Photography 1O2: Stay in the Shade and Pay Attention to the Line

A part of me is a firm believer that "true greatness" comes with time and lots and lots of practice and hard work, but the other half of me is an obsessive overachiever that wants EVERYTHING I attempt to do to come to me as naturally as breathing, but then I have to stand back and ponder to myself, "what is the fun in that?"...So bear that in mind as I try to explain this journey I have undertaken of learning photography from one of the BEST of the best.

I LOVE this career, so much so that I NEED one day to end so that I can get up and do it all over again. I love everything about it from working with clients, which is my most favorite, to editing, to coming up with ideas for the next event, and I have the coolest partner and mentor around, but...I have so much to learn when it comes to being behind the camera that it literally hurts my brain. When I first started playing with a camera, you would not believe how hard it was to get that sucker to just focus. Here I'm shooting on a $600 to $700 camera, which has all but x-ray vision it seems in its automatic settings, but in manual, I couldn't get the darn thing to focus to save my life. It took me months to figure out this one simple little task, and it wasn't until Ramone came into my life that I was convinced I had finally gotten down my first teaching principal.

With that being said, my mentor decided it was time to work on "outdoor" lighting, which is probably one of the most beautiful aspects of photography, but yet, to me, the scariest, so if focus took me months, lighting may take me years! lol We started plugging away a few weeks ago ingraining in me the direction of light, where the light is in retrospect to the client, the different light at different times of day and such, and this week she decided to take me out and put it to practice, so I brought my little mini-me along to be my model and Ramone in hand, ready to soak in the day's lessons she would teach me.

After trying to figure out my settings from point A to point B, finding the best shade in each spot, her asking me where I would put mini-me in each location, taking too long to shoot cause mini-me's attention has far drifted from what I'm doing, as well as her pointing out everything I don't want in my back ground and the angles at which I should stand, I was really missing our studio and felt like I was going to have a mini meltdown. I went home and cried it out a little, disappointed I hadn't come as far along in the last few weeks as I thought I had, and pulled the pictures I had taken up on my computer. After sifting through them, I decided I didn't do quite as bad as I felt I did, but bear in mind, I want greatness when no one is looking, and she was there holding my hand! The information that day was a complete overhaul but I learned a lot, and after talking it out with my Besty, we decided the sun was too much for me right now, and that I needed to stay in the shade and pay attention to the line, which is basically how things are arranged in the background of a picture, so this will be my focus point until I have lined my pictures into submission and my mentor browbeats me into moving onto the next thing that will move me to greatness.

SO WACHAAA!! Look out world! I'm bringing shaded lines to a frame near you..coming soon - Love Angie ;)

Bella Italiana, Foxy Fox

Oh...my...yumminess!!! Life is always full of new adventures, and when I was faced with this new challenge, there was no way I was backing down. Me and my first session with food went head-to-head this week, and boy was I more than a little nervous. I'm use to trying to create a connection with someone and capturing that on camera. For almost a week, I mulled over ideas, thinking to myself, "How could I possibly have a connection with food? It just sits there!" There's no smile and no personality to play off of, so I was far from my comfort zone.

Once I arrived for my session at the Foxy Fox, I was immediately inspired by the passion of Jeff and his staff. The food was so perfectly placed on each plate that I had to fight the urge to stick my finger in each one to sample, but I resisted, amazingly, and turned that energy into capturing a picture that looked so good you could almost smell it with your eyes. By the time I was done, I was not only in love with the food, but the restaurant and their staff. Everyone should give this place a try. They are located in McDonough on East Lake Parkway, and make sure you tell them I sent you! ;)

Boudoir Bliss

The day was beautiful with sunlight bouncing off the floors, and a glow radiating in each client's eyes. It was a day a photographer dreams of for themselves and the client to create perfect boudoir bliss. Every client usually shows up for their appointment a little shy and, of course, pretty nervous, but as each outfit is tried on and my sidekick Angie works her directive magic, the true spirit of each client begins to open up, and in that moment, you see them realize and feel that they are as beautiful as they really are. This is when the magic happens and a photographer knows that with each click of the camera that luminous personality and true beauty is being captured.
Boudoir photography has absolutely become one of my favorites for this exact reason. We laugh so hard until we cry at times, and the client even sometimes becomes creative with ideas for themselves, which is an amazing energy to feed off of. Angie and I look very much forward to growing this side of our business and providing this type of experience more often for our clients because this is what life is all about...laughing, creating, and capturing that moment of emotion that is timeless, no matter what setting it presents itself in.

Kell meets Ramone

She believed life was perfect just as it was, working solo, paving her way through life one beautifully lit moment at a time. Kell was content to just be, shuttering at her own pace...that is...until she met him. So dashingly handsome as he strolled into her life on that perfect back lit evening. The sun flares between them could not go unnoticed by onlookers. As the dark-eye'd masterpiece got closer to Kell's view, she could feel her shutter kick into high speed. "My name is Ramone, bella signora," he said to her. Kell smiled so big that the light around her just blew out, making all those around her readjust their IOS.

This was the moment, the beginning, of a magical connection that called Kell to work with more brilliance. She asked Ramone to join her journey to capture every beautiful moment that exists in every shade that be, and from then on, a mystical and wonderful friendship began...

Hello World!

Wow!!! This has been a long time coming, but here I am world, finally blogging it up. I look forward to sharing all my exciting photography adventures with you and introducing my CrAzY, but oh so talented side kick, Angie Duncan. She holds my lenses and brings me coffee when I need and every once in a while I let her let loose with a camera, so welcome to our world all of you out there. I hope you enjoy our adventures as much as we do.