It’s a common practice of mine to let my images sit a few days after a shoot before I look at them – it gives my emotions from the shoot day a chance to dissipate, so I can look at the images with fresh eyes.

My last assignment was to incorporate motion into a portrait.  This one was a lot easier for me on the idea front and as soon as Ken told us our challenge, I knew what I wanted to do.  I wanted to create a portrait that contained elements of focus in addition to the elements of motion.

While I was shooting my assignments, I also shot some straight up portraits.  Thanks to Bethany (model) and Teal Druda (hair and make up) for helping me out with this shoot.

June 9th I was in Watts and that was the day I found a little brown puppy.  She was laying in the sun, emaciated and not moving.  She had cuts and bite marks on her face and she didn’t make a sound or struggle as I picked her up.  She lay on the front seat and barely moved the entire drive back to Venice (which took extra long because of ridiculous traffic and freeway closures).  My plan was to bring her to the vet, they’d get some fluids in her and make her healthy and I’d bring her home and take care of the rest.  Again, my naivety kicked in.

After doing some preliminary blood work and other tests, the vet called and told me the puppy had parvo.  She was given an 85% chance of survival.  She was on an intense antibiotic treatment, in addition to being on two IV’s – one for fluids and one for vitamins.  They started treatment the afternoon of June 9th.  I would visit her every day, which meant putting on scrubs and gloves if I wanted to touch her or pick her up.  I brought her toys and talked to her but she would rarely, if ever lift her head and only follow my movements with her eyes.  On more than one occasion I would leave the vet’s office in tears – with the thought of her dying without ever knowing what it was like to be loved by someone.  By the 15th, she was still in isolation and hadn’t eaten yet.  The vets were concerned with not only her physical state but her mental state as well – she was a depressed little puppy, and she was going downhill.  It just seemed like she had lost the will to live.

On the 16th, while I was at the vet they asked me to try and feed her some baby food – just to get something into her system.  At this point they had tried everything – a variety of both dry and wet dog foods, cold cuts, and force feeding – all of which she either turned away from or threw up after.  They gave me a jar of $0.69 turkey baby food.  I stuck my gloved finger into the jar and then under the puppy’s nose and her ears perked up a little as her tongue came out and licked the food off my finger.  I was beyond excited!  She ended up eating about 1/3 of the jar before deciding she didn’t want anymore.  Between the 17th and the 22nd (when I brought her home), she continued to eat and get more energetic.  It’s hard to believe that a tiny jar of turkey baby food ended up being the thing that gave her a will to live – even though I like to tell myself that it was me.

Now not only is she on her way to becoming a healthy puppy but she has a home, a big brother (in the form of my 5-yr old husky mix, Phantom), more toys than she knows what to do with, and people who love her.  And I no longer have that little girl wish of finding a puppy while I’m walking down the street.

Taking a portrait of someone laying down has its own challenges and can be done in many ways.  When someone is laying down, two important things to consider are the type of surface they are laying on and how their clothes (and in my case, jewelry) will lay.  These factors will ultimately effect how their body will look in the photo.  What was more important for me however, was camera angle and point of view.  I wanted to be on the same level as my model – when I am laying down and photographing (especially if my subject is also laying down), the rest of the world seems to melt away and I find I connect with my subject on a whole other psychological level.  For this assignment, I shot a model I had never worked with before – which is something I love doing.  Prior to the shoot I had no idea what I wanted my final image to look like – the only thing I had going into it was my colour palette.

The idea of taking two portraits of the same person using different techniques had me making lists of things I could try – strobe vs natural light, colour vs b&w, high key vs low key, etc.  In the end I opted  for natural light, colour, and lensbaby vs hot lights, b&w, and my tried and true 24-70mm lens.

After feeding the animals, we stopped by the lorikeet exhibit to feed the birds.  It’s basically a big open area (covered by netting) and the birds fly around and land on you.  It’s the kind of place that’s probably pretty terrible if you have a fear of birds, but pretty magical if you don’t.

You can see more images from my trip to the Nashville Zoo in my portfolio.

Despite finding the images above, the most exciting part about the whole adventure was discovering that during my exploring, I had picked up some friends – in the form of ticks.  I’m not going to lie, I was completely freaked out by the fact that there were insects burying their way into my body.  Thankfully, those around me realized that it was really not such a big deal and they calmly removed my ticks using the hot needle method.  Although in all honesty, when I think about the ticks, I still get the feeling like bugs are crawling on me.

To see more from my Tennessee explorations, visit my Flickr.

Thanks to Patrick for getting dolled up and sitting for me at all hours of the night.

It was all planned out – a friend and I went out one afternoon and scouted for a location, the model and make up artist were confirmed, and a rad designer from Portland had sent down some dresses.  Now granted, the location we found was in a state park and there is about a 50/50 chance of getting kicked out.  BUT I figured the chances were in my favour seeing as i was using natural light and there were only five of us.  I obviously figured wrong – almost as soon as we wrapped up the first look we were told to leave.  At this point we went into full guerrilla mode – driving until we found some suitable backdrop, jumping out of the car, shooting for about 10 minutes, and then moving on.  While this method was a little more stressful (ok, a lot more stressful), it reminded me about the great images that can be produced due to having to improvise.

Model JACQUELYNE SELLE
Make up & hair VANESSA
Clothing provided by CLAIRE LA FAYE

Alternate images from this shoot can be found in my portfolio.

Make up & hair VERONICA LANE
Hair JOHNNY SANGA
Styling AUTUMN STEED
Model ALEXANDRA MATHEWS

I’ve been inspired by motion recently and wanted to add an element of that into this shoot.  I spent a good while trying to get it to happen in camera, without getting the result I was looking for.  So I had to do it in post.  I like doing things practically as much as possible, but in this case it was actually ideal to take care of this effect afterward as it allowed me to have much greater control.  You can go here and here to see more from this shoot…

The black and white version is the new edit and the colour version is the original edit.  Seeing the two images together made me think about all the things that effect how I choose to retouch an image…not the least of which is what is going on in my life and how I’m feeling about it.

I look back fondly on this shoot – it was the last time I was back home (Ottawa, Ontario) for any length of time.  Anna Finlayson did amazing make up and Jennilee was a trooper for being up to her knees in snow in a very short dress (I was bundled up and still freezing my ass off!)