Battle of the Boutiques

I'm sponsoring a fun event on February 26th! It's called the "Battle of the Boutiques," is organized by poorlittlerichgirls.com and will feature some local Chicago boutiques battling gladiator-style to prove they're the most fashionable.

Many drinks we be drank and goodie bags given out- which will include an Organic Headshots coupon for a discount on any photo session. (See, I give out coupons now and then like a good girl.) It should be a blast! It even has celebrity judges. PLRG sure knows how to party!

Fashion in the fall

Last night an old friend and I met up for photo shoot in an alley, using some cool clothing from local Chicago designers.

We had a lot of fun, and were interrupted only once by a passing car. Not only is Tonee an excellent model, but he can grab a light on a stand and carry it to safety lickety split too!

Actually, we were interrupted a couple other times when we would hear some scurrying in bushes or behind trash cans. There were a lot of rats in the alley and if you don't move or make much noise for a while, they come out to explore.

I think some of them got used to us after about an hour, as they started to poke their heads out to say "hello" here and there.

But they were camera shy, so thankfully Tonee is the only one in the shots.

It was nice to get outside shooting on one of the last warm evenings of the season, before it gets too consistently nippy at night to wander around with cameras blazing. We laid out the outfits for the evening with lots of jackets and coats, and didn't really need them.

A very special thanks to Tonee Dang for being an excellent model for the evening, and for the designers for providing the shirts: Fussya Co. by Chris Ho, and Black Market Caviar by Marco Lopez.

"The Swooning Shadow" and other tales

If I could change my middle name, I think I'd change it to "rim light," because I like rim lighting so much. (Or I'd probably change it to "superhuman destroyer of evil," but that's a post for another day.)

Maybe it's because of my background in cinematography and filmmaking that gives me an affinity for rim lighting, aka edge lighting- films use it a lot to add dynamics to a scene. A light placed behind the subject to light the edge of his or her hair, shoulders, etc., really makes the subject stand out from their background and gives them a solid look. It splashes light all over their edgy parts, but also creates new shadows and gives their features depth. Hand me a shovel, because I dig it.

I took this photo last night as a comp photo project. I snapped the subject's photo with a simple lighting setup, then another of myself for the shadow, and replaced his shadow with mine in Photoshop. (Sounds simple enough, but my mouse-using wrist is still sore and my eyes are watering from staring at the screen for so long...) Special thanks to Dave Hamner for modeling for the photo, and for being so awesome!

Pow! An explosion of ties.

I got this idea for a fashion photoshoot a while ago, and thanks to stylist Sheyssa Rosado and model David Latimer, I was finally able to make it happen. I saw a photo once of a bunch of ties flying through the air- like they had been tossed into the wind or something- and I thought it would have looked even better if someone was wearing one of those ties.

The concept was to have ties tossed around a model, almost like just the ties were caught in a wind machine but the model wasn't. Here's my favorite photo from the shoot... to me, it looks like he's so cool that he's immune to wind or something. Or maybe the ties are just so awesome that they keep exploding and jumping all over the place.

Obviously, to get that effect I couldn't use actual wind. It would be a little annoying to throw ties at David and try to have them catch the wind, then pick them all back up again for each shot. I won't totally give away the mechanics of the setup, but I will give a hint. A lot of fishing line, wire, and a patient model.

Thanks again, Sheyssa and David!