Heh, apparently I haven’t written since September. Oopsie.
So I’ll start with my most exciting news: some of the pictures from the photoshoot I mentioned at the end of my last post got published in a fashion magazine! It’s not a huge publication, but they have a decent number of followers, it’s well designed, and they still do print (which is important for me for some reason, and a lot of newer magazines only publish online). This is them: http://ellementsmagazine.com. The pictures from this shoot have been blasted all over Facebook and Instagram since the issue came out, so anyone who follows me on social media has likely seen these more times than they care to… but, since I couldn’t post them in my last entry on here because the issue hadn’t come out yet, here are some of my favorites along with the tear sheets from the magazine:
So I’ll start with my most exciting news: some of the pictures from the photoshoot I mentioned at the end of my last post got published in a fashion magazine! It’s not a huge publication, but they have a decent number of followers, it’s well designed, and they still do print (which is important for me for some reason, and a lot of newer magazines only publish online). This is them: http://ellementsmagazine.com. The pictures from this shoot have been blasted all over Facebook and Instagram since the issue came out, so anyone who follows me on social media has likely seen these more times than they care to… but, since I couldn’t post them in my last entry on here because the issue hadn’t come out yet, here are some of my favorites along with the tear sheets from the magazine:
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| Tear sheet (from the magazine) |
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| Tear sheet (from the magazine) |
The process of getting published was actually kind of a funny/awkward/tragic story, so I suppose it’s worth telling. Back when I was still in the planning stages of the shoot, the stylist I was working with requested that I get a pull letter from one of the magazines (I think I explained that a few entries ago). Being totally new to this whole game, I decided the best course of action was to reach out to as many magazines as I could, to improve my chances of getting one without having to do them individually and wait to hear back each time (which could take forever). In the end, there were 3 magazines that provided me with pull letters, which I was pretty stoked about--but I didn’t realize until it came time to actually submit the final images that pull letters essentially work as a trade agreement. The editor of the magazine supplies the photographer/stylist with a pull letter if he/she is interested in the concept of the shoot and likes the photographer’s work, and in exchange, there is an assumption that the photographer will then submit the final images to them… and only them. I didn’t understand this; somehow I had naively thought that I could use whichever pull letter I wanted to, and then submit and publish with any magazine I wanted to. So when, eventually, I had submitted to over 20 magazines and got a “yes” from 5 of them (including two who had given me pull letters), I was in a bit of an awkward situation.
Things got even worse when the editor of one of the magazines who gave me a pull letter started to email me every day, asking for the high res images for publication. I had already decided to go with another magazine at that point (Elléments), so there wasn’t much I could do to reverse my decision. So then I had a choice to make: either I could say nothing at all and just cross my fingers that the editor never saw that work come out in another magazine (which could land me in hot waters if he did), or I could do my best to explain what happened and hope that he was a forgiving enough guy to let it slide. In the end, I decided that honesty is the best policy, so I sent him a very apologetic email about my misunderstanding. He replied expressing his sadness over the situation, and saying that he’d even been pushing for one of my images to be the cover for that month (many expletives were uttered upon reading this). He may have just made that up to make me feel bad for all I know, but either way, I felt pretty shitty about myself. Anyway, he did understand, and he even encouraged me to submit again. A little while later, I sent him an email just to keep in touch, and attached some of the pictures from the shoot I had just done (which I will detail later). I explained that I didn’t intend the pictures for submission, and that I’d already posted them online anyway (I just wanted to show him what I’d been up to), but he liked them so much that he wanted to publish them anyway, so I guess those will be making an appearance in their February issue! Very nice guy.
So while we’re on that subject, I’ve had a few photoshoots since the last time I wrote. Since it’s relevant, I’ll start with the one that’ll be published in February. When the booker at Major had sent me a package for the shoot that got published in December, my first choice model was a woman named Stephanie, but it turned out that she wasn’t available during the time I was planning to shoot, so I picked two others and told the booker that I’d love to shoot her at some point once she did become available.
In the mean time, I was scouting locations and happened upon an absolutely gorgeous park down at the bottom of Roosevelt Island quite by accident. I had read about some creepy/beautiful abandoned smallpox hospital on the island and decided to check it out--it was indeed both creepy and beautiful, but it was completely inaccessible because it was surrounded by a tall, new fence that didn’t have any holes (I checked), and was patrolled by guards, so there was no way of getting in. That was a disappointment, but I noticed that literally feet away from the site was a gate to something called Four Freedoms Park. It wasn’t open that day, but I peeked through the fence and decided that I had to come back and check it out. I did... and my god, it took my breath away! The pictures can’t even quite do it justice--I’m a sucker for minimalistic architecture, and this place does it in such a graceful and peaceful way. Down at the end, you have a beautiful view of Manhattan on one side, and Brooklyn on the other with the east river in between, and everything is in clean, crisp white marble. I think this place is actually my favorite location that I’ve yet been to in New York.
So once I saw this remarkable park, the inspiration started to flow. I’d had this idea in the back of my mind for a while that I wanted to attempt to make my own wardrobe for a shoot, but as I’ve never even touched a sewing machine before, I was sort of limited on what materials I could use. I decided on paper, which worked out well because it complemented the white marble of the park, and it was also sort of a subtle reference to origami, which worked well with the stark architecture of the park along with the fact that I had an Asian model. The construction of the wardrobe pieces was quite a task, but I had fun doing it. I’d never attempted anything like this before, so I had to strike a balance between something that was complex enough to not look like trash, but simple enough that it was actually within my abilities to construct. I wound up making a gigantic, fluffy skirt out of something like 300 sheets of tissue paper, held together with staples and taped to a paper braided belt, a matching choker and bracelet made of tubes of paper cut into strips that fanned out like a Victorian collar, a sort of futuristic headpiece that had kind of a dino-mohawk appearance from the side, and a couple of triangular shaped accessories. The top was harder to plan, since it has to be fitted and I’ve never made clothing before, so I wound up just wrapping long pieces of tissue paper around her at the shoot until I liked how it looked. I have to say, especially given my complete lack of experience in this department, I was quite pleased with how it looked all put together!
I can't include the actual pictures from the shoot just yet... but here are a few behind the scenes pics:
Anyway, long story short, it was a very frustrating experience. BUT, the cloud cover turned out to be an advantage ultimately, because when the sun did occasionally peak out, it looked super dramatic. We only had little windows of 3-4 minutes each time before the sun would retreat again, so we had to work quickly to get as many good pictures as possible while the lighting was good. Overall, we had a pretty small yield of good photos (at least compared to what I’m used to), but the couple of good pictures we did get are some of my favorites that I’ve ever taken. I’ll include those in my next entry once the issue has been released.
I’ve had two other shoots in the last couple of months that don’t really have stories like that (thank goodness--this post is already too long). They were sort of spur of the moment things with two more models from Major that I hardly did any planning for (which is a rarity for me). The second of the two were done with my new AlienBees lights (!!), so that was very exciting. Here are some of my favorites from those:
The shoot was stressful, partly because it was my first big-ish advertising gig, and my first time having to rent a studio. Pricing is always a bit of a sketchy business because so much of it is based on pure guesswork; I have established hourly rates for myself at this point, but it’s always hard to estimate how much time I will spend on a project exactly, and the clients themselves may not even know exactly what they need when the negotiation starts. As it turned out, the personal assistant of the woman who runs the company had quoted about half the number of product and model shots that they wound up needing, and as we only had the studio for 6 hours, that meant that I had to work twice as fast to get twice as much work done in the amount of time I had reserved. That also means that I have about twice as much retouching work on my hands as I had estimated, and since I’m billing per hour on that, the ending price will almost certainly be significantly higher than the price I put in my estimate. Not a bad thing for me, except that it’s never particularly pleasant to have to tell that to a client--but she understood the situation, so it looks like that won’t turn into anything awkward.
The woman who runs the company is an altogether pleasant person; she knows what she wants, but she’s also respectful of the work that I do, and trusts that I know what I’m doing. Her assistant, on the other hand, had a rather unfortunate habit of second-guessing all my decisions, which got to be a little obnoxious. During the shoot, she asked if we could do the product shots without the lights because she didn’t like the reflections on the foil printing on the labels, and later when we got together to pick which shots I would edit, she asked if I was familiar with an editing technique in Microsoft Word (lol), which I don’t think she was even really understood, because what she was suggesting was literally impossible. In any case, I guess they’re not working together anymore (?), so I won’t have to deal with that from here on out, and I suppose on the bright side, it was a nice, light exercise in patience haha. So far the pictures are looking really good, and it’s nice to have a new crop of product shots to be able to show prospective clients, since that’s always going to be a more steady source of income than fashion (understatement of the century).
What else? I got to visit California for about a week and a half back in December… that was a much-needed trip. I was pretty stressed out with all the photo work I’d been doing plus the extra hours I’d picked up at the salon before I left, so it was good to get away for a bit. If anything, it wasn’t nearly long enough, and having to leave in the middle of a family get together surrounded by people I love was difficult... but I'm glad I got to see everyone. Now that I'm back, things have pretty much picked up where they left off, except for a few things. Work has gotten a little tense... I think it's probably best if I don't go into too much detail, but the long and short of it is that there have been some changes made that none of us are happy about, and everyone's too afraid to speak up about it. Personally, I have very little patience for passive aggressive BS (which there's been a lot of lately), and it seemed to me that if we were really all on the same page about how we feel about these changes, that maybe we ought to do something about it instead of just complaining to each other. Anyway, I guess we're going to have some sort of manager meeting on Tuesday, but I'm doubtful that any good will come of it because everyone's too timid to be honest about how they feel, and in any case, the girl who is the cause of all of this drama is the type of person who loves to dole out criticism, but doesn't know how to receive it. So... we'll see how that goes.
Other than that, I have an interesting new friendship that I suppose is worth mentioning. A couple of my friends from Croatia that I grew up with were visiting family in New Jersey, so we got together for coffee one night about two weeks ago. That was a fun time in and of itself; it was great to catch up and hear about their lives and what’s going on with the other kids I knew in Croatia, but things got really interesting after they left. The guy sitting next to me had overheard us talking about Croatia, so he turned to me and asked me about it. Apparently he had some friend there who’d been encouraging him to come out and visit, but conversation quickly transitioned to other topics, and we wound up sitting there and chatting for hours until the cafe closed. He turned out to be a professor at Parsons, and we talked about everything from music (most notably Radiohead and Aphex Twin), to art and our favorite movements in art history (his was the Bauhaus and the Russian Constructivists, I lamely answered that I love everything after the first World War, because that’s the truth), to robotics and technology, and all sorts of other fascinating things. In short, we had a mind boggling number of mutual interests, and it was one of those rare instances where you randomly meet someone that you just click with.
I gave him my business card, and we’ve kept in steady contact--he’s reached out to me every day, and we’ve already gotten together three times since the night we met. There is a fairly significant age gap, which, I won’t lie, makes me a little wary because of a certain experience I had when I befriended an older guy who turned out to be kind of a creep (long story). But truthfully, I don’t have any reason believe there’s anything wrong here; I feel safe around him and I really do enjoy our conversations, so I’m trying not to think too much about it. The fact of the matter is that it’s not often that I’m able to connect with someone on this kind of a level, so it would be a shame to lose that.
So life's sort of settled into a routine for now... I work at the salon most days, and the rest of the time I either attempt to catch up on the giant load of retouching work I have backed up, or I allow myself to become a zombie for a bit and submit to the all-powerful Netflix. I think in light of the new developments at work, I'm going to resume my job hunt on a more serious level, and try to find something more fulfilling while I'm still making enough money to live on. My mom's been on me for months to contact Sandbox Studios, and now that I finally have a fresh crop of catalog-style product shots to show, maybe something will come of that.
OK! You're tired of reading, I'm tired of writing... let's put this beast of an entry to bed, shall we?
