Style

          Some people go years without finding their style.  Luckily for me I have some awesome teachers and my own strobe lighting kit.  This allows me to take lots of in studio pictures ANYWHERE!
  
     I have been on a journey to find my style ever since I began taking classes.  Very rarely does a person know what their style is once they pick up a camera.  Usually it has to be developed over time.  To speed up the process of finding style my teacher, Professor Gomez, is having us make idea books.  Thanks to this "idea book" I have picked up the habit of looking at photography and new photos and new photographers.

     The other day I found this photographer, and I LOVE his pictures.  You can see them at http://andrzejdragan.com/  His pictures are AMAZING.  The more I looked at them, and the more I studied them I wondered what made his pictures so beautiful?  I decided I want to take pictures just like him.  They are kind of dark and gloomy, but I love the lighting, and the element of depression.

     After I found his pictures I went on to find more photographers that I love.  Most of them were from Europe.  Anyways, thanks to them I think I know my style.  I love photographing on a black back ground.  I love the darkness in the picture surrounding a subject.  Then I looked at my lighting, and I realized.  I LOVE SOFT LIGHT!  I love the way soft lighting looks on a person.  It's sudden and highlights features very subtly.

      The more I look at my blog and the more I look at past pictures I've taken I can see I am constantly striving to capture that subtle light.  I think the pictures I decided to post in this blog represent the soft light I'm talking about.  There are some pictures from the "Kids" post that have subtle light in them (they are my favorite ones).  A lot of the pictures from "The Beginning" post have subtle light.  Now that I have realized I love soft lighting I just need to get my photoshop style down (my editing style).  Anyways, I hope you enjoy my pictures.

  

 

Kids

                     This was my first shoot with a kid that was one and a half years old!  I learned two very important lessons on this shoot.  The first one is to have patience.  Kids that are one and a half have no concept about listening, or doing what you tell them to do.  I admit I got a little frustrated.  Then when the kid pulled out his playing cards I got an idea!  He was so focused on the playing cards he barely noticed I was taking his picture.  At first the pictures were too dark because he wasn't in the direction of my lighting.  To get him in front of my lights I simply moved the playing cards.  After that we had fun and took pictures.  I felt he had really warmed up to me.  After I got enough pictures, I began to show him the back of my camera.  That's when this kid put on the basket as a hat.  It was almost like he was saying, "take a picture of me with this basket on my head."  So I'd take a picture and show him; then I'd take another picture and show him.   I did that until we both got bored.                                                                The other lesson I learned was to know what my customer wants before you go into a shoot.  This should be obvious, but I didn't know it.  I had all these ideas of taking the kid's shirt off and making him look like an angel, but the parents were very conservative.  That's not a bad thing, but if I would have known what they wanted before the shoot it would have been a little less frustrating.  Even though this was a very frustrating shoot for me I think I got some good pictures, and I met some awesome people!  I'm glad the parents gave me the time to photograph their son and helped me build my portfolio!  I just hope they like the pictures.

The Beginning

      I'm a college student with BIG dreams!  I want to be a famous portrait artist known throughout the world. I idolize Arnold Newman.  I think he is the best portrait photographer that ever lived! Of course I look up to other photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Sebastiao Salgado, and Lewis Hine.  I could keep making my list, but I'm afraid you'll get bored.

                                

       
     As an up and coming photographer I find the competitiveness about the photographic world a little scary.  It seems the only way to become successful is to assist a professional photographer.  I plan on assisting once I am out of school.  Right now I have a job, school, and I coach a youth soccer team (which I'm afraid I'll have to give up in order to achieve my goal).

                                                                             Soccer was a HUGE part of my life when I was younger.  I've been playing it since I was 5 years old.  After I graduated from Lyon College I played semi professional in San Diego.  During that season I found the politics of soccer wasn't going to be worth $25,000 a year.

    After that season I started thinking about my life.  Why am I going to kiss up to a soccer coach that doesn't even know I exist?  It was like he already had his team picked.  I got sick of soccer politics and realized by the time I made it pro (if I ever did) the league might not be going on.  The league was known to fail in the past. 

      I graduated with an English Degree (which I had no idea what to do with because there were no job openings), and applied to Pololu Robotics.  I cried after the interview.  I didn't know if I did good enough, and the people there made me feel kind of stupid.  I was surprised they wanted to hire me.  I almost said no, but I'm glad I work there.  I am currently their product photographer, and I handle some of their accounting stuff.  Recently I was told I wouldn't be doing so much accounting, but I will be doing more photography.  I'm happy with that.  I look up to my boss Jan the most.  He is really smart and funny.  I want to be just like him, but I'm a girl obviously!