decision daisy

I am aware that the flowers in question are actually blackeyed susans, but originally I tried this idea out with daisies and liked the title so I kept it. The daisies were much smaller, so writing on the petals was much more difficult than it was with the susans and would have required way more photoshopping than necessary. Fortunately, my mum had a nice crop of these flowers growing in the backyard during the summer and they didn't seem to mind the black marker as much, so WIN.

decision daisy, originally uploaded by avalilly.

all yellow, originally uploaded by avalilly.

handful, originally uploaded by avalilly.

I'm not sure if I want/need any more images to go with these. Might just leave it as a triptych, since it seems okay the way it is.

The leaves are already changing colours here. I love autumn, but I had so many summer-requiring ideas, I guess I'll just have to wait 'til next year to do them.

make-over

So, this year I decided I should actually get a desk for school instead of just using my laptop on my bed all the time. I happened upon the Salvation Army store in my town getting rid of everything for super cheap so they could move locations or something. I found this desk in there for $30. It's small, cute, and fits perfectly in my new room.

I decided the dark forest green wasn't really working for me though. I have this thing for red, white, and black, so ofcourse that needed to happen in the new paint job. Picked up some marine oil paint 'sample' cans from the paint place, sanded it down and painted away!

Before!

After!

Unfortunately, the stripes didn't come out perfectly straight. The tape I used sort of allowed for some paint to seap under it, but it's nothing terribly noticeable. I'll probably just fix it with a small brush if I'm in a tedious mood sometime. I have some small circular mirror accents I'm debating putting on the drawers too, but I think I like it the way it is.

hearts

heart petals, originally uploaded by avalilly.

love colour, originally uploaded by avalilly.

heart shaped lipstick, originally uploaded by avalilly.

colour love, originally uploaded by avalilly.

tilted love, originally uploaded by avalilly.

love tea, originally uploaded by avalilly.

love bokeh, originally uploaded by avalilly.

I don't know why, but one day I woke up and decided I'd like to start a photo series of hearts. I know it's been done a million ways already, but I like it. It's just a silly side project I'll keep ongoing, if I think of something or come across something that'll work I'll add it to the set.


It might eventually amalgamate into some sort of "love is" series, but I'll have to think about it. Well, maybe not, but I'll need the assistance of other people so it doesn't get stale. I'd like to do more people portraits anyways, so it's a definite possibility.

PS why does blogspot horribly compress the images in the thumbnails into grotsky quality? Sadface.

it's raining

This film was shot on June 21, 2009. It was written and directed by Will Murphy and is special to me because it was my very first non-student production. It was a simple set up, just a bedroom and a bathroom, but the director trusted me with creative freedom to just bring in whatever and dress it how I felt. That was awesome, because the character who the room belonged to was pretty much in the exact demographic as I am, so a lot of my own things ended up being in the shots.

Worked out pretty well, the end budget for art department was only $4.52, which was spent on pregnancy tests from the dollar store for props. I still find it hilarious that you can buy pregnancy tests at the dollar store. They were perfect though because they were label free.

You can find more stills from the day here in my Flickr set, but here's a few favourites:

realization, originally uploaded by avalilly.

connection, originally uploaded by avalilly.

camera, originally uploaded by avalilly.

blanket, originally uploaded by avalilly.

lil hammer, big hammer, originally uploaded by avalilly.

makeup tears, originally uploaded by avalilly.

Overall it was pretty much the best experience I've had on set to date. There were a handful of industry professionals on the crew that graciously donated their time to help make this film. It was a really interesting change from working on student productions. Everything went by much quicker with a lot less downtime and everyone stuck to their own job, etc. I thought it might be more difficult to work with strangers, but it was a surprisingly lovely experience!

The film is not yet completed last I heard, but I can't wait to see the finished product!

money honeys

This is precisely why I need to find summer employment... immediately.

Song: "Money Honey" by Lady Gaga

(Hopefully they won't get mad and make me take it down. Facebook wouldn't even let me upload it, so it'll go here for a little bit anyways...)

In other news, I'll be Art Directing a film on sunday, so look forward to seeing some production stills from that soon!

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".