What can I say

And now for something completely different

Laura

Great shoot today! Laura Penn (www.laurapenn.com - hire her!) is a Chicago actress with a great personality, beautiful smile and a very youthful look. Looking at her images on her website, I could see she had all that covered well enough. I wanted to make her look a little more glamorous and grown up. She showed up right on time (talk about professionalism) and came fully stocked with wardrobe and makeup ready to get to work.

When the shoot got started I began to get a little nervous. The photos were ok, but nothing was getting me excited. We tried some different poses, and we laughed a bit to get us in a good mood, but the image I had in my head still wasn't showing up in front of the camera. Maybe I couldn't make her look anything other than "cute". She has a lot of energy and every shot I took either showed too much youthfulness or the pose was too cheese. I had my work cut out for me.

But I learned something important today. As the shoot progressed, she became more comfortable and I found what looks were and weren't working and became more comfortable giving direction. Soon we had a great rhythm and was firing away some great photos shot after shot. So the lesson I take away from the shoot is this: it's never the model's fault if you're photo's aren't coming out the way you want them to. Sure you may find it challenging at first, but with a keen eye, good communication and an ability to adapt to the shoot to fit the model, you will always come away with something great.

Thank you Laura for being such a great model today. I hope my photos help get you a great gig!

Self Portrait

Testing light for a shoot I'm doing today in studio and decided to bust out the hassy for a thru the viewfinder self-portrait. Kinda fun...