abigail prebble-taylor

Last week I had the lovely opportunity to work with Abby to do her new headshots. She is an absolute dream in front of the camera. Usually I have to give a bit of direction until the person is comfortable and understands what they're doing, what's working, what isn't, etc. She just did everything without me having to ask. It was so cool, made my job absolutely effortless. I just had to stand there and click the shutter.

 

abigail prebble-taylor, originally uploaded by avalilly.

abigail prebble-taylor, originally uploaded by avalilly.

abigail prebble-taylor, originally uploaded by avalilly.

abigail prebble-taylor, originally uploaded by avalilly.

abigail prebble-taylor, originally uploaded by avalilly.

Last one's not very headshot-y, but I liked it none the less.

These were a lot of fun to shoot. We were down at the creek area and just above the valley is a park that the town happened to be holding their weekly Concert in the Park series. So, we had live jazz playing the whole time we were shooting. It was awesome!

update!

Hello everyone,

It feels like it's been a while since I uploaded anything new, but it's just because I've been reorganizing this blog. I decided to change the dates on some of my entries to make them closer to the dates in which things actually happened. I'll continue updating like that until I get caught up on what I've done and been shooting this year. I've still got a couple whole series of images to post on the photography and drawing fronts, so check back soon for those.

In the meanwhile, check out these new posts (that have been put in their proper place in time):

marat/sade: photos of Laurie Merredew's lighting design for Theatre @ York's most recent show.

open house: York University's Visual Arts open house! So much to see.

drawing area exhibition: an art gallery show I participated in with two of my most recent works.

bonds: a short film by Janice Lee that I did Production Design for.

barbell boy: a short film by Taylor Bateman that I did Production Design for. (Got to build my first film set too!)

astrea campbell-cobb: headshots!


In other news, I am now a graduate of York University's specialized honours BFA for Visual Arts program. It's so weird to be done school and have to face the real world and be a real person (and pay off my student loan...). I have a couple job possibilities on the horizon, so hopefully that'll pan out soon so I don't have to worry about the job hunt portion of this new life. I'm quite behind on uploading for my 52 weeks project as well, so now that I have time I can get back into that.

So, even though I'm done school I still have lots to do. Check back soon for more arting and adventures by me!

astrea campbell-cobb

The lovely Astrea recently asked me to do some headshots for her. She needed to update her photos as she shaved off her long locks back in Novemeber 2009 as a part of a really brave project for school dealing with trying something new that scares you. And what do you know, she still looks amazing!

She's so much fun to work with! I'm putting together a series of red lipstick photos that she also participated in, so keep an eye out for that in the future.

headshots

So I got to try my hand at some more headshots on Sunday. My friend Laurie is in theatre production and needed some headshots for the show she is stage managing so she asked me to do them, which was awesome because I need more practice! She was great and brought along another lovely girl, Emily, who is also in production. The more the merrier~

These ladies were a lot of fun to work with and were super fabulous because they set up the lights for me! We used the theatre lighting studio, so unfortunately I have no idea how to handle the type of lights that were available to us. They weren't the most ideal lights for headshot purposes, but I think they turned out quite nice all the same.

Thank you Laurie and Emily!

headshot fundraiser

As mentioned in a previous entry; "material goods", I offered to do headshots as a fundraising event for a friend so that I could in turn get some headshot photography experience. It was an interesting project to take on during the school year. I had obviously never attempted them before, but a couple friends from the film department rented me out some lights to use (thankyousomuch), so it turned out fairly well for a first try.

I didn't get terribly creative with any of these as it was my first go at headshottin' so I wanted to keep it simple, but here's some of my favourites from the edited batch of lovely peoples!

I think I learned more in the editing process than I did during the shooting. First, I'm still verrry much a beginner, but I can still see improvement happening since these were taken, so it's all good. Second, $30 is too cheap (even though I technically did them for free). The amount of time spent processing the photos kind of puts in perspective why a lot of photographers can get away with charging $300/hour. It was for a fundraiser though and we hoped to get a lot more people interested, so it was a fair deal!

All in all, I'm super glad I had the opportunity to do these. I now feel a little more comfortable being behind the camera and being able to interact with the model. Also, I definitly feel like I'd be able to take on more creative stuff for future headshot/portrait possibilities. I play around with that camera equipment of mine pretty much everyday and for only having it for a few months it's starting to get easier and easier to try new things with.

material goods

The other day I got bored and decided it was time for a trip to Yorkdale and the general Orfus Road area near by (awesome outlet stores, holla). As I was passing by the Blacks Photography store near the subway entrance of the mall, I noticed they had a spring sale sign in their window and figured I'd go in and see if any cool lenses were on for less.

I didn't find any good sale lenses, but I found myself a lovely Soligor T170 heavy duty tripod for $29.99! It was marked down from $80, so I was quite happy about my discovery.

Afterwards, I ventured over to Fabricland on Orfus Road and found some amazingly cheap fabric for backdrops ($2/meter!), so I am now fairly well equipped for doing headshots and portrait type things. I picked up a nice light grey/off-white and a good deep/dark grey. Can't wait to try them out!

I'm going to meet up with a girl I met through Frosh Week soon to set something up. She's trying to raise money for her Up With People (http://www.upwithpeople.org/) trip, so I offered to do headshots for people and the money collected can go towards her fundraising. This way, I'll get some experience and she'll have more funds for her trip. Everybody wins!

I imagine I should probably get my business card printed soon. May indeed come in handy! Just need to find a place that'll do it for cheap.