Salem glamour / fashion

Here is another photo from my shoot with Marissa. I am getting them edited to get to her and thought I would add another post with a shot or two. I really like this headshot in black and white:



but I also think she pulled off the rest of this shoot (as always) really well. It is much harder than people think to model - especially when you are 5'4". Inch for inch, Marissa is the best in front of a camera. If I was selling something that needed captivating eyes and great presence, I would hire her.

Marissa in Salem

Here is one from my shoot with Marissa. I will post more on my flickr page as I get them done.

Merry Christmas!

Salem Fashion Photographer

The holiday season has been crazy busy. I have been booking shoots left and right, developing more commercial business than anytime in the past - a lot of fashion and some business executive portraiture.

I have to run to shoot this morning with Marissa. We haven't shot in a while. She is awesome to work with, but our styles diverge quite a bit. If you look through her portfolio, there is a lot that I do not personally prefer (probably because she has worked with so many different photographers of varying skills and styles), but there are shots in which she looks stunning. I have had some of my best shots come from Marissa as well as whole sets that have not worked so well, through no fault of hers. It could be that I am out of touch with what is fashionable, but I prefer more minimalist stuff than what she usually does (kind of the Gordon Ramsey Kitchen Nightmares school of photography, simple, good, clean shots). The challenge is to do something different each time, and this time, I have several new ideas, weather permitting a couple.

Overall, shooting with her is very much worth the potential reward of getting one of those jaw dropping shots that her experience brings. I work with a couple of models that are physically more suited to modeling than Marissa (like Mary who is 5'11") but none are better at working in front of a camera.

Latex in Salem

Got ahold of some latex fetish gear from a friend, so I have tried it out on some models and a boudior client. It is actually a tough thing to photograph well.

While I am not a fetish photographer, I do like to shoot all kinds of different stuff. The most interesting thing about these outfits is that the people seem to get into the persona a bit more and give me some better emotion when posing. Props to TS for letting me post this and for being a mom of two, she looks great and pulled off a difficult modeling shoot for someone who has never modeled anything before.

Salem Photo Lessons

Just curious if there would be any takers for some fashion/glamour photography lessons? I have seen them before where a photographer hooks up a model or 2 and gets 4 or so people to pay for the lesson and shoot with models. All releases signed, etc. Anyone interested drop me a line.

www.adamphotographic.com

First magazine fashion spread

I have been contacted by a regional magazine to shoot some fashion outside at the end of January. I am hopeful that we will sign the contract in the next couple of days.

I also shot some crazy photos in a crazy effort to get some additional business from an unconventional client. Here is an example of what Mary looks like all darked up. Simplest lighting setup I have ever done. Ambient room light with a flashlight to get the glow behind the model.



After that, I took some headshots in the same make up since I didn't think that I would get another shot at Mary with such dark make up on. What do you think?



More at www.adamphotographic.com

Doctor's Office Shoot

The doctor's office shoot went very well, and I got to know my doctor better. My wife and I already liked her a lot, but we left liking her even more. The nurse who does the laser zapping (I imagine Doctor Evil every time I say "laser") was very cute and had one of the easiest smiles ever.

Boutique Party

What a joke. I have my port on the counter, since I am donating a session to this raffle. I leave for a little bit and come back to find it out in the hall. I was told that the person selling the raffle tickets was showing people to get them to buy tickets - fair enough. When I went to leave and let her know I needed to take my portfolio, I get, "Oh, is that what that is?" Obviously, she never showed it once.

Lesson learned, and I won't be participating in anything like that in the future.

Salem Boutique Party

I am going to show off the new portfolio tonight at the Olive Boutique's Christmas party tonight. I think it is invitation only, but if you are going, stop by and say hello. I will be showing off the new fashion photography portfolio.

Portfolio Building

I am still going through older photos cataloging and reworking some photos from a while back. Here is another of Cottage Grove based Katie that I worked on and may use.

Portfolio Prep

While going through my files prepping them for my new portfolio and importing the PS files into Lightroom, I found an old picture of Katie that I reworked a bit. I usually don't process files quite as much, but I used the pinch filter a little on her nose, converted to black and white, added a high pass filter to bring out her crazy hair and great lips and used a little diffused glow at low opacity to soften the skin.



I will have my new http://www.lost-luggage.com/ portfolio done today, I hope, ready for a Christmas party at a boutique next Friday.

New digs, new port - need advice to make my studio more girly without losing my balls

I am running a few trial sheets of some moab paper through, getting my port all set for a few professional opportunities next week.

After the swanky Olive Boutique party, I will shoot some photos of my super cool doctor at http://www.vidafamilymedicine.com/. Gotta get a licensing deal arranged. I am not a big fan of unlimited use but we may be able to work something out.

In any case, my fashionista doctor will make an excellent subject and will finally push me over the redecoration edge in studio. We need to paint, mount stuff, get a fridge, sink, mirror with light bulbs and a couple of hanging bare bulbs from the ceiling. Move my leather couch in with Pioneer receiver and a couple of speakers, we can make it sound good.

For the event, we need to get some pictures hung.

No more industrial shoot schack. Hello feminine experience. Women buy photos. My shop must ease up on that manly stuff. That manly stuff just makes good pictures. That happy stuff makes saleable pictures damn it. Only one way to see, keep as much manliness in the design but put womanly aspects of design such as a fridge filled with french water. A special chair, A big movie style fancy chair with flowers that we can also use in a shoot. A couple ligts in the ceiling woucd be good if they could work on pulley.

Hopefully I can get my industrial Salem studio to work well for women since they are the primary purchasers of portrait photography.

Salem Photographer - Fine Art Photos Featured in Journal

My fine art photos will be featured in the Salem Project, an art journal that will be sold at the Coffee House Cafe.

Stop by, pick up a copy - or visit my site at www.adamphotographic.com to see some of my fine art work.

Lightoom organization

Although I am loving Adobe Lightroom, I am struggling with organization of all of my photos. My portrait photography business has generated 27,369 photos that I have kept. My family photos are separate. I need to figure out and apply a keywording scheme as I am having a harder and harder time finding specific photos, especially my landscape fine art photography work.

I have two Lightroom books, and I need to sit down and go through everything this weekend.

Trying to determine the cost benefit of spending so much time organizing, but I am seeing it as inevitable at this point.

Salem art magazine

Some of my photos will be in the Salem Journal, to be sold at the Book Bin in downtown Salem as well as a few other spots around town. I had actually submitted a bunch of them a while ago, so they are not my latest, greatest stuff, but still worth looking at.

Straitjacket

Here are two photos with Marie. I had this insane shot in mind for a while after seeing the all white brick basement of my studio building. With the model working on being a psychologist, I thought it might work out well to take a first run at the shot I had in mind.

The final shot I would like to do involves another person and a little bit more cinematic perspective, but just for the high key factor, I like these. Trying to avoid the whole appearance of bondage, but that is tough to do with the subject. What do you think? While it is high key, there is detail in the highlights, so if you see a mass of white, with no detail, either your brightness or contrast may be a touch high on your monitor.

Salem Photographer

Wow, just noticed that this blog put me on top of the google search for "Salem photographer." Awesome!

ADAM PHOTOGRAPHIC - PORTFOLIO

I will be at a Christmas party held in the Salem Arts Building on Friday, Dec. 7, by the Olive Boutique. It is an invite only affair with the Olive Boutique's top clients. They sell fairly high end boutique stuff. Hopefully, the new store in the building will also participate. It is a pin up style, fetishy pin up clothing store called Cherry Red.

I will have a small display and offer a 50% discount on my sitting fee for bookings made that night.

I am also excited about shooting some pictures for my doctor's office. She is a good doctor and a pretty cool person, so it should be fun. She also has a razor wire tattoo on her leg that reminds me of George Clooney's tattoo on his neck. I might shoot something in the freight elevator that just focuses on her calf with a cool shoe.

I will post a lot more to this blog today, with lots of pics.

Salem photographer

Alright, I am now on the hunt for the ever elusive SEO. That would be search engine optimization.

I think I have a good reputation locally and have never had a client less than thrilled with the photos, but it is time to try and fill in the slow periods. Although the last week has been slow (and I have really enjoyed it after senior and school photography), I also like shooting a lot.

Maybe I will see if Lauren wants to shoot. She has an interesting look but works a lot better with a make up artist, which I don't have handy this weekend.

Tis the season for boudoir pictures, so maybe I should beef up my site, http://www.adamphotographic.com/, for that a bit. Problem is, people think that if you have a lot of boudoir photography you are just trying to take pictures of people nekkid. For me, it is the fashion and model photos that drive wives to my site to get hot pictures for their husbands.

I may be able to get some of my fine art work hung at a nice downtown establishment. Will post more information as it is available.

Is blogging worth it?

Not sure. Maybe my content just sucks.

I don't know that I have time to do this much anymore. Maybe now that I took some time off school, I will post and shoot more. I have added any photos to my flickr account in a while either. I think I will this weekend. It is tough though because it takes time and I don't want my images to get ripped off.

Senior and school photography were super busy this year! One more weekend day of editing photos and I am done though. Should be a little slow in November like always. I do get a smattering of boudoir requests from wives wanting to look hot for their husbands and am shooting one of my friend in the next couple of weekends.

I keep adding pics to my site at http://www.adamphotographic.com/. I may get another site to rank a little higher in the search engines.

Slacking

I dropped Academy of Art classes. They were sucking this term and no where near worth the money. People thinking about attending http://www.academyart.edu/ need to really consider whether it is worth the money on a reputationless school. Pick up US News and apply like mad to all of the other schools instead.

Anyway, been finishing up portraits. You can see them at http://www.adamphotographic.com/.

I will add one of Mary being a little crazy in a photo shoot. She is great, not only really pretty, tall, etc, but a very nice person who is easy to work with. She wants to be a psychologist, so we went with a madwoman shot. Impressions?

Senior city

Senior pictures are in full swing and I have been so busy that it has been hard to write for the blog. I write at my day job almost all day, so when I come home, I just want to spend a little time with the family.

Anyway, I got a 50mm F1.4 Canon lens and used it yesterday. Wow, for $300, it is very nice. Kills the plastic fantastic 1.8 on image quality and bokeh (camera nerds will get that).

Shot again with Mary and loved this photo that I shot with my lensbaby 2. I just got a lensbaby 3 for my still life class as sort of an ubercheap bellows/tilt shift lens. Because of the finnicky focus of the 2, I had to shoot a bunch in order to get one sharp enough in the eyes. I think the lensbaby 3 will lessen the number of exposures needed to get a sharp shot.

New site getting set up

I bought a site from bludomain.com, and I am populating it prior to my switch from my livebooks site, which you can see (at the time of posting) at www.adamphotographic.com.

My new site is cheaper and has more features, so I am pretty excited. Best of all is the proofing gallery, so I can have people look through the outtakes and see if there are any additional they want. That is the one sucky thing about digital, people expect to see everything. I used to have to go through a real hassle to watermark and pdf them in such a way to make it a pain to use images that may not be up to my quality standards.

Now, I just use Lightroom to create jpgs and upload to a client proof gallery. Super cool.

School starts again

I am going to keep at this blog if for nothing else than as a cathartic exercise.

I have been uberbusy this year with senior portraits. I think they have come out really well. I don;t have a lot of them up, but you can check out a few under individuals at http://www.adamphotographic.com/.

I am in the process of switching to another web server so both my email and website could be messed up for a couple of days.

On Wednesdays, I have begun working with Mary, who is super nice on top of being pretty and super tall. Here is a picture in which I put my old logo (doh!), but it is a good example of my work.

Anyway, just thought I would post an update. It is much quicker to blog it than post it on my own site!

Website

I am looking for a new website provider. Livebooks is too darn expensive.

Spent all day yesterday printing senior portrait orders. I have been lucky this year with lots of pretty people. Makes it much easier.

I am surprised sometimes about what photos other people choose. For instance, this photo of one of the seniors was my faves but did not get ordered:



I still have a bunch of sessions waiting for print orders, but I have been surprised this year. I have had everything from super thrilled with my photos to people whose spouses obviously told them to hire me and weren't thrilled with it.

Alright, I signed up for photographers.com listing. I am not sure if I wasted my $135, but people over at modelmayhem seem to report that the site is bringing them referrals. We will see.

Even with Adobe Lightroom, I am still wading through piles of images. I have to get a handle on keywording and categorizing. Last I checked, I had 22,000+, so it won't be simple.

What is the point?

Why blog? I am not sure.

I am up late working sometimes, between two jobs and school, I need some time to do something besides work. I like to write, and there are a brazilian people taking up photography, so maybe this will evolve into a teaching tool, marketing tool or just way for me to vent about crazy shit that happens during the day or I hear when shoot model ports. For example, did you know that cauliflower is broccoli grown in the shade or strawberry milk comes from red cows?


I shoot portraits and model portfolios mostly from my downtown Salem studio, http://www.adamphotographic.com/. Just got done with a gaggle of senior portraits with very cool, pretty people. Some of them are at my flickr page, and some are posted on my Web site.