Those Puddles

 

There is a gravel parking lot on Denny that my bus drives right by everyday. When it rains the huge dips in it fill up and make beautiful big puddles that reflect all the tall buildings around it. I’ve been itching to shoot there for a while but didn’t know exactly how I would. I had a free assignment for school coming up so when I saw that this rain was supposed to cease for a day I decided to contact a model friend I knew could fit the vibe and trusted her to supply the wardrobe. I didn’t worry about hair or makeup or even knowing what anything looked like beforehand. I gave up so much control here. Something I never do, I'm quite the control freak. I know a lot of upperclassmen in my program shoot like that all of the time and produce great work, so I thought I could give it a try. I think through shooting this I learned that that style doesn’t really work for me. I like really stylized things with strong concept. This made me realize I am very much not a 'lifestyle' fashion photographer and should continue to pursue the world of high fashion. I’m happy with these images, maybe not all inspired at first but it was a great exercise none the less. And of course my model Annie killed it!

 

Model: Annie Plunket – Heffner Model Management

A Pantone Collaboration

Jess Ornelas is extra special rad designer at my school. Working with her on this Pantone inspired look book was a great experience of real world teamwork. We collaboratively shopped together for exact colors, casted talent, discussed shooting style, picked and edited selects and of course she then made a kick ass brochure. Our models killed it as well. Despite the number of changes we had them do, their dynamic was great on camera and each of them gave me great movement. Officially my first studio shoot I felt inspired by. Enjoy a preview of the images bellow.

 

Models:

Katherine Whimett and Nick Bentley - SMG

HMUA: Lis Krebs

SCCA Port Townsend 2014

Its time for Port Townsend! Every year my program takes a 'shoot out' trip to PT where we all stay in military barracks and join the second years on their high production shoots. Ive been waiting all year, I had no idea what I’d be like and was honestly a bit nervous to go all the way out there with only my class for a whole week. It was the best week I had in very long time. The biggest project I worked on was Jake and Zoe’s music video for Kairos. I gained so much, learned a ton about video and the industry as a whole & most importantly a team. Team wolf to be exact. It is a great feeling to be apart of amazing work with amazing people. I am so excited to see the outcome of all our sacrificed sleep when the video is released!

Ava Queen Anne - LifeStyle

I will be leaving this apartment building soon, but I’ve always found it visually interesting and I knew I had to shoot someone here  sooner than later. Paige has a sweet lifestyle look and It was perfect because Zara just released their spring/summer collection. Needless to say, I went to town on wardrobe for this. My makeup artist and I brainstormed very bold looks. We aimed to kill it. It was unexpectedly busy in the compositions and along with other frustrations but we worked it out.The pictures remind me of stock a little bit,  I am unsure of where they would be seen but.. Im happy, theres a few really fun images and of course its always great experience to shoot no matter what.

HMUA: Lis Krebs

Model: Paige Sullivan SMG

Jeff

Recently got the chance to shoot with the new face in town straight from Oahu, Jeff Hopkins (TCM & Wilhelmina Hawaii)! He was supper rad to work with.

With this shoot I wanted to explore a current trend I have been seeing everywhere in fashion photography: house plants. I certainly fell in love with the look, if only I had enough room in my apartment to keep them. 

Model: Jeff Hopkins - TCM 

DeBell

My muse and and an extremely talented MUA

Model: Elle DeBell SMG

HMUA: Lis Krebs 

Dishes For The House

 

As the new Administrative Intern at The House Studios I’ve been given a vast range of projects to complete. This week Emily had me shoot dishes.. white dishes organically stacked on a table top to be used to advertise our giant room of dishes. I felt totally out of my element and style with this but hey, Emily asked for it so I’ll try it! It was frustrating at first and I could feel myself going crazy playing indefinitely with the composition of each element. But I am surprised with result, I think I managed to make 62 white dishes hold visual interest and to be somewhat inspiring. Then The House made it their cover photo..! ;P

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Vintage Glamour

For the SCCA "Hurrell" assignment I got to explore and recreate a Film Noir lookALL in studio.

Models: Elle DeBell (SMG), Madi Blavka

HMUA: Yessie Libby

In Class Celebrity Challenge

Celebrity Portrait Challenge

This week lets talk about a photography class! My favorite class of the program is our Monday class with Erik Skaar. Last week Erik came up with an exciting in-class-project where he assigned teams and divided the studio up into seven top secret station. At each station was an envelope with a beautifully lit celebrity portrait that we were to emulate as close as possible.

The catch to this project was that only the photographer for that station could see the printed portrait and the images that are being captured. This was a great exercise in team work and a test in our ability to communicate technically.

I was the third to shoot out of our group and it was group of people I had never worked with before! But I got lucky with a beautiful portrait in a style I enjoy that was somewhat simple. A Ben Stiller portrait by Platon. Luckily I had a teammate with a similar amount of character in his face and a good hair cut. 

We had one hour to devise a plan, set the set, direct, shoot, and take down. I am pretty proud of this image, definitely my favorite assigned for portrait this year.

Here is the image I came up with next to the original.

Photo by © Haley Blavka Photography 2014

Photo by © Haley Blavka Photography 2014

My Attempt At Food Photography

Two assignments in a row we had to photograph food! Turned out to be more frustrating than I imaged.