Hats

What's In a Hat?

For our first big assignment, we were assigned to take 20-30 photos, all with a common theme and put them to music in a slideshow for class. 

After about two weeks of photographing the public with candid shots, I began to notice how many different walks of life we all come from, and how each of us can appear at first glance to others.  One factor in determining this, is a hat.  We all choose our hats.  Wear them with pride.  Recently, I myself acquired the cowgirl hat that really completed my transition to the west, and to me, it symbolizes the pride in my new lifestyle.  Whether you don a cowboy hat, a ballcap, a tiara, or a pirate hat, what you wear on your head says something about you.  Your character, and your personality.  Here are some of the character I found, and the hats they donned that match.  

My slideshow music was "Click Click Click Click" by Allan Bishop, but due to copyright reasons, I won't be attaching the music to the show.  But enjoy the photos all the same.

Studio Sessions

We had a world renowned photographer Joe Lavine for our studio lighting.  You've seen his work before I'm sure.  You can find it on ever hamburger helper box!  He is a serious food photographer specialist and a master with his studio techniques.  Too bad our class and him didn't get along so great, but all differences aside, here is some of my work:

First we just worked with the lights.

 We shortly moved onto people with Traditional portraiture.  Thanks Rich for being my first model.  Here we tried the primary lighting techniques.  Side lighting, split lighting, Rembrandt lighting and some others whose technical terms...may be evading me without my notes.

Then we moved onto Contemporary Portraiture and I got to work with "Uncle" Scott!  He's from Hawaii, so we played with that a little bit:

Then we had a trickiest challenge...reflective metal and clear glass.  This is really tricky because of the potential for reflections and unwanted highlights.  For the spoon, we created a scrim tent and light it from above with a softbox.  The elephant was a bit trickier.  Put on a black felt base and backboard, we lit two hard light reflectors behind the backboard and used those highlights to pull out the shape and definition of the object.

Then we moved our studio lights outside and worked with groups.  Using a softbox and the sun for ambient light, we found a location and feathered the fluorescent so the light was distributed evenly. 

Finally, our last class in studio was working with a model of our own choice on our own terms.  I just wanted to have some more fun with contemporary portraits and here they are:

Kristin was lit solely with the Octalight in the second two, in the first she is lit with an Octalight and a rear hair light. Thanks Kristin for being such a good sport. 

RMSP Final Project

“America” means something a little different to each of us.  We all may have different reactions to the name.  To some, it may not mean much at all.  Truthfully, I used to be one that had very little emotion or attachments to this place so many of us call home.  Perhaps it was because I was young, perhaps it had more to do with the influence of a hodgepodge of cultures I had the good fortune of growing up with.

I still remember the day my parents told me we were moving to Montana.  We were living in New York at the time, I was 12, just about to finish 8^th grade and we were in the parking lot of our local “Burlington Coat Factory”.  Mom turned off the car and asked, “Sarah, how would you feel about living in Montana?”   You could say I wasn’t thrilled.  The hysteria that ensued may have been a tad over-dramatic. 

Four years of high school passed, and we moved across the country to the great American West.  Well, I didn’t believe it was so great at the time.  To me, Montana symbolized boring summers spent with grandparents and time taken away from friends and family I knew well.  Time that could have been spent being other places, and doing other things. 

Leaving the Empire State, I swore I wouldn’t date any of those crazy country cowboys.   Five years later, I married a self-proclaimed “non” - but the closest to “cowboy” I’ve ever met.  Through him and the rest of my friends out west, I now appreciate this land that I have come to know and understand as the true heart of America.  This project represents what living in Montana has come to mean to me, and the true American spirit I have gained from being in a place so truly rich with growth and culture.  Here America feels genuine in its entirety.  Stars and Stripes certainly, but beyond that, a country lifestyle and a way of living that could only be seen as our own; a tradition and heritage to be proud of.

Wedding Dress Shopping

To get a start on weddings, we headed to local wedding dress shop, My Sister's Closet to get a few snapshots of a dress fitting.  

A mega thanks to our bride Kristin and her bridesmaids Jessica, Mica and Jen.