Pet Portraits

My supervisor, Steve, helped me practice a set-up and session of pet portraits at Brookside Barkery.  We're teaming up to include customers in a Halloween Pet Costume Contest - they'll be able to get a portrait of their pet in a Halloween costume for ten dollars (donated to a charity), which will enter them into a contest to win a Barkery gift card.  I'll get some publicity out of if, as well as hourly pay.  Not the best pay for me, but it's a start!  Here are some photos from our Sunday session.  If you want to see more, you can look at the new Pets page on my website.

PVC-Stands!!

Ever since I learned about the opportunity to work on pet portraits at Brookside Barkery, I've been slowly accumulating all of the "professional" gear I need - lights, stands, backdrops, etc.  The biggest expense I was worried about was one of the less-needed, but still necessary, ones - C Stands.  These are the stands that are typically used to hold up backdrops, and sometimes lighting or other equipment.  They're surprisingly pricey, so keeping my tight budget and my old photography professors' advice in mind, I perused the internet for ideas.  I found a great site that showed how to make these stands out of PVC pipe - they may not be the strongest, but for about 30 dollars, some brainstorming with a couple Home Depot employees, and a little work with Brian's help, I was able to put together two of them.  

I still need to glue all of the joints together, and trim down a couple of the legs to make the stands more level, but I am so happy that they'll be strong enough to hold up a backdrop.  This was my first time working with PVC pipe, and I am in love.  I think I'll be using it to create my table display at the Bizarre Bazaar this year - wooo!

Bubbles

Sara came over a few Saturdays ago, and we had a great morning full of lots of bubbles.  Here are some of the pictures I got out of it....

Popcorn

It may seem like I'm not spending a lot of time on photography (judging by the amount of time between blog posts), but I've actually been pretty busy!  I'm learning that a lot of the freelance photography business deals with not even picking up the camera.  Since my last post, I've proposed to take pet portraits at the Brookside Barkery (where I wash dogs - Best Job Ever!!), worked on packaging prints for the Bizarre Bazaar, helped someone learn a little more in Photoshop, brainstormed plans for a kids' stop motion animation project I'm doing in a few months, and prepped for a couple weddings coming up.  And to think that I still have so much to do without my camera - agh!!!  


But I did have a chance the other morning to work on a food shot - trying to show corn on the cob SO ANGRY that some of his kernels are popping...  I think it kind of worked!

Rolling Along

After spending days wondering if the bird feeder I made would ever attract anything, Brian notified me that Something ate all of the peanut butter.  Soon after that, as we were eating lunch on our balcony, we noticed we had a friend watching us with its beady little eyes.  And after a little bit of patience and a lot of excitement, I got photographic evidence of this tiny guy...

He may not be able to fly, but I'd say it's a good start to a wonderful relationship!

I spent the later part of that day in Lawrence, where I spent time talking business with Elenor and taking photos of Shadow - which was a lot of fun, I never knew that dog was so great.  (Ben was a big help for the shoot.)

I've also opened up a shop on Etsy - you should check it out!!  Just follow this link -

http://www.etsy.com/shop/hallygrace2?ref=ss_profile

Juggling Act

I take a lot of pride in my work.  If I hate a job, I still tend to bend over backwards to prove to my boss that I am worth my weight in gold.  But this week, I've changed.  I've decided that, as an adult, I should take responsibility for my happiness, and in order to do so I sometimes need to make sacrifices to be selfish.  I quit my job as a fan photographer, which may have been good money, but had also been turning me into a life-hating, fatigue-fighting machine.  I didn't want to touch my camera after a twelve hour day full of washing dogs and asking disgruntled fans to take their picture (hence the amount of time that has passed since my last post).  


So now, I spend my days washing dogs (best. job. EVER!) and more of my free time working on photography.  I made a bird feeder in the hopes of attracting birds to the tree growing next to our balcony, which has yet to actually work but I'm learning to be patient.

It's not the classiest thing, but if birds can find it, I'll be able to photograph them without much background distraction of a bird feeder.  I've also started taking my camera out when Brian and I go on adventures throughout the city, and was able to take a couple panoramic shots on top of the World War I monument this past weekend.

There was a storm rolling in, which made for a great cityscape.  I think I spent a little too much time taking pictures, though, because Brian and I got stuck in the storm on the bike ride home...


I spent this morning working on photographing eggs, and here is what I have so far. 

Yay for quitting jobs I don't like!!

Greek Yogurt Pancakes

Greek yogurt pancakes are not only incredibly delicious and pretty good for you, they are also really easy to make.  I've been meaning to create a photo showing the ingredients being put together to create the pancakes, along with the actual recipe on top of it.  

I also decided to make all of the ingredients look all sorts of anxious as a kind of a way to acknowledge how we don't really think about where the food we are eating comes from.  There are a lot of people who are (justifiably) horrified by the meat industry today, which has caused vegetarianism to be more popular.  And I can't stop thinking about an article my dad shared with me, about how scientists just figured out that plants can actually communicate pain (which makes me wonder - how are vegans feeling about this??).  

I've been meaning to create different photos like this for awhile, and this is my first draft...