time and whatnot.

This time of year always makes me feel sluggish, not to mention daylights saving time and losing daylight, and also the fact that i've been working overtime. I've had zero time for any shoots lately it seems. I've just posted two photos from over a week ago that I did with Joe on the 23rd. It was a rainy day, and silly me decides, thats perfect weather for a shoot. So we went down to the swamp thing across from our old highschool, and there was geese poo everywhere. But despite everything, all went well.
Just recently, as in yesterday I went to a wedding. My cousin got married, and they hired me as the photographer three days prior. I've been so drained from this past week and a half. I didn't even get to see Halloween coming. My pumpkins I bought 3 weeks ago are still sitting in my trunk uncarved....and slightly moldy. I need to smash them somewhere ahaha.
But in two weeks the competition I'm hosting starts. astump.com for the details. we'll see how this goes, success or not.

tired

I don't know why, but lately I've been so tired. I mean I've been getting certain things done, but my energy level is just so low. I want a vacation from my job so bad. Supposedly I'm getting on in late November/Decemberish. It better be like a week and a half to two weeks off. Then I can finally finish reorganizing my room. And finish some of these dresses. And of course do a couple shoots.
My soda tab dress is going to take the longest. But I'm finally getting a cage crinoline, after about a year and a half of wanting one. So all my dresses are going to be like ballroom dresses. I just can't wait to get all this stuff done. And do these shoots. I can already see the pictures in my head. I just need to create and photograph and they'll be out of my head finally.

oh and instead of buying antique cocktail hats and having them get smushed, I've decided to make my own. It shouldn't be too hard.

mermaid shoot

It was 45 degrees out today with a very high chance of rain. Call us crazy, but Bri and I decided yesterday we should do a mermaid shoot in Lake Nockamixon. Yesterday I purchased extentions and a lightening kit. I've been meaning to get blonde ones for my models Bri and Liz, since their haircuts are normally short. After 2 hours of using the lightening kit, the hair was finally the color I wanted.
I knew Bri would be excited to have long hair again. After I put it in we joked around that she looked like Hannah Montana and Avril Lavigne combined. I showed her my hypothermia survival kit, since we would both be in the water: towels, mittens, shorts, basketballs shorts, pj pants, hoodies, and furry socks. We were set.
After jamming out to MJ's greatest hits we finally arrived. Despite my dreading thoughts about fishermen everywhere at 2 in the afternoon, there were none. Bri started to get changed in the car. I held up the doormat which served multi-purposes throughout our shoot. First it was a changing room. When Bri got out of my car in only a bra and shorts the doormat (Matthew) now served as a shield against the 20 mph winds. Needless to say, it was cold outside. Matthew served for us one last time as a platform under water so that we wouldn't step on any fishing hooks or jagged rocks or lastly snakes, which I told Bri there were none of, because the water was too freezing.
I got in the water first. Freezing water, high winds, and low air temperature. awesome. haha. However I got used to it fairly quickly. I had been cooling down my body temperature the whole way to the shoot by only wearing a short sleeve t-shirt and no jacket with the windows down in my car. Bri finally got in the water and laid on top of one of the rocks. Everyone that had driven up the fishing pier to gaze on the view, was graced with the image of me barefoot in a gargoyle position in the water, and Bri in barely any clothing laying on a rock. Goosebumps covered both of our bodies.
When we were done we decided to leave Matthew in the water. He was 5 inches from floating ashore anyways. We stumbled to the hypothermia survival kit across the rocky shoreline only able to feel pain on the bottom of our feet. We wrapped ourselves in the towels and headed for the car. Their was only one other person on the pier, and he was in his car. An innocent old man. "How do you like the view. I bet you'll like this!" I stated as I quickly removed a pair of basketball shorts and pj shorts to reveal my bathing suit bottoms. Then I hopped in my car and acted like it was perfectly normal. ...well that is normal to me. Besides, the best way to warm up when you are wet and cold is to take off your clothes and rely on your own body heat. See, there is a reason to my madness. haha.
Of course we didn't stop shivering completely until about 5 minutes of being in the car with the heat blasting. All in all it was a good day, despite weather issues. But then again. Nothing really stops me. Not even floods, but that's another story.

hair hair everywhere!

oh boy. i'm going to be about knee deep in hair very soon. I've got extensions coming in from the UK, i just bought blonde extensions for my models with short blonde hair, and my model Kali Kae that i just shot with is making me extensions. ohhhhhhh boy. i'm so excited. now i'm going to need a organizing unit for all of that, plus my extensions i used to wear. i'm going to have a full set of brown, full set of blonde, hot pink, turquoise, white, and so many more colors.
I'm currently unpacking from the pirate shoot and re-organzing my closet, bereau, vanity, and end table drawers. I love organizing. It makes so much more space for things, and then I know where everything is. I need to go out and buy giant zip-lock bags for all my hair. Might sound sad to you, but i'm more than excited.

Mermaid shoot tomorrow and my model Bri and I are getting in the lake. Yes... in the lake. It's going to be freezing, but I'm going in with my bathing suit. hahaha. it's going to be so much fun, considering it's most likely going to rain.

A Pirate's Life For Me

My darling boyfriend built me a treasure chest two christmasses ago. I usually use it to hold all my props, wigs, costumes, and odd tidbits for my photography, well, what I can fit in there. I've never used it for a shoot but always wanted to. I quickly piled all the wardrobe into there, 3 pairs of shoes, 8 corsets, leggings, crow, eyepatch, 6 feathers, 2 parisols, and an umbrella skeleton.
I find myself doing more and more night photography. It was daylight when I met up with Kali Kae at the diner, however when we took the 30 sec drive around the corner to our location daylight began to seep into the horizon. By the time Kali's wardrobe team had dressed her there was almost no daylight. I messed around with the ISO, shutter speed, and aperture quickly to see if i could save what light was left, however since I was missing half my tripod my pictures were coming out blurry, because I was shaking from the cold. Then I thought to myself, Amanda, don't you remember Ky's photo of Liz with the headlights behind her? And then I got the idea to use my and Kali's friends headlights for light. I set them up at 45 degree angles like I usually set up my artificial lights when I work in the studio. Highbeams on one, regular lights on the other. Now I could get to work.
I was partially upset, because now the abandoned factory looks like its blue or even non existant, as opposed to being pink, like it actually is, but oh well. haha. It wasn't necessary to the photos.
I asked Kali if she was blind without her glasses; she said she was. However that was not a handicap for her. She took direction very well, and barely needed it to be offered. She told me how she had so many extensions, I told her I understood, cause I used to wear them, but now they're just in a drawer. She then told me how she used to have a drawer, but it evolved to a closet. Now thats a lot of hair. I was excited to work with someone who wore extensions like she does, it makes her different from all my other models. She didn't mind the cold at all, and I don't like to wear more clothes than my models when I stick them in the cold, but I found myself having to put on another shirt. Kali barely looked like she was cold at all; a real trooper.
We only had an hour to shoot, before at get entirely too dark. With three wardrobe changes and sticking multiple things in her hair, we finally decided the shoot was done.
"Make sure everything in my hair is mine," she said. I laughed, finally someone else has said it. Normally I'm the one making references to sticking objects in people's hair, such as birdnests.
All in all, it was another successful shoot, and as Kali Kae and her friends reviewed the pictures I heard the lovely sound of "Oh, I like that one." "Me too" "I like this one a lot" It definetly was a pleasant experience with amazing results. It felt like I had already done a shoot with her. Everything was very comfortable, friendly, dedicated, and prepared.

photography griefs

This is somewhat of a continuation of yesterdays. And I'm slightly irritated, so mind you, if I don't sound pleasant. Now that you've seen what work goes into my photos, I'd like to state that it is time consuming. I'm tired of people saying that I slack. I know photographers equal and greater than me that don't finish editing a set of photos until nearly a month or longer after it is shot. I work a fulltime job as is. Photography is something I pursue on the side, so yes I do get aggitated by people who don't even pay me to take their picture and expect rush delivery. If you wanted someone to do you pictures for free you should have asked your mom or dad. ...And why didn't you ask your mother or father? Because they probably don't know how to make a photograph. Well I do. And that is a service that requires a pay. I'm not the photographer you can get a free lunch out of. There's no such thing as a free lunch. So understand that I have a pretty busy life and I just might be working with more than one client at a time, which I normally do. (And by client, I mean someone who is paying me) And if you don't believe my work is good enough to pay me for, go ask your mother and father to take those pictures of you. Sooooo long story short. I am a photographer. That is an occupation. Occupations means that work is involved. Work takes time. Time=money. I don't do this fulltime, and it is not my only occupation.
Unless I ask you to model for me, or your modeling is top notch, I will not work for free.
And no, I do not pay my models. My models have gotten work because of my photography. It pays for itself.

Now that I've got that rant out, I'm feeling a little less bitter.
So again, sorry if I was harsh about this topic, but people are always expecting free handouts from me. It doesn't work like that. This is my business.

editing

Now a lot of people may argue that a good photo does not need to be edited. I disagree. However I don't believe that any photo can be edited into a good photo. Post processing is not a place to fix errors while shoot. It is simply a place to signature your work with a certain look. One cannot take a crappy photo and make it a masterpiece in photoshop or whatever editing program you may have. I could get into the technical aspect of my last statement, but I'd rather not bore you. Instead I've decided to post an original piece next to its final piece, just to show you how much work and attention for detail I integrade into my work.

I can't/don't just click a button and *poof* out comes the final piece. It requires several actions to complete a photo. The first thing that you should have noticed was the slight crop. Not all photos need to be cropped, but the light at the top of the original copy distracts your eye from the main subject, Becky. The first thing your eye goes to in a photo is light. So it's best not to have random light all over your frame. Granted when I took this picture I was leaning off a ledge, so it would have taken longer to get a still photo (because I was holding my breath for the shutter speed) with the correct framing (since I was balancing on an edge).

The second thing you should have noticed was the fact that certain spots are darker and others are lighter. For those who don't know what venietting is, it's an old style of post processing, developed in the darkroom of burning the edges of a photo to make it darker. No burning does not mean setting fire, in this case. Burning is a darkroom technique, also found in photo editing programs, where while the photographer converted his film to prints he would expose the edges to the light longer to make them overdeveloped. Dodging is the opposite; the technique of underexposing light to create light areas on a photo.

Thirdly you should have noticed the treatment on Becky's face. Some photographers, depending on their style edit the skin of their subject to make blemishes, freckles, bruises, scars, etc less noticeable. Again though, this all depends on the photographer and how they want their final piece to look.
Lastly, if you're were really paying attention to detail you might have noticed certain things are missing out of the final copy, such as the ribbon hanging off the raftor. The idea of a photo is to make it easy on the eyes. Minimalistic at best. Too have a very loud, distracting photo could give your viewers a headache. I simply used the stamp tool to erase the ribbon out of the photo.

Also I'd like to note that just because something is digital as opposed to manual, does not mean it is any easier. Yeah, there's the auto function, but you may as well have a kodak disposable. Digital photography still requires knowledge of how to read light, compose a frame, and utilize aperture and shutterspeed, just like manual photography. There is just as much work involved with manual photography as digital, especially if you are creating artwork, not snapshots.

Angel Shoot

Well I'd like to start off with the fact that I'm ashamed that I didn't keep my other blogspot updated, and so I have forgotten my username and password and had to recreate it. oh well.

It was Sunday morning and I had woken up at 8 o' clock. I had gotten everything loaded into the car and was still waiting for Becky to wake up to do the shoot. I called several times with still no answer. I figured she was still sleeping or in entirely too much pain from having her wisdom teeth pulled out the week before.
I often find myself wanting to explain myself when people see me carrying strange objects out to my car. A tacklebox, lingerie, and a set of full-sized angel wings. People must wonder what I'm up to. I can only hope that by having a camera slung over my shoulder, that is enough of an explanation for everyone who witnesses this oddity.

I arrived at Becky's at 10:30 only to find out she was sleeping, and in immense pain the night before. She had been ignoring my calls, thinking I was her doctor finally calling back to check up on the pain factor. When she realized I wasn't the doctor she said she would be out to my car in a minute, that she had to brush her teeth. She asked if bed-head was alright. I said it was more than fine. And probably better not to shower, because we'd be getting dirty. When she had gotten into my car and casually said "cig-thirty" I looked over and noticed bed wrinkles all over her cheeks and thought to myself, so this is what I look like when I come to work.
I asked if she knew where this abandoned barn was that she had told me about, because I've gone in search of it before and didn't even see it. Turns out I had missed the turn.

Of course when we arrived my best friend the no tresspassing sign was posted. No hunting, gaming, etc. ...well I didn't see No Photography. The barn was only 50 feet away from another house. Anything as little as taking your keys out of the ignition would have been within earshot of the owners.

We got Becky dressed as quickly as possible. I had to pin the angels wings, because she's so small. This seems to be a common thing for me. Pinning my possessions to fit to size on my tiny models. I'm used to it by now. When I had started to root through my tacklebox for makeup we heard footsteps and slipped into a small fit of panic, until we turned around and saw an old couple walking their dog. We could easily pack up and leave before they could do anything. But he smiled and waved in the distance. And when he got closer he said "Well that's a sight to see on a sunday morning... an angel." Becky and I let out a sigh of relief. That was almost too close.

We waited for them to pass by before we entered. Taking extra precautions. We explored everything from the well with the frogs in it, that I had almost fallen into, to the trench where we got really dirty, to inside the barn, where powertools had been left and new raftors and beams had been put in. As soon as I saw the raftors I thought to myself, I'm climbing that. And Becky must have known what I was thinking, because she mentioned getting pictures of her up in the raftors. I said "Of course, I was just thinking that"
After climbing all the ladders and walking across support beams like some weird level in Mario we decided that we were finished the shoot. Once we had made it back to the trench we heard a car driving down the road. I told Becky that it wasn't parked right outside the trench, that it sounded like it parked off in the distance. Becky went first, saying that if anyone questioned her she was just an angel. And I was no one. Just figments of their imagination. I asked if she could see them when she got to the end of the trench. She said she could see the car but no people. So we made a break for it. As we were getting back into my car we looked back to the barn. The driver of the car was now inside the barn walking around. I quickly turned the keys and we left.
Becky and I looked at each other, cracking up as we started speeding down back roads away from whoever wasn't actually chasing us.

We had both agreed that was another successful shoot with perfect timing.