Its not often that I have the chance to collaborate with other creators because of my very busy schedule with clients, school, and a part time job. During the January-February stretch, business tends to die down a bit and i’m able to work on personal projects more. I was really excited to work with Lily because I had seen her model for other local photographers and she looks stunning! We went to Saratoga, NY and walked downtown. Because of the wintery coldness, we tried to stick to inside settings and shops with big windows which is my ideal lighting (natural). One of my favorite parts of this collab was when the camera was put down and we had conversation while walking to different locations. Meeting new fun people is what I live for, and now I know someone else who has double jointed elbows, just like me! Thank you to Lily for creating beautiful portraits with me and kicking ass with your modeling abilities!
The corner
This was a very interesting project that I never thought I would do. For a photography class in college, my assignment was to take photos of someone in a corner of a room and I was given no further instruction. With inspiration form Irving Penn, I took portraits of Alyssa in a few different corners of a building. The all white corner was my favorite out of everything I took because of the harsh contrast between her outfit and the stark walls. This assignment pushed me out of my comfort zone in multiple ways. Normally, during a shoot, I feel very confident in myself and can help a model or client pose without any type of struggle. I also pride myself in making sure the person i’m shooting with feels AND looks comfortable in my image. I took a few standard portrait shots with Alyssa, but because I really wanted these corner images to stand out, we tried something different. I had Alyssa pose in ways that I consider to look a little more high fashion and we tried many many poses. While some worked, others were very experimental, which helped me push outside of what i’m comfortable with even more. I also thought that incorporating a chair in the corner would add a more interesting element. A few of these images are definitely not portraits that I would normally take, but there are a few that still scream AUTUMN in the style, which I am very happy with to say the least.
On pointe!
This was quite an interesting shoot! It started out in an unexpected snow storm and wind chill of -20º F. Bekah and I hiked up a hill in our snow pants to an abandoned building in New York. If you’ve followed my work closely before, you would know this is certainly not the first time I’ve shot here. All props go to Bekah because I don’t know many other people who would be willing to put their pointe shoes on in the middle of the snow. We went to the roof and got our first shot of her jumping in the air (which ended up being my favorite). After we explored the building a bit more, but didn’t stay long because I was pretty cold and I was almost certain Bekah’s feet would fall off if we didn’t go back to the car.
The day after we took more shots inside The Shirt Factory in GlensFalls. This time, we took photos INSIDE. I wasn’t super satisfied with everything we got the day before because we didn’t stay that long and I was more focused on how cold it was outside. At the Shirt Factory, I was really happy with how the photos came out because the lighting was beautiful, I was a lot more focused on posing and getting all of the details right since I could feel my limbs in the warm indoors. I turned photos from both locations into a photo series called, “Potential.” I wanted this to be a message representing anyone starting from a low point and growing to meet their highest potential through the story of a dancer.
The last 8 photos are what I added into the photo series and these next photos are other ones that I didn’t include, but are still spectacular.
