Albuquerque

Girls of Geek Reunion.

Virginia has had a lot of things going well for me. Stable job doing video production, a comfortable home life with a wonderful support system, and I’m the healthiest I have been in years. But if there is one thing it lacks it is the lack of connection with the modeling/cosplay community that I had back in Albuquerque NM. Going back home offered me the wonderful pleasure of working with a group of girls who I always have a ball shooting with. The Girls of Geek were always my favorite part of shooting in Albuquerque. Weather we were aiming for Nerdy or Sexy it is always great being around them. The best part of shooting with them is that it never feels like a photoshoot. It feels like a bunch of friends to goof around, play dress up and have some memorable pictures taken to commemorate the event. I’m happy to be living in Virginia, but as long as these girls are still in Albuquerque I’ll probably be finding my way back out there.

Desert Mermaid with Mary Jane Monroe

I don’t often consider my photos to be very “High Concept” or even art sometimes. In fact i have to tell models I work with all the time that I am terrible with coming up with ideas and concepts. I sometimes even have a hard time calling my artist because of this. I get around this by thinking of myself as more of an improve artist making things up as I go along instead of having a ton of prep time behind something. Lucky for me the recent shoot I did with Mary Jane Monroe had the high concept feel to it because of her own ideas all I really had to do was shoot. One thing that I differently in this shoot was try to implement scenery a bit more in the shots which is something that I  need to work on but came out quite well in the finished product.

 

Getting back into the swing of Modeling with Crystal Sedillo

Sometimes we get away from doing certain hobbies or activities for one reason or another. Heavy work scheduled, lack of motivation/inspiration and sometimes just lack of opportunity all contribute to this. In Crystal Sedillo’s case having a Kid is a pretty legit excuse to getting away from modeling for a little while. I’ve known Crystal for years now and her husband Orlando has done a lot of my tattoo work so when she wanted to get back into modeling I reached out to help get her back into the swing of it. Crystal brings with her a list of Features that compliment my style of photography specifically her tattoo work and her Alt Model Style. Those things works well with the way I like to process my photos, especially the way I use contrast and colors it allow all of her tattoos to really pop. Over all I really loved this shoot and I hope that  I get to work with Crystal again on something a bit more high concept in the future.

Demo Reel

After Much Internal Debate at The Comic Kid Photography Headquarters, I’ve decided that I will go ahead and release my Video Reel that I have been shopping around in my job search just for the sake of letting people be able to see it. Most of the footage was taken while I was in college and I’m mainly showing off what I’m capable of shooting with a minimal to almost non existant budget and very little direction. Everything I have done up to this point has been done in a run and gun documentary style that is intended to bring visual interest into real stories. My hope is that someone will come across this reel, find value in my skills as a videographer and consider hiring me on for a project.

Maxine’s Curves.

Anything can and will go wrong on a shoot, it happens and it happens to the best of us. On a recent shoot with Maxine things “went wrong” in that we couldn’t find the intended location, the area we were in had terrible weather and we were losing light pretty fast. When things like this happen it’s important to keep the spirit up and roll with the punches. With the initial idea being scrapped we drove down to Old Town Albuquerque to try and make up for a shoot that didn’t happen and the results were well worth it.

In the car ride (that got extended) Maxine, my assistant/girlfriend, and I had conversations about shooting women with curves (as Maxine obviously does) and how to get the best images out of it and we specifically talked about how it’s not hard to get great images with curvy models. Essentially when working with curvier models you don’t want to hide the curves, you want to highlight them and use them to your advantage. Curves can be incredibly flattering and work very well aesthetically but in order for get them to work you need to know how to pose the model. Posing is important for any model, it’s the basis of modeling in general and every model is different in what works but I’ve noticed that curvier models are very specific. You need to know where their curves are, where they look the most flattering and extend those areas out so that they get more of the attention than anything else.

Shooting curvier models is a lot of fun. It’s not nearly as challenging as you would think it would be and to be honest is more visually interesting to look at. If you want to get better at directing and posing I would recommend working with more models with curve because it makes you more attentive to what you are doing with your directions.

Short and Sweet with Sam.

There are a couple of things that I take pride in as a photographer. One of those things is just always doing constantly solid work but there are a lot of other qualities that my clients and model friends appreciate when I work with them. Those would be my fast turn around times on edits and the fact that my shoots don’t last to long. On average a shoot with me probably only last about 30 minutes. In that time we’ll take well over 100 images and when I get into editing around 20-30 will make the culling but and then only a hand full of those will be posted, that’s just standard. This recent shoot that  I did with Samantha was just that where, we met we shot, we got some solid stuff, I took it home to edit and that all took just about 3 hours in total work time (not including travel time too and from location.) Doing great work doesn’t have to take weeks to do. Simple locations, poses, edits and good work flow can offer a lot to making great images on a short time table and it always impresses people when you can do great work so quickly.

Ave Kateri Machina in the Studio

Photography is sometimes a very misunderstood medium and the laymen of the world would regard it as a very easy craft. Normally that kind of attitude would set me off. But this shoot that I did with Ave Kateri Machina did make it feel super easy. Every now and again you work with a new talent that is so good at what they do it just make everything so simple. Except editing, because I had a hard time narrowing down this take when I got into lightroom.