Forest Spirit

Model: Jane

Best weekend ever.... thanks to Jane (and Tony for a quick spontaneous meet up). It's been far too long since I last had a chance to work with Jane. I almost forgot how awesome she is (emphasis on almost). First of all I love that she always follows through on plans we make (no matter how complicated they are) and never complains about anything. I asked her on Friday if she'd meet up on Sunday. I warned her that I had no clue what we'd be doing. I was kind of stressing out because I had no ideas. All I knew was that I wanted to shoot very early in the morning, like 5 or 6am. First I asked Jane to come into the city and meet me there at 6am for a city shoot. Late Saturday afternoon, I suddenly got this odd feeling about the whole thing. For some reason my gut was telling it wasn't the right location. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to shoot in the forest. So Jane ended up coming over to my place at 9pm because we needed to figure out the outfit and make up.

We decided to get up at 3:15am to have enough time for getting ready and capture the morning light. I was totally exhausted (I was up the night before until 3am which I normally never do). We somehow managed to make the outfit out of underwear, ribbons and other stuff I had at home. We also decided to paint her whole body a bit white to make her stand out more against the forest.

Getting up at 3:15am was NOT easy. I was tired but it was nice hanging out with Jane. We took our time drinking coffee which was a mistake cause before we knew it, it was 5am. I kind of freaked since I desperately wanted to get there by 5:30am before the sun was up and people were out and about. It was a mad rush getting ready. I did end up forgetting a small part of the outfit, oh well. We got there and I was totally stressing because I didn't know what I was doing and what I wanted. As you may know I hardly ever shoot outdoors. The bug situation wasn't pretty, we were covered in bug spray.

After I relaxed I could tell we'd get some good shots. I liked how Jane was glowing against the background. The white body make up paid off. The pictures didn't do her justice though. She looked so pretty and elegant in person. I could almost imagine her dancing around. She reminded me of a forest spirit.

Ms. Nikki is back

Model: Nikki
Make Up: Tamara

Nikki asked me to do a shoot with her to get some shots of her new tattoos. I was happy to do so since it's been a long time since I last had a chance to shoot Nikki (last time was in 2007). While her new tattoos are certainly interesting I kept wanting to focus on her eyes. As you can see she has amazing eyes. We tried a few things with the tattoos like add some oil to make them more contrasty but then I was getting too much glare from the lights. Adding powder on the other hand tended to wash them out a bit. I decided that I'll have to do another shoot that's not so much about the tattoos to really capture Nikki. Tamara did an awesome job with the make up.

Flower power

Rhododendrons

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??

Flowers?! Has she gone mad? Hey you know, I have other interests too :), I'm loving our yard this year. I don't know why I never did before. Perhaps I just never took the time to look around. I started to and couldn't believe how gorgeous it is. I got so inspired that I decided to start a rose garden. At the moment we planted 8 rose bushes. 4 are climbing roses we'll see how that will go (I admit I have a rather bad track record when it comes to plants). Anyway here are a few pics of various things growing in our yard. Since I don't know shit about flowers I couldn't tell you what most of them are. If you happen to know, let me know :) ..... oh and yes a few new portrait shoots are in the works. July will be my month of photography, I have big plans so stay tuned.

American Ballet Theater

I took Ella to a kids ballet workshop and performance hosted by the American Ballet Theater at Lincoln Center. It was really awesome. While the workshop was for kids it gave me the chance to walk around backstage in the Metropolitan Opera house. I'd never seen this and it was fascinating walking through the corridors lined with all kinds of props and set pieces. However what I enjoyed most was seeing Ella's reaction to the Metropolitan Opera Stage. I figured from a kids perspective it must seem even more enormous. She was quite taken back and it was such a pleasure to see her reactions to everything. I have to admit she was almost equally impressed by the big fountain in the middle of Lincoln Center as with the ballet :)

friendship

Model: Evenie

I did a shoot yesterday with one of my oldest friends from here in the US. It actually was a trade, Evenie is an amazing jewelry designer (on hiatus unfortunately, she now works for Tiffany's) so I traded the shoot for some original jewelry of hers which I adore. She wanted to do a shoot for her husband so unfortunately this was a closed door shoot and I won't be posting pics (besides the one above) since they are private and on the racy side :) ..... it's unfortunate though since she looked lovely in a lot of them and she has a killer body.

Evenie is literally one of the first persons I met when I came to the US. To be honest, when I first met her I wasn't sure what to think of her. I still remember how this little 5'1, crazy, Puerto Rican girl entered the room, laughing and greeting everybody. You must understand that I had just come over from Switzerland where people are far more reserved, especially in a situation where you don't know anybody. But I realized quickly this girl is a lot of fun. I'm sometimes amazed that we stayed friends over all these years (it's been 16 years) especially since we don't see each other very often. Somehow we still manage to stay close and whenever we do see or talk to each other it's like she's always been around. The thing I most value about her is how straight forward and honest she is. You always know what's going on with her. She will tell you what she is thinking or if she doesn't like something and she is consistent. Recently my friend Virginia used a quote about art that I felt you could also use to describe friendships: "True friendships survive the test of time"

~

Model: Kristen Drewski

It's been a while..... honestly I've been feeling completely uninspired. Plus I've been going through a "I hate photography phase".....

I finally after months had another shoot and only because it was a commission. Because I was in such a funk I almost didn't accept but now I'm glad I did because I had a good time. I loved how pale her actual skin was. If you're familiar with my work then you know how much I like pale skin. I asked her to look sad and she actually shed a tear! When I saw that I was so happy,..... is that wrong? :) She wanted a nightmare/dream/dark.... theme and well, this is what I came up with. As always I had no time to prepare and did everything the day of the shoot. It was a crazy morning spent looking for stuff I wanted to use, cutting out those damn stars and picking cloths for the outfit. I wonder if I'll ever give myself enough time to not have to do everything the day of the shoot. Lauren Weber did the make up and was her usual fantastic self.

Inspiration

Ilya and Zoya Gaft

That's where he usually sits when teaching the class.

Zoya has always made the costumes for all the stage performances. Some are really georgous.

A new shoot is in the works. But I'll be honest I'm not totally feeling it these days and there's just so many things going on..... blah blah.

Anyway I wanted to post a few pics I took of Ilya Gaft. He's the owner of the New York Ballet Institute. Ilya's life story is long but in a nut shell he was born and raised in Russia. He spent his life studying ballet and pretty much devoted his life to ballet. He entered the famous Kirov ballet school in Saint Petersburg where he became a principal dancer and later a choreographer. Later he left Russia with nothing and started all over again in the US (with some stops in Europe). He worked for many years in NYC with his own theater company that he ran with his wife Zoya who was also a dancer (and opera singer). After suffering a heart attack he decided to settle outside of the city where today he still runs his own school. He is now 75 years old and teaches ballet everyday. He still moves amazingly well and it is astonishing how he comes up with routines on the fly, often I think his mind works better then mine. He lives and breaths ballet. The most fascinating thing to me is how emotional he is. When he is in a bad mood or a good mood you can always tell because it will reflect on his routines. Sometimes he closes his eyes and makes us listen to a particular part of a song because it is so beautiful. He puts a lot of emphasis on understanding the emotional side of dancing not just the technical side.