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BTS shot from Commercial Shoot.

More post are in the near future. I have a lot to share. 

RE

End of Capstone

Today marks the end of Capstone. It was a long and busy 15 weeks, but I feel that my efforts were completely worth all the planning and stress. I am quite happy with the work I've produced these last few months and feel that it is the beginning of good things to come.

I've taken my original project statement and did some tweaking to bring everything together.

Statement

Normally when I start shooting a photo series I work around a concept I’ve created, that reflects a strong personal connection to something I want to express visually, in the photos themselves. This time the importance of this body of work is not necessarily what I’m shooting, but why I’m shooting.

I often reflect on the work and progress I’ve made over the last two years, I was happy when I made the decision to go back to school, but I can’t help but feel that I lost a bit of myself artistically. Since I am an artist before I am a photographer, that made for a mentally devastating experience. My first few semesters where nothing but technical work, leaving little room to work on personal projects. I’ve decided to rekindle what I’ve lost by creating a new body of work that focuses on experimentation and the growth of creative concepts, as well as a more organized workflow.

The point of this series was to take my newfound technical knowledge and retrain my artistic brain. The idea was to learn how to successfully merge the artist I once was with the photographer I am now.

Here are the results.

Horizontal Love

The last few months I have been obsessed with horizontal portraits. I try to steal a simple beauty shot in every session. It’s funny to think about because, I once read somewhere that most photographers shoot landscape automatically, because it is the way we see.  Turning the camera to shoot in portrait was always second nature to me, so it was almost like a new discovery when I started shooting portraits horizontally. 

Showing some examples of my new obsession. 

Update and Inspiration

I've been shooting quite a bit lately, faster than I can edit. I find it is kind of wonderful when this happens.  I only have three more shoots till I wrap up on my Capstone project.  But, of course even though the class will come to completion soon, the drive and quality of imagery that I have been working on this semester will not.

One of the best things about this semester is the amount of visual research I've been making time for. I thought I'd share work from some of my favorite photographers, at the moment.

Tim Walker

Lara Jade

Zhang Jingna

Capstone #3

I'm back in the studio with my third Capstone session. This time I focused on playing with different props, that I found at my local craft store, to enhance this "Dark Mother Nature" shoot. This shoot was really about using simple props and techniques to enhance my usual workflow. Sometimes, just adding a few extra elements could be the big difference in making a great image that much better.

With the help of my make-up artist we got a little wind action, something so simple can add so much. The slight movements in the models hair really add to the mood of this shot.

And trying out different textures in photoshop can turn a simple portrait into something dark and dramatic.

Behind the Scenes

As much as I love being in the studio, I love watching other photographers work too. I really enjoy when photographers take the time to film a behind the scenes video of them working. Every photographer has there own workflow and it's cool to see how they create, especially when it's a photographer who's work I really appreciate. Sometimes the behind the scenes footage is just as beautiful as the resulting images.

About a year ago, a friend of mine, Matt VanGronigen, did some filming while I was working. And as much as I prefer to be behind the camera it was cool to see the photoshoot from a different perspective. He post the video on his Vimeo Page.

I think doing more behind the scenes is definitely in my future.

Ruth Elizabeth Photography from Matt VanGronigen on Vimeo.

Capstone #2 and Planning

 Last week I shot the second shot for my absurd and surreal fashion series, I am shooting for Capstone.  Besides the trying to be more creative, another aspect of this project is to get myself to be more on top of planning the initial concept. Normally, when planning a shoot I tend to be a bit vague and leave more of the shoot up to the energy that is on set.  Now I do a lot more visual research and plan out my lighting diagrams before I even cast a model. I have also taken up drawing out a reference sketch so that I have a starting point.  It definitely makes the process run a lot smoother and I  believe it allows me to get better results from a session.

For this shoot I was influenced by ads for designer sunglasses. These are some examples I was really drawn to.

I've found it really helpful to sketch out an image to work from, even though 80 percent of the time it turns out completely different.

A sketch from the first steps of planning my smokey sunglass shoot.

I'm still in the process of editing my final image. 

Screen shot of my favorite image.