does want to use them, I don't have to chase down models I haven't spoken to in years to get publicity rights.

Anyway, I'm through the first year (I got a late start that year, so it's more like four months.) Only four more years to go!

M More after the jump - click here!