Erin Covey Creative Blog

Ingredients:

~ $12.09 for beverages at 7-11 (Will not confirm or deny chips and salsa was also bought to keep energy up)

~ Plastic tarp on floor

~ old glass (found underneath desk at work)

~ Boredom on a weeknight

Mix thoroughly for best results…

With an entrance, came a departure.  I needed a break from what I was doing on a day to day basis, and, like a muse, she appeared. Kristen and I were ‘tweeps…ummm, Twitter friends (no matter how I say this, it will sound odd to some).  I was a huge fan of her awesome music blog, essentially a place for out-of-touch-wanna-be-cool-kids go to see what the hip people are listening to.  Join the experience here.

Anyway, after bonding over a road race, pictures, music, etc… we had to meet.  And I had to photograph.  So in she came with some inspiration, and out went my status quo way of shooting.  You see, it is rare that I get a beautiful and patient subject in front of my lens who allows me 100 percent experimentation! Yep, she’s that cool.  I have really been wanting to try different looks.  I have a little book of ideas/experiments that I keep and update, so I have a running tally of things I want to try to put in my portfolio.  Among them: laser lights, glitter, and playing with shadows.  She was game! Some worked (glitter), some definitely didn’t (laser lights), but in the end it was a fun tweepup (or something)!!

A HUGE thank you not only to Kristen, but to Megan who did the makeup (contact me if you need a fantastic makeup guru in the Albany, NY area) and Chad for use of his space where we set up a studio and made a glittery mess of his floor!

Here are some of my favorites…

Chad held a gold reflector right below Kristen’s face and I LOVE how the gold bounced everywhere and made her skin radiant!

Here is the same kind of theme but we switched out backgrounds to give a winter, ice princess vibe…

Then we mixed it up and played with shadows (something I will definitely do more of in the future)…

Now, for an even bigger departure.  I almost NEVER gel (color) my lights.  But I wrapped my strobes in bright pink gels (a waxy like coating) to try to backlight her…I think it was a cool effect and something I at least can now nail if a client asks for it in the future.

A ginormous thank you to the stunning model Kristen, her rocking wardrobe, and her patience! Had an absolute blast and learned a lot!

Hanging out tonight with two artists (one of the musical kind and one of the audio kind), listening to them talk passionately about their upcoming projects…I didn’t take a photo yet and I had an hour to do so…seemed perfect for the Photo 365 Project! I’m glad those close to me don’t mind me shoving a camera in their face all the time…

My friend Marcea while we were playing with light in DC…she’s just relaxing and looking gorge, as usual…with no effort at all…

We were just playing with flashes for fun, but she’s the type of girl who just always looks amazing!

My plugged-in mother tipped me off to a photo contest that was going on in central New York.  A local cemetery was hosting a contest.  The rules were simple: Honor a veteran by photographing something military related, in the cemetery.  I thought about it for a good week.  I don’t ever enter photography contests but I’ll tell you what, they DO challenge you to think outside the box.  My motivation is never to do something that is “the best.”  More often, it’s doing something that is different and unique and might cause someone to think…”ahh, kind of cool”

So here is what I came up with:

I’ll let you know if I won anything, but that’s hardly the point.  If I win, I’m taking my mom out.  She’s always up for tagging along on a photo assignment, even if it involves wandering around spooky cemeteries at night!

I love photo challenges.  In case you wanted to know how I lit that…I had my mom hold a flash (snooted with construction paper taped around the flash into the shape of a round spotlight).  She pointed the flash (which was not on my camera but fired from a pocket wizard) at the metal star.  Since it was still relatively light outside (dusk) I put the Fstop at something around 18 and ISO 100.  We actually got kicked out of the cemetery so I was pretty pleased with the 5 minutes we got to put this together!

I met this talented paper artist recently and she hired me to take photos of the dozens of works she’s made over the years.  Awesome! I love pairing up with passionate and compelling people.  Problem is, they’re all framed, many are very large, and they have price tags on them! So the work began…here’s how to shoot things with very reflective surfaces (i.e. things in glass frames.)  Take black sheets and cover all sides of the item, INCLUDING the front of it.  You cut a hole in the sheet and shoot the lens through it (yes this most likely means you will get under the sheet to take photos, if the items are large) It helps if you get in some shade and use natural light…strobes are just tricky.  For photographs, I also used “lens distortion” in photoshop to correct some of the lines from the picture frames, which didn’t quite match up.  Then I photoshopped out the price tag.  Here are some of my favorites.  She’s putting together a website and I will DEFINITELY pass along when it’s up and running!

♥ One of my California friends is a tremendous writer.  Thought I’d pass this along.  This snippet is his response to the state legislature there being completely broke, but continuing to spend like money grows on trees: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/07/02/EDGP1E7BN0.DTL

I’ll be the first to admit, my goals change frequently and sporadically.  I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to accomplish, as it seems to be the topic du jour amongst friends lately.  I don’t know where I’ll be five or ten years from now, but I do know that I should be a little clearer about small-medium size things I intend to do…even if I don’t ultimately know the end result.

I’ve been seeing a lot of photographers’ blogs and their “101 things in 2010″ lists.  If I came up with 101 things I wanted to do (while it wouldn’t be hard, it might overwhelm me seeing a list that long!) it probably wouldn’t get done.  But perhaps 25 items or 50.  I didn’t want to post them here…boring for you.  But maybe it will prompt you to do the same and we can inspire each other.

That’s why I bought this journal today (well, Barnes and Noble was also having a huge 50% off sale…SCORE!) So I’m going to start carrying it with me and jotting down what comes to mind.  Whether it’s songs that inspire me or photographs that I cut out of a magazine…it’ll be a “catch all” for things creative.  I actually have a bunch of cool journals, but they’re all contaminated with my writings or drawings, so I felt I needed to start fresh.

Tell ya what I will do…I’ll let you know when I start crossing things off my list!