A quick eidt from yesterday's shoot

Blast from the past...

I've got aq hoot coming up and I've been stumped on the concept. It's a portrait of a stunning actress which is going to be part of a whole new series I'm shooting over the next couple of months. Sometimes I find myself looking at other photographers work for inspiration, but to often that gets me thinking about how they make images. That can be useful but it can also be dangerous if you find yourself simply adopting or varying their style. So sometimes I find it useful to go back and look over outtakes from my own shoots.

Especially images like this one that I liked but just didn't make the cut for whatever reason. This portrait is from a fairly elaborate fashion shoot I did a while back - It was almost an after thought. A vintage dress that a friend had given me when she downsized her wardrobe, a cool lamp I found on the street the week before, a last set squeezed out before we all called it a day.

The fabulous, the marvelous, the wonderful... Hazel Honeysuckle!

And the subject of yesterday's shoot for the Box Project. I met HH at burlesque show on my birthday back in May last year. A small piece of advice for all you budding portrait photographers out there: If you want to photograph someone it would be better not to be staggering drunk when you approach them about a shoot. Particularly if they are wearing only a couple layers of gauze and feathers when you do. However despite this initial... let's call it a tequila induced handicap, I was able to describe the project well enough that she was at least intrigued.

And despite this somewhat questionable beginning (and this is where an iphone portfolio comes in handy!) once she saw the images she loved the project and agreed to sit for me. Then it only took 8 months to coordinate our schedules, come up with a concept and shoot. Here are a couple of quick edits from the day. Final images coming soon!

Today I relaxed.

And did a self portrait.

In honor of the return of the Shwirtzes...

Welcome back to Brooklyn my friends! 

I did a quick portrait shoot in their apartment just before I left town on my last trip. And a few weeks later they moved back to New York!

Alice in a Black and White Wonderland

This is from last weekend's Box Project shoot. One of my favorite collaborations to date, the masks and mushroom were designed by Launa Eddy and Daniel Olshansky of http://www.thecompoundeye.com. That's Metteliva rockin' out as Alice. I met all three of them at this crazy art salon in a dilapidated tenement building on the LES a few weeks back courtesy of Adam Aleksander of www.UnprecedentedEvents.com. It was one of those perfect evenings where everyone you meet is cool and creative and so far two awesome collaborations have come out of it. Keep checking back 'cause the next one's even better!

A quick outtake from the shoot.

Katia

And I'm still not entirely sure how I got talked into these...

From the Vault

This is a portrait of a friend I made when I was about 18 and it's still one of my favorite images, both for the pure random chance of it as well as the beauty of the portrait. These are two frames next to one another on a 35mm roll of film, and printed as one large image. I had to cut a special negative holder  for the enlarger in order to make the print.