F**K Cancer!!!

October is breast cancer awareness month!
The amazing Ophelia K was more than happy to help me bring this set together and fight the ongoing stigma around breast cancer. According to the National Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation, 1 in 8 women in the United States will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. On average, every 2 minutes a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States. There are over 3.5 million breast cancer survivors in the United States. Please consider donating to this foundation.

More images of Ophelia are below:

Ophelia In Lingerie

Showcasing a piece of lingerie from her own collection. Its always a joy to work with Ophelia and combine our ideas to achieve amazing results. I love how she can turn her head and change expressions to give a completely new feel to her poses.

I Love the Beatles ft. Ophelia

I have a wide variety of shredded t-shirts I created to use for photo sessions like this one. KOphelia chose one of my first creations, I ♥ the Beatles. Its hard not to be playful and mess around in this shirt.

Melissa in Red - TBT

Throwback Thursday is here again with Melissa. These photos were lost for several years but now that I have rediscovered them, I am sharing again. This series includes Melissa in a red bustier posing standing and sitting seductively in the studio.

Melissa White Shirt - TBT

Throwback Thursday is here again with Melissa. These images were lost for several years and now that I have rediscovered them, I am sharing again. This time in a series where she is wearing a men's shirt and tie.

Melissa Corset - TBT

Throw Back Thursday is here again with Melissa. These images were lost for a few years and now that I have rediscovered them, I am sharing again. Here, she is wearing a corset from my prop kit, paired with her own lingerie.

Melissa Striptease - TBT

Melissa was so much fun to work with from her eclectic wardrobe to her striptease. Emphasis on tease, as there is no nudity in her session. These images were lost for a few years and now that I have rediscovered them, I am sharing them again.

Making Faces ft. Rachelred

Near the end of our session, we took about two minutes to have some fun to wrap things up. So began  rapid-fire portraits making faces and improvising expressions.

Flash! ft Rachelred

In my prop kit, I have shredded t-shirts with logos and graphics to add to my model sessions. I find them on clearance racks or thrift stores and shred them myself. Each takes less than an hour to complete and the transformation ranges from simple to dramatic. This is one of my more dramatic shred jobs.

Melissa Goofing Off - TBT

ec-clec-tic

e-klektik

adjective

1. deriving ideas, style, or taste from a broad and diverse range of sources

This description is perfect for Melissa. Her personality and natural connection with the camera was amazing. She is the only person I have ever worked with who could pull off this combination of wardrobe. A pink tutu, bowler hat, and striped stockings aren't something most people would even consider putting together but she pulled them all off beautifully.

The Contender featuring Lacey

Initially I envisioned this as a breast cancer awareness set. I found these pink boxing gloves at a discount store and added them to my prop kit, and knew how I wanted to use them. Once the session started, it became a playful cover-up tease with a side of pinup.

Fine Art Nude featuring Kahlan

Presenting the always beautiful Kahlan!

Fine Art Nude featuring Lacey

Always stunning!

Lacey in black & white fine-art nude wearing a string of pearls.

Portfolio Building with Mileah

I love when I have the opportunity to help a new model build her portfolio. Mileah is one such model. She had never modeled with a professional photographer before. She would have her boyfriend take a photograph, then look at it and decide yes or no and it could be several minutes from one photo to the next. This destroys the flow of poses and makes natural-looking poses much more difficult. It also has a negative impact on the model's confidence when she is picking apart everything about her expression, body, or pose.

 I prefer a much more consistent pace that allows for a natural rhythm of posing. The smallest turn or twist of the body can change a mediocre pose into something stunning. Expressions also change from moment to moment in ways the model isn't always aware of that can be shy, sensual, or seductive in a matter of moments.

Each item of her wardrobe here is from my prop kit. A lace fan and garter complimented by the lace body-wrap combine to form a truly sensual image. You might have noticed this is also the wardrobe for the Day of the Dead on Ice. Those images came just moments before the mask was put away to make way for this series.

Portfolio for Trade - Personal Fitness

Since closing my studio, I have been scheduling photo sessions anywhere that has a few square feet of space to set up a backdrop and lights. This session was held in a half-empty living room with the sofa pushed to one side and my background stands pushed up against the opposite wall. We had about 8 feet of space in each direction to work with. It was just enough room to set  up my portable flashes and light-modifiers to give us different lighting effects. The idea behind this photo shoot was to give us both some great looking images to add to our portfolios. This young woman is a personal trainer and wanted some promotional images to add to her online profile.

::: UPDATE 2015 ::: She has since discontinued her personal training career :::

We started this session using a white fabric backdrop and set the lights to make it a bright white. Throughout the photo shoot, we changed backgrounds, lighting effects, and wardrobe to create several different looks and poses for a variety of options. To create some dramatic images, I changed to the black background and moved my main light to the side to create some cross-body shadows.
We shot over 700 images during our 2 1/2 hour session. I narrowed it down to 200 top picks. In order to share them here, I have narrowed my list of favorite images even further: