Jingle Bells, Batman Smells...

Wow, the holiday season really snuck up on me this year. One day it's 75 degrees and the next day it's Thanksgiving. I hope everyone had a great holiday and stuffed themselves silly, and if you went shopping on Black Friday more power to ya. I hope no one was trampled. I had a nice laid-back Thanksgiving myself, and I have a lot to be thankful for. It really is a time to reflect on all the blessings we have received over the course of the year, and I hope that everyone can think of at least one psotive thing that happened to them.

For instance I'm thankful for my job, my family, my pets, and I'm thankful I took this picture...



More after the jump...

I have been busy with school still, and trying to keep my head afloat. It hasnt been easy but hopefully a couple years from now I will look back and say it was worth it! I've had a couple of shoots recently as well, and the results seem to get better every time. I'm still no pro - but I'm taking it in baby steps. I feel more comfortable with off-camera flash than ever before. I know that if I have a strobe, a lightstand and an umbrella I can make a decent picture. Up to this point I have been focusing on using one light and harnessing it, getting comfy with it and pushing it to the limit. Recently I started playing around with 2 lights. It's amazing the world that an extra light can open up for you. You can set it behind the subject and get a cool flare effect with a bare strobe.

You can throw it further back and keep it out of the lens for a nice rim light.

You can also play with lighting ratios, here I had one strobe at full power in a softbox to camera left, and another strobe on half power through an umbrella at camera right.

Or your gear can completely fail and you can just say "eff it" and use natural light.

I think I'm leaning more towards fashion photography than anything else, I love working with a model and getting those intensely cool frames. It speaks to me as the kind of images I want to create. Fashion photography is an incredibly competative field (not that all photography fields aren't), and extremely difficult to break into. That scares me a lot. It's so inspiring for me, but yet scary because it's one of the tougher specialties to be successful in. The only thing I can do is keep working on my skills, and build the best portfolio I can possibly make.

I'm getting to the point where I'm going to have to start getting serious about my work. I'm not going to be able to do many free shoots unless it is for building my book up. Especially since now I know that family pictures are not what I want to pursue. I wouldn't mind doing weddings though - although I would be seriously stressed out doing them because you only get one shot!!

Who knows though, I'm sitting in the middle of a teeter totter right now and it could go either way. One thing I know for sure is, I'm ready to take this thing to the next level. I'm on facebook, twitter and flickr and I'm ready to market the hell out of myself. Keep an eye out for my name because it's gonna be well-known before I die.