I’ve shot Kassidy a few times now and always get a great picture of her. It reminds me of an episode of Just Shoot Me when the photographer Elliot (Enrico Colantoni) comes out of his studio talking about how great his photo shoot with Cindy Crawford came out. He hands the proof sheets to Dennis (David Spade) and Dennis says ” Wow, you shot pictures of the most beautiful woman in the world and they came out great. What, did you use some kinda film?” This is one of my all time favorite TV quotes and I use it all the time. Although it’s not always easy to take a great picture with a great subject, it does make it a lot easier.

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I got my portfolio back from my consultant on Friday. At first glance I was scared. This is a big deal for me and something I’ve been putting off for way too long. The first image I noticed in her layout of the book was one that I wouldn’t have expected to see, so right off the bat, I was a little freaked out. After reading her reasons for choosing the images she did and what images should be next to each other in spreads, I started to get excited about the new me. I’m not going to reveal the new portfolio just yet as I need to do a few test shoots to fill out some weaknesses, among which is my lack of portraits of “real women.” Well, they’re all real, but they’re all models.
Anyway, in my attempt to get the ball rolling, I did this shot of my mom in her Red Hat Society garb yesterday. I don’t know if it will make it into my book, but it was an exercise for me anyway. I’ve never really done a “portrait” of my mom other than family portraits.
Most telling quote from my consultant: “…I get the feeling you’re afraid to show women who aren’t traditionally beautiful in some way, and I’d like to see you get past that.”

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I know I just posted another shot from this shoot not too long ago, but I like this one two because it’s so much more dramatic than what I usually get to do. The magazine that this was shot for just came out and I’m kinda disappointed in the cover. It’s so blah compared to this later stuff we did. This often happens as the excitement of the shoot gets watered down once everyone back at the office sees all the images. I don’t do this often, but if I decide to show the magazine cover on my site, I’ll probably do a lot of tweaking to the image to make it look more like this.

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When you’re shooting straight down from a 12 foot ladder, make sure you don’t drop your camera on the model, especially if you hate camera straps like me. No I didn’t drop my camera, but I had the possibility on my mind the whole time. This was shot for the cover of Dayspa Magazine. I posted the opening spread for the story on my other blog, just in case you wanted to see it. Fauxtoblog

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I don’t know if you remember the story I told about the model that almost passed out during a shoot and ended up just being dehydrated, but this was the shot that was used on the Nailpro cover. Deanna was fine and we promised to test some day. My favorite bit of trivia about Deanna is that she played a murder victim on CSI. PLEASE Visit the link on the left for the Katrina Relief Auction over at Flickr. I’m auctioning off a few prints and all the money goes to the American Red Cross. Just look for my Flickr user name (Brooks Ayola) in the discussion thread and/or image pool.

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I’ve heard a rumor that the band that Vinita played guitar and sang for broke up recently. I also heard that they are trying to decide who gets to keep the name Lia-Fail.
On the consultant front, I’ve been slacking a lot. I finally started making some more prints to send for my initial portfolio review and I’m going to try to have it ready by the end of the week. Hopefully this story line will get more interesting after I make the first steps.

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And now for something completely different! A little bird told me that I could post this early if I don’t mention what I was shooting when I did it. It’s not a long story, but I’ll let you in on it when I post the other shot from this day. Cornfused? I shot this at ASA 1600 and I love it. I’m going to do more high speed stuff with the 1Ds MkII. It’s hard to see the noise/grain in a small shot, but a print of this is going to be killer.
Oh, my friend Don just finished his first novel. Check it out. Shaker Days

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