What can I say? This shoot has a special place in my heart! 

There's quite a lot of rule breaking happening here. I spent endless hours being taught to systematically remove colour casts, and here I am throwing them in. Well, that's the thing about rules--you know them, you acknowledge them, you give them a nod and then you do what you want. 

I am particularly fond of this one. Marita reminds me of Kirsten Dunst and it seems like the kind of pose Kirsten Dunst would do. It makes me think of that Liebovitz shoot (wait...I swear there were horses in that shoot...where are the horses?) or Melancholia (but much less serious and on a much lower budget). So if I think Marita looks like Kirsten and I always thought I resembled Marita, does that make me look like Kirsten too? No, I guess it doesn't quite work that way. 

I love the vintage look of these.
Something tells me Oma would really like them. 

There is always a lot of prep to do before shoot--technical prep like charging batteries and cleaning lenses, getting everything together. Then there is the prep that the model has to do. But then there was this whole extra step of prepping Khomille, Marita's horse. Brushing her down, trimming her whiskers (or not), cleaning off her feet, toweling her off, putting her "pretty" harness on.

Animals are always a fun challenge to shoot. They're never too sure why we are making them do things, and more often than not, have plans of their own. The best thing though, is when they do something that makes their own personality assert itself--like when a horse sticks its tongue out at you, or gives its owner a little headbutt.

It's the eyes, right M?

Congrats on graduating Marita! I'm very proud of you little cuz!

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4:24 PM

Just noticed I haven't posted anything yet for 2013. That doesn't mean I'm not shutter active. I am finally completing the final class of the photography program at Algonquin and shooting like a maniac. I've got the studio cleared out again after it became (..ahem) temporary storage. I'm looking forward to really turning it into a dedicated space and sprucing it up and hanging some work on the walls. Picking the ones to go up will be a challenge!

I'll probably need to create a new website for my class. While I like the blog format because it allows you to see what's new, it's not great at showing a full body of work.

One of our assignments is self-portraits. I've done lots of these (hey, when there's nobody else around, who's left to shoot?) but I wanted to go for something different, something odd and quirky...like me. I took the first shot in the tub, and I've been playing lots with superimposing and layering, and put some icy frost from winterlude over the top. I prefer the B&W but the bottom one went over better in class. I find it a little Avatarish (wow...that was a few years ago now!). Do you have a preference?

Next post will be less me and more other stuff...promise :)

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4:10 PM

Only 2 classes left of my lighting class. I'm taking a minute to post a shot I took last night for one of my last assignments. Sometimes (most of this time) you have this vision and find yourself scratching your head and fiddling with the camera until you get it just right, and sometimes it just doesn't happen. Other times (almost never), everything comes together almost too easily. I had one of those moments last night shooting this pic. I was anticipating having a hard time with it, but we got set up, I fired a test shot, and BAM! That was it. I was like, huh, I guess we're done! I didn't even bother taking any safety shots. Thanks to Matt for posing for innumerable shots this past week and not complaining (too much).

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12:06 PM

update: just getting around to putting up a few more pics of Nadia...As you can see, Oliver jumped in on the fun (as always!) Nadia came to visit me this weekend from Montreal, so I took the chance to get her in front of the camera and have a fun shoot! I'm still working on some of the images, but here is a little preview!

(isn't she gorgeous???!!!)

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10:57 PM