aerial straps

At the beginning of the month, I had the awesome opportunity to work with Abby again, but this time for her specialty dance talents. She does Aerial Dance with straps and a hoop (not photographed yet). She is amazing at it! If you want a unique act at your next event, or even a private lesson, ask me for her contact info!

I got to use a couple of my new "backdrops" for this shoot. By that I mean, I went to Fabricland and bought cheap material and sewed it together all make-shift style. The red and purple I bought are Rayon Twill... so they're probably going to be wrinkly a good lot of the time, but they look neat. The black is Valour, which makes me laugh, but it's actually pretty good for a backdrop.

I wanted the background in these shots to be flush with no folds or wrinkles, but the only way we could hang it resulted in a sort of theatrical curtain look. I don't hate it, so it's all good.

red curtain, originally uploaded by avalilly.

pointe, originally uploaded by avalilly.

half a heart, originally uploaded by avalilly.

extend, originally uploaded by avalilly.

impossible, originally uploaded by avalilly.

riley, originally uploaded by avalilly.

aerial, originally uploaded by avalilly.

We actually shot these in her garage. Her unheated garage. On a day where it was -30 C out. She was a great sport, as was her little cousin who came out as well. Abby teaches private lessons for children as well, if you happen to be interested! It's a really beautiful dance form. I can't imagine how much strength it takes though. I can't even touch my toes without bending my knees, so this is definitly not in the stars for me!

She does a routine with a partner on her hoop. I really hope I get a chance to shoot those photos! It sounds so awesome.

These photos really make me wish I had a good lighting kit though. We just used a common work/flood light and in some of them my external flash fired at the ceiling. It will suffice for now, but it really really makes me want to learn how to light properly.

(Also I did the makeup for these. Can you tell I had just seen Black Swan?)

abby and the old barley mill

So I just realized I never actually uploaded the rest of the photos from this shoot to this blog. They've been on Flickr for a while, so if you follow that you may have already seen them. They're also now on my Facebook Page!

time, originally uploaded by avalilly.

lean, originally uploaded by avalilly.

weightless, originally uploaded by avalilly.

glow, originally uploaded by avalilly.

The levitation image (weightless) is probably my favourite photo to date involving Photoshop to achieve the desired image. It features two different photos to make up Abby's body, one for the gallery space, and two more to create the left, foremost pillar. I'll have to do a full before and after with the in between steps to fully explain it, but I'm happy with the results, so I hope it looks good!

You'll be seeing more of this lady in the future as she's hired me for her business portraits and aerial straps photos (which I shot last night with my new red backdrop!). I'll post more about those in future.

I may upload more photos to this post in the future. There's still a couple images that I want to work on from this shoot, so whenever they get done I'll just add them to the end of this post. :)

sneak peak

time, originally uploaded by avalilly.

Here's one of the first shots from my photoshoot with the lovely Abby from friday.

It's a shame I've been so busy, because I just want to come home and work on these! I'll have more up soon though.

Still in love with the location. <3

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!