photoshoot fun

So Katie and I had a fun little photoshoot last weekend. She wanted to do some makeup on a couple friends of ours to start building up a bit of a makeup portfolio, so I agreed to do the photography for her.


The following are of the lovely Jamie! Those lashes were so huge that the wind was actually blowing them around on her eyelids. She rocked them though!

Photography: Laura Crowell

Make-up: Katie Melanson

Model: Jamie Miller

Editting: Laura Crowell

The next batch are of Astrea. We ran into a bit of a time issue, as she had to get to a meeting, so it was a quick process with makeup and then a quick photoshoot, but they still turned out nice! Admittedly, not the most spectacular creative makeup in the world, but we were in a hurry. What can you do. She worked it though~

Photography: Laura Crowell
Make-up: Katie Melanson
Model: Astrea Campbell-Cobb
Editting: Laura Crowell

All in all, a fun little photoshoot. Hopefully with some more thought and time in the future, we can come up with some more elaborate ideas. I had a lot of fun working with these ladies, so hopefully they'll be up for it in the future!

monotomy

Been a little busy as of late trying to finish up this lonnnng school year. I'm finally finished all of my course work, I just have a couple exams to take care of next week.

For my digital photography class, our final project had to do with stop motion or slide show narratives. I wasn't too crazy about the narrative part. When I heard 'stop motion' I had really hoped we could just compile sequences of images and not really have them mean anything. I just wanted to play! But alas, being at university everything must have a meaning and some kind of intellectual persuit. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but seriously sometimes you just want to make something pretty without having it be... SOMETHING.

I animated the ants all on my own. There's 130 different frames rendered into a loopable clip. It honestly took me a good eight hours or so to get it up and running. I wanted to toy with the idea of people with monotonous ant-like behaviour. As students, we are constantly working towards a piece of paper that proves what we've done. This being the longest school year ever due to the strike, it feels like the work and the routine never ends.

All in all, time consuming, but an interesting project. I'd like to try more things like this in the future. Perhaps without any time constraints I can come up with something a little more deep than "people vs ants".

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.

stay gold

Here are some more production stills, this time from Stay Gold; a third year student film production @ York University 2009 written and directed by Alexandra Byers. My roommate was doing the makeup and asked for some help from me to do the strange designs on top of the purple skin.

sans purple, originally uploaded by avalilly.

little big shoes, originally uploaded by avalilly.

facing yourself, originally uploaded by avalilly.

habitat, originally uploaded by avalilly.

alien, originally uploaded by avalilly.

More can be found in my Flickr set!

It was a very pretty idea for film. Super fun for anyone who loves art direction, costumes, and makeup. Unfortunately, I believe I had two or three essays to write that same weekend, so I could only stop in to do the designs with makeup in the morning. Naturally, I stayed long enough to take some photos though.

Lovely film.

henry

Here are some random snaps I took on the set of Henry; a third year student film production @ York University 2009 written and directed by Howard Shefman.

scene crop, originally uploaded by avalilly.

crew powwow, originally uploaded by avalilly.

I was called in pretty last minute (which I don't think I'll be doing in the future) to do set dressing for the apartment scenes. It was fun, I pretty much just had to make an eclectic apartment appear more sophisticated with what was available in front of me. I enjoy playing around with stuff like that. It was a bit of a tight space to work in, but the final product looked quite nice. My production stills aren't that great - I didn't want to get in the way too much while everyone was moving lights and pondering the frame so I just sort of captured what I could from the corners.

results

So these are a couple of the results of my Janieta Eyre inspired photo project. I didn't get nearly as many good shots as I wanted, as it's super awkward to model for yourself. I had to get a roommate to operate the shutter for me, since I don't have a remote yet. The first one doesn't work as well for her style as I had hoped. I might need to make it black and white to do so, but the ridiculous dresses are my favourite part so I'd like to keep them in all their glorious colourfulness.

The second one I feel works well for her style. I wish I had a better idea of what the frame looked like though, I wanted the stuff on the wall to stand out. Ah well, 'twas a good learning experience; both photography and planning-wise. I'll have to remember not to rely too much on other people unfortunately. I couldn't do this project on my own without a remote and the people who were supposed to help me bailed. Thank god my roommate was home to help though!

I may still try a few more if I have time. I think I'll be printing the second image to be handed in though. It works the best and all the me's are in focus, which is always nice haha. Now all I have to do is figure out how to talk about the original photographer for 10 minutes. Always fun being a student, I guess.

janieta eyre

I'm in a digital photography course this semester and we're heading in on the third project now. The theme this time around is to shoot a series of images in a sort of homage to a contemporary Canadian photographer. We were given a list of names to choose from and I searched out a few and came across the work of Janieta Eyre. She's got a really interesting body of work that you can check out on her website:

http://www.janietaeyre.com/index2.htm

I especially love her Incarnations series. The dual self portrait will be what I try to explore in this third project. 'Tis a shame my friend moved out of her apartment. It would have been perfect to shoot in, but I've found a way to make my own place work, so I'll be working on that all weekend! Hopefully it won't be too awkward doing a bunch of portraits of myself around the house.

Super excited for it though! I hope I can translate my ideas well enough into photos. They look so good in my head. :(

Check back soon for the results of this shoot! I'll try and post them as soon as I'm done editting~