Alis: Part I

I've had such an amazing last week. On Thursday, I was part of an event at Alis Fashion Design in Scottsdale. 

Style Stalkers were responsible for the amazing Hair & Makeup.

They did a Holiday Inspired look with a tasteful amount of glitter. 

Then I photographed the model in two of her dresses designed by Lana, the owner of Alis Fashion Design.

Thank you, Lana, for inviting me to be a part of this! It was truly a fantastic evening!

The girl with one earring...

So! I bought a new dress!

It was $17 at Forever 21. I don't even care if I never wear it because it was a steal.

It has already been of some value, however (see one of the images below). I also shot in the faithful red skirt. That skirt better live as long as I do. I can't imagine life without it.

All these images are finished off with my favorite textures courtesy of Mextures. I'm even featured on their site if you click the link and scroll down :)

Another little interesting tidbit about my appearance: you'll notice every picture depicts only my left side...This is for two reasons. If you know me, you know I'm terrifyingly asymmetrical (maybe an exaggeration) and never photograph my right side. Also, I happened to only find one earring. C'est la vie.

If anyone reading this has the Mextures App or wants to start using it I'm sharing the above formula code (JMTNRLN) for one of the formulas I used in the making of these images.

Aaaand for those of you in Phoenix, I'll be doing a live shoot at Alis Fashion Design in Scottsdale this Thursday at 6pm. Please come if you want to see me go through a lovely live shoot using a light source that is, unfortunately, not the sun.

Story Time

The other day I was in a rut. I knew I wanted to take photos. I didn't know what - in this infinite universe of options - to take photos of. I reached out to Facebook and still lacked inspiration.

Then, I clicked to one of my favorite artist's pages...

This is a small sampling of Charmaine Olivia's series of silhouettes:

I've always admired this series, and I thought it was already quite similar to the back lit images that I've been doing lately.

So, I gave it a stab. 

This is what one of them looked like Straight Out Of Camera (SOOC).

I did a full behind-the-scenes of the photoshoot and editing on Periscope (@ejw211) and plan to do that in the future as well.

Below we have the final two images...

I've been asked before about my silhouette/double exposure work for portrait clients. Specifically, for a gallery of silhouettes of their children (which I think would be darling). I think it's a very classic, personal, heirloom type image. With that in mind, I am definitely going to be shooting this more for client work.

Colleen 3/3

We have reached the end of the 3 part series that was this amazing photo shoot. 

We had decided to wrap up the shoot since we had done all of the poses and outfits. As we all got up to put things away someone mentioned something about how we never got a photo in her husband's button down. 

Off to the kitchen!

Then, we were all like, okay, really, this time we're done. 

But I remembered that her dogs were shut in the office, and I've been dying to photograph them...

Her reaction to these images in particular were very touching. There's nothing quite like a relationship with your fur babies, and I'm so glad I could be a part of capturing that for her.

This post wouldn't have existed if we had just ended the photo shoot when we thought we were done. I'm so glad we kept going!

Styling by Natalie Melchiorre.

Hair & Makeup by Stephanie Neiheisel.