Abstract/Visuals

Hi everyone!

My Photography is now available for sale at Starbucks in Atlanta on 14th street with all sales going back to the Children Need Love Organization, which helps children in India.

I’m so excited about this opportunity and can’t wait to return to India in August!

There is such a need for help there… I’m just so glad I get to be a very small part of what the country of India  needs.

Someone  asked me- “Why are you selling your photography for India? ”

Well.. a smart man once told me,  “If you want to serve and find a greater purpose… then you must first find a great need… and fill it.”

That has been my journey since returning from India last summer. I’ve wanted to find out how I can help the children I met and still be involved while here. When I could not give my time by personally being there.. I gave my gifts. Which is how the Photography at Starbucks came around.

In December I was with my friend, Jantzen, in downtown Atlanta. We had just seen the Atlanta Opera, which his brother sang in. It was amazing. The most wonderful sound that I’ve ever heard.

We stopped by this Starbucks on the way back home and I saw beautiful photography hanging on the walls.

I was amazed… and  said, “How amazing would that be if we came here one day and my photography was on the walls?”

That was the beginning of this dream.

Jantzen had a little bit more faith in me than I had in myself, and told me it would be on the walls… and soon.

Through a series of events, I was the “artist” chosen for the Month of May. (That sounds so crazy!)

I feel so blessed and honored that I can do this for the children I met this past summer.

Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing the canvases for a donation!

“I love this!,” said Janna Evans as she was posing for a night time photo shoot. “I could do this all the time!,” she said.

As easy as it was for Janna to pose and make lots of quick movements, it was not as easy for me, the photographer, at night.

Nighttime photography is rather difficult, but can produce the most dramatic pictures. There are many elements I had to consider before shooting. One of the elements was the location. Because I wouldn’t be using flash, I had to make sure the location had a good bit of lighting. There were few places in Lakeland, Florida that could provide lighting as well as scenery at 11 o’clock at night, but thankfully we got both when I chose Lake Mirror in the downtown area.

“This is such a beautiful place,” said Janna as I took her to the different locations around Lake Mirror. She wore a black and white strapless Marc and Cleo dress that was trimmed with black lace at the empire waist line. The bottom of the dress flowed freely against the backdrops I chose, with the wind blowing in all directions. It was perfect conditions.

Many of the pictures I took were close to the lake’s lights. I did this because I was not using flash and we needed a good amount of lighting. The lighting from the lights worked well as long as I was not more that five or six feet from Janna.

A recommendation I have with nighttime photography is to bring a tripod! It is a must! Pictures can get blurry if you decide to take them “free hand”, even with a high ISO setting. A tripod helps you balance the camera completely still and allows the exposure to take without movement. This will make the picture clear and concise.

“But…I want the pictures to look different,” said Janna, spring break visitor to Florida and model for the nighttime shoot. Defining the “different” was what I set out to do. The first few shots we did were casual. As I began to learn her style of posing, I learned the type of pictures she was looking for: something dramatic and fierce.

From that point on, I was able to tell her exactly how to pose and where to go to get the effects she was going for. Because she was looking for a dramatic style of photography, nighttime was perfect!

I changed the ISO settings and contrasted the colors immensely, as you can see in the picture directly left. I posed Janna so the light from the lake light would fall directly on her. This caused a black out in the picture and made for a great shot!

“I feel so pretty!,”said Janna as I was letting her review some of the shots we got. “They are all so different! How do you do it?” she said.

We captured many different styles in this nighttime photography shoot. Janna walked away with the type of pictures she was looking for and I walked away with a better understanding of nighttime photography.

One great thing about photography is there are always new techniques and new things to learn, whether it is about a camera, a style of photography, or the time you do photography, which in this case, was nighttime.

Below I have included a list of quick tips!

1. If there is not enough lighting, make your ISO higher. For this shoot I chose 800.

2. Bring a tripod! This allows for the picture to develop completely without you shaking the camera.

3. Know your location. Working at nighttime can be challenging enough, so it is important to pick a  place you have scoped out.

Vikas Dutt inspires us all with his photo journalistic style of photography! Revered in India as the best!

Learn how to set up and light your studio!

Imagine flowers, nature, a clear sky and four students from Southeastern University, ready to be models for the next two hours. That was the scene a few weeks ago when we were inspired by the Gucci ad seen above.

The girls wore boho/hippie style clothing, heavy makeup and LOTS of accessories. The colors I tried to capture weren’t in the scene- it was in their makeup and their clothing.

We shot at a small place in Lakeland, Florida called the “Dunes.” The Dunes was a quiet place that had a woodsy  feel and places that had not been explored. It was perfect place for a rugged, natural look. ”It was less structured than a studio shoot. It felt incredibly natural and organic, ” said Elizabeth Stoutimore, who was a model at shoot. (more…)

“Symmetry in an image is often considered an element of balance. It elicits feelings of dignity and repose but makes photographs static and often unimaginative. This type of alance in an image is mostly seen in photographs of large public buildings, where each ide of the building matches each other with the entrance in the middle. A photograph with this type of balance will be boring and uninteresting after the first look.”

(more…)