Another portrait from the set I did with Zoe, might add up some more at some point, editing all of them is taking me forever.
A glass of soda with ice cubes, it keeps it extra cold and for some reason I like the sound of the ice cubes hitting the glass.
Text a friend that you haven’t talked to in a while and invite them out for drinks or dinner, think about all the things you can talk about and look forward to the evening.
Buy the biggest pineapple you can find in the store, leave it on the counter for a week or so, eat it when it’s ripe and sweet.
Skype with friends that lives half a world away, but when you talk it feels like you only left each other yesterday.
Sit outside on your balcony with a glass of cold white wine and a good book until the sun goes down.
Took a bunch of photos today as well, so now I got a lot more to edit, and my editing list was so long already. But I felt I really needed these two shoots, I had a wonderful time and it’s so nice being around someone that’s so grateful for the time I’m putting into this. I’m really excited to get started on some of the images as I think they turned out so great.
I also got this mask as a gift from my model, how sweet isn’t that? It’s one of the few times someone has given me a gift for doing a shoot, I feel so happy. The mask makes me look really creepy though, and my eyelashes pokes out through the holes.
I can’t say I have all the experience in the world, but with now a few years behind me I have some and I have some of the bad experience too. There has been situations where I have had shoots with friends and they use forever to pay me, it’s a very awkward situation to be stuck in as repeatedly asking for your money from your friends is not a thing that helps on the friendships. I have been in a situation where there has been miscommunication and I tried my very best to fix it, even offered free prints, though the mistake was from both sides, yet they insisted on trying to bring me down. I’m still here, I’m perhaps stronger then before as well, each mountain I have to climb does make you better and wiser. Now I always take my payments when my clients have seen the photos and have picked the ones that they want. Now I always sign contract so that my clients know what they’re getting from me.
But what I wanted to use this blog entry on was a new experience that has taught me to put my foot down and say no when enough is enough, and has taught me to value myself. I was suppose to spend my weekend shooting at LondonExpo, I had at least 17 shoots planned and the Friday would start with three. I was especially excited about Friday as I had agreed with one cosplayer that we would take photos of the expo area, we had been a lot back and forth about where when she two days before Expo sent me a link to a location and asked me to check it out so I could see if it worked. It wasn’t all that far from my house so I decided to walk, enjoy the nice weather, and the location was really wonderful and I spent about an hour there walking around looking for places we could shoot. I get back home send her a message as I never got her number after I lost my phone, nor was it in any old messages, and I just hoped she would answer me in time. I never got any answer, not the morning after and I ended up sitting at home until three o’clock after getting up at eight in the morning waiting for her to answer me. In the end I just decided to go up to Expo since I had other people to shoot with
First person I meet when I arrive is her and the first thing I get is “we decided to cancel”. I instantly felt disrespected, I had been sitting around all day, I had been running around on several locations trying to find something that could work. She tend asked me to join her for a shoot straight away, which ended in her friend shooting while I was just sitting around doing nothing, and in the end I just had enough and left. I texted the second person I was suppose to shoot with, she had told me her plans for everyday at the Expo and had seemed very interested in having a shoot, what I get back is “just a shoot on Sunday would be fine”. Again I feel disrespected, I’m there to take photos, I’m not there to hang around all day. And so I text the last person who was up for a shoot but used one and a half hour on showing up, and when she shows up she had a whole group. I was not informed about a group, and honest I didn’t want to shoot all her friends. I asked her because I liked her cosplays, that does not mean I like what her friends does. But I couldn’t find it in my heart to say no so I took photos of them all, and it was perhaps the worst shoot I have had so far this year. Nothing was in my control, a lot of their poses was horrible and they spent their time playing around expecting me to take photos of that as well.
I went home feeling angry and disappointed. And I decided to cancel Expo. It’s not a dramatic thing, it’s not because I’m sad. But I see that it’s time to set my foot down and say no. I won’t let people push me around like this, I’m worth more then waiting around all day, more then getting canceled on and more then taking photos that I shouldn’t. I have decided that unless the photos I take are not a paid job or benefits my portfolio I will not do it anymore. In many ways I’m glad this happened because I’m sitting here thinking about my own value and slowly finding it. I am of course sad for those others I had appointments with but hey shit rolls downhill.
Today I wanted to blog about something different, mostly because whenever I try something new that I like I want to share it with everyone else. I follow a blog of a girl who posts a lot of different healthy recipes, and yesterday she posted something I couldn’t wait to try. It’s so easy and the result ended up being delicious. She made it as a waffle, so that’s always a option as well, but I made it as a pancake as I don’t have the right equipment to make a waffle.
Recipe;
1 banana
1 egg
Yes that is all you need, this will give you maybe two waffles, or one large pancake.
Break the banana into pieces, that makes it easier when you mosh it with a fork. Mosh it all the way so it sorta looks like a porridge.
Crack your egg into the bowl and mix the banana and egg together well.
Keep your heat on about medium, this thing it kinda hard to flip over and can burn easily to I like to cut it in two before turning it or even in four.
So this ended up being my result, I’m by far the best chef, and yes I know it looks a little burnt, but it tasted wonderful especially when topped with a few strawberries. This recipe is healthy, it has not sugar and is gluten free, easy to make and makes you feel full. Give it a go, you might end up liking it.
My mood has been tumbling a bit lately, negative thoughts become more negative until you find yourself surrounded by them and only see flaws instead of good. So my mom came with the suggestion that I should write down ten good things that happen everyday, or ten things that I like/do during that day. I didn’t get all the way to ten, and I feel some things are rather small and irrelevant, but they’re still small things that makes me smile.
- Read a book about your favorite photographer, get inspired and lost in fantastic words and sentences and hope that your life can turn out just as amazing, and if your own photographs should end up being half as amazing as her work it will make you happier then anything.
- Get a message from a model who compliments your work and wants to work with you, that feeling when you like the model as well and try to come up with ideas of what sort of shoot you want to have with her.
- Read wedding blogs and get inspiration for the upcoming shoot I have the 14th of July. Dream and hope that I can be as good as the photographers that inspire me, and also dream about one day being able to follow a couple as they get married by a lake house in a 1920’s style and have fireworks at night.
- Sweet, juicy cherries for desert.
- Curl your hair because it gives a nice change and it makes you feel pretty.
- When it gets warm enough outside to go out in shorts and a top, only with a thin stocking under your shorts and thin jacket over your top.
- Have a friend you haven’t seen in a while come over in the middle of the night, and lay under covers to keep warm and talk about things that make you laugh and smile and how scary the future seems.
- Wake up with someone next to you, girlfriend/boyfriend or just a friend, the feeling of just not being alone, have someone to say good morning to and someone who looks just as sleepy as you feel.
Every now and then I find myself wandering the streets of busy London trying to search my way to small galleries with small exhibitions. I did attend one a about a week ago or so. I can’t really say that it relates to my own personal project, but since I work within the nude category it’s always interesting to see how other people work with it.
Thoman Ruff has made a photographic collection based on internet pornography which he alters and manipulates so that the work becomes an abstract of form and colors, with no visual memory of the original source material.
In the gallery, which was free to enter, there was only exhibited four photos but they were really big. About twice or trice of life-size. I think how he has worked with the photography and the look of it is a lot better when you see it in the size the photographer intends for the viewer to see them. When they’re small scale, the ones I look at first on Google, it was not as artsy looking.
Should anyone care to take a look you will find the exhibiton in Davies Street, just close to Oxford Street by Bond Street tube station.
Body Image is a project where I go home to people, either friends or strangers, and they undress as much as they’re comfortable with and expose what they want of both themselves and their home. And once the photograph is taken my models write a text about their own body image.
This project for me is honest and real, it is without any photoshopping, it’s just me portraying real people just the way they are. I hope people will take the time to read the text the model has provided and that this project will affect someone out there.
Age; 21.
Occupation; finished a bachelor in fine art photography.
Relation; roomie.
“I’ve probably always had, as many other girls, not a very healthy look when it comes to my body. I’ve always wanted to change something and there is certain stuff that irritates me more then others. Like my thighs for example, or my “lady lumps” (fat around the belly and hips). But, now that I’m growing up, I’m learning to at least appreciate other things about myself. I like for example my hair, my hands and my eyes. When it comes to the things I don’t like, I realize that I need to complain less and go more to the gym. The most important thing for me is to look healthy and be healthy.”
And now suddenly I’m at the end of the road. A road I have been wandering along for fifteen years, sometime the road has been pretty straight forward just all about getting good grade and passing the school year. But then came the choices, too many choices, and choices that would affect the outcome of your future. My road started to get harder to walk on, sudden turns and twists and unexpected dead ends. But without every hard step, every small failure I wouldn’t be where I am today, and I’m at the end finally. My final exam handed in and now I just have to wait three weeks before I get my grades. Then the old road closes and a new one opens.
I feel a little scared, a bit small and very curious about what waits me now. After fifteen years of knowing what came next, knowing that you would sit down in a classroom and study for one more year gave me some sort of comfort. But now, it’s out in the big world, make a living for myself. And as a newly educated photographer that might not be the easiest thing to do. If anything it is a challenge, and huge challenge that I willingly accepted when I started with this. Photography is my passion, my life and one of the things that keeps me going. If I were to put down my camera one day I would also put down a part of myself.
Working on my final exam has been tough. These two terms might now have been my most giving terms, and I might not have been the eagerest student either. But I do take my exams seriously. I have been up so late that I start rubbing my eyes, forget what I just wrote and feeling slightly dizzy for looking at a large light screen for so long. But every little hour of work brought me a step closer. Every little nervous turn in the bed when I couldn’t sleep and I keep thinking “do I remember it all? will it be good enough” has made me progress a little further. And one of the moments that made my heart flutter in my chest was when I was looking at the catalog that I had made.
Shiny, glossy pages to flick through, words perfected after hours of re-reading and correcting. Images I have spent months working on finally right there in my hands. There is honestly not a better feeling then seeing your work printed. It feels like a little book in my hands, it’s square, beautiful and it makes me want to work harder to achieve the same feeling with other work that I do. Now it’s time for a little breath-out, to catch up on some sleep, to wander the streets of London again and to start shooting again.
A tired dog allowed to sleep on his owners lap during the tube ride.
With less then two weeks left (ten days to be exact) on my exams my room is slowly growing into this mess state. Old papers, new papers, prints, sketchbook papers and so on. I’m already tried of writing and sitting in front of the computer, but I guess this comes along with the amount of work that I have put off until the end. Yes I know, very typical student. I got one deadline in two days before I send in my work to get a catalog printed, very excited about seeing the result I think it will end up looking quite neat. I will take some photos of it when I get it and post here.
Second deadline is next Friday when I have to hand in both assignments and have everything done and ready. Cross your fingers, going to be a lot of hard work the next ten days.
For today’s post I wanted to make it a little different then what I usually do, I wanted to include some of my behind-the-scenes photos and talk a little bit about my process and then and up some of the different photos I took from that one shoot. Normally as a little heads up before a shoot I tell my models to wear loose clothes, tight clothes leave marks on the skin and since I’m working on a project with no retouching it’s better to have them wear clothes that’s loose.
For me making my models feel safe about what they’re joining in on is one of the most important things. I want them to feel that they can trust me, I want them to feel that they’re also in control of where these images end up and don’t have to worry about them ending up on unwanted pages. So I always have a little chat with my model about the shoot and then afterward I let them sign a model contract which I also sign and I will give them one copy of it as well. This was my model knows her rights and it also states clearly what I’m using the images for.
After we have signed the contract it’s time for a little test-shoot so I can get my light, aperture and speed right. At this stage I allow my model to still have their clothes on, there’s no need for them to take them off already when I’m just doing tests, and especially I had used flashes as well, sometimes these things takes time to set up and get them right so until everything is ready my models remain clothed.
Here are some of the different outcomes from the shoot, there are more as well but these three are among my favorites, I have not yet picked the one that I wish to use. Normally I give it a days rest and then look at them again, sometimes it’s easier to pick when you have been able to give it a little thought.
Text from the model;
“The fact that I have worked a little as a model has made me more comfortable in my own body. Throughout my childhood and teenage years people mocked me for my thin body, and then suddenly there was someone who actually appreciated the type of body that I have. But my complexes for my thin body has followed me for many years, not until in my twenties did I manage to be happy with what I have and not look down on it. I can’t do much with the body I have been given besides keep it healthy, it’s important to accept yourself for who you are and be proud of it. As a adult it’s important for me to feel strong on my own, be able to handle things on my own and feel independent, and at the same time feel proud to be a woman. Body Image has a wonderful message that fits my own ideals around how people show view themselves. I’m pleased with the images, and my body that finally got some meat on the bones.”
Old commissioned work, I think working with Body Image has made me very found of nudes and old work. Just three weeks left now before my hand-in, after that I will have lots of time to edit up all kinds of old work and share more here on my blog.
