Cheering Section

I wasn't sure if I was going to cover the marathon again. Last year I ran around the city to cover as much as I could. Last year there were no 8GB cards on sale (so all I had were some 512MB cards). Last year I didn't really know what I was doing. This year, though, I knew I didn't end up doing much with the pictures I took. In fact, I did so little, I didn't even post them on this blog. I was thinking this year it might be fun for the three of us to go down to the marathon and sit and be spectators and cheer.

The weather was pretty nice. We found a sunny spot at the 4-mile area, saw the wheelchair, women's, men's, and the rest run past. On the left is the winner, on the right is Scrappy doing a dance to keep warm. We left in time to get home to see the lead women and men finish on TV.

More Abstract

I saw an ad on craigslist for a web designer/photographer. Trying to swap web designing for group shots didn't prove to work out previously, so this time I offered to photograph what they needed in exchange for what I needed. Not until the morning before the shoot did the idea really strike me for how to anchor the shoot. I wanted something more emotive than what I had, but "anxiety" and "happy" were just too vague. I wanted something specific. I decided to pull the more interesting announcements from my Facebook account. The picture above is "[Name] cannot wake up. :("

This is a picture LV, my lovely assistant, took of me taking a picture of "[Name] wants to bury her head in the sand and not wake up until 2009." LV's not into the absurd, so it really wasn't his cup of tea. I am his cup of tea, though, so he bared down, made nice with all the pigeons on the roof, and was a great assistant.

This wasn't really part of the series. More just to make use of the sunset and a group shot.

On the Big Screen

After a second day of shooting Christian Siriano (that was the shoot in July where I couldn't disclose details), I had to go check out the billboard created from the July shoot. (The red dot in the middle that says "LG.")

While my pictures made it into the reel playing on the screens at the fashion show and make up a bunch of the content on the lglotus.com (you can download my work as wallpaper!), my stills weren't in the 10 seconds on the billboard. (Christian looking at fabric on the screen just right of center.)

Still, I was part of that billboard in Times Square. :0)

Test Shoot

Because I don't have enough on my plate with needing to turn around images, I stuck to my test shoot for this week. We did a variety things, ranging from kind of bizarre to totally bizarre. (The are slightly bizarre and normal.) And then she got hurt. And it was 90 degrees outside. And I kept getting phones calls from my contact person for this coming weekend's shoot. The posing was good, the lighting was good, but "the shoot" was... eh.

More Clothes

I can't believe that's my yard. I also can't believe I figured out how to light that. It's like I've been reading. It's more like I woke up, having learned from all my past mistakes. And then my yard turned out looking this lush.

21

I'm not sure which defies logic more: how hard they are playing or how none of them puked afterward considering we'd all just come from brunch...

Babysitting

The good thing about being a full time freelancer is that I can take off for a week. The bad part is falling out of my routines. But I kind of drove myself crazy with all the work to get together my shoot for the 19th and get my postcards out the door, so the week off was good. (And staying with an infant and a toddler don't really make for a week "off.")

I wish I'd used the fill flash for both...

Super Bowl Sunday

I was supposed to do a shoot with a wardrobe stylist at her fiance's bar, but she had an emergency and needed to cancel. I'm still hoping to reschedule that shoot.

The model, the makeup + hair stylist, and I threw together an outdoor gear shoot in my backyard. Just as I've discovered it's bad for me to shoot on at dawn because I am not a morning person, I've now discovered Sundays aren't very good days for me either.

Hurry Up and Wait

What do you get when you decide to take your time leaving Brooklyn to get to the Museum of Natural History the weekend before New Year's? No chance of getting in to see the exhibit you spent two hours traveling to see. Oops. At least I got some pictures.

Models in My Backyard (cont.)

I had the rental lights from Thursday to Monday, so it seemed like a waste not to stick Scrappy out in the cold for a shoot. It only took a few frames to break through the forced smile and get to something real.

She really wanted to do a Halloween fashion show. I needed some seamless white practice. This was one that showed the dress best, which I needed as examples for a potential client. There were better portraits in the bunch.

Models in My Backyard

Today I shot Tristan, a Model Mayhem-er, in my backyard. The shoot was originally supposed to be at Coney Island with a wardrobe stylist. But she had a paying gig, so she wasn't able to come play. And then I thought Tristan was going to cancel because of the weather. But after a day in the cold shooting models in ridiculous get-ups, I wasn't about to be deterred from using my rental equipment. So, I told Tristan we'd start in the backyard and that's where we stayed for the whole shoot.

Project: Slide

I thought it would be a fun idea to run around to every playground we could find and get a picture of Scrappy on the slide. Partly to celebrate the number of un-vandalized playgrounds in St. Charles and partly to have something to do before our late flight back to New York. I ran out of memory by the time we got to the fourth park. We didn't head out for more parks after picking up a new card. Maybe next time...