Shameless self-advertising

For everyone who had been waiting for my Cuba photos with bated breath, you can now find them here.

I would love to go into stories about the awesomeness of outdoor showers at sunset, under palm trees, with live saxophone music in the background, but I'll refrain.

In other news, I recently had a reason to be in front of a camera, for a change. I recently had the pleasure of contributing a series of articles to Ambition in Transition, a blog offering career and lifestyle tips to 20-somethings caught in the transition period between study and employment. Joining their team required, aside from the implicit brilliance (this is the shameless self-advertising part of this post. Did you guess?), a headshot to go with it. This is where Jeff came in.



Jeff is one of the rare people who can point a camera at me and not have my facial muscles contract into a mix of deer-in-headlights and a young Elmer Fudd. Which is good, considering I'm neither a herbivore, nor am I hunting wabbits (be vewy, vewy quiet). Anyways. Above and below are my two favourite shots from Sunday's shoot. Big thanks to Jeff, once again, for his endless patience and the lovely photos!

Shiny Pretty Things

Happy New Year! (First post of the year, so it's required, no?)

Since my last post, I had a lovely holiday (thanks for asking), and I hope everyone else did as well. I spent a week in Cuba, which far surpassed my expectations; photos will be posted shortly. In the meantime, however, here are the results of a more recent shoot - I know, chronology is not my strong suit!

Jeff decided it would be fun to do a little jewelry shoot, just for fun. So I rounded up a few of my shiny things, and our good friend Diana was also nice enough to contribute a few of her pieces. Jeff took a very methodical approach and focused on one thing at a time or a few like things together.

Then I go in... and promptly turn our little staging area into a girly mess.



This is, admittedly, busier than my shots tend to be most of the time. I think this is probably the first time that I've had, all in the same shot: velvet, paper, china, shells, various precious and non-precious metals, pearls (of the artificial variety), silk, beads... and there was much more outside the frame, believe it or not.

After that was done, I decided to try a few simpler setups, starting with a pair of gold earrings.



The Papery is a great place to get cool paper to serve as interesting backdrops for jewelry, for much cheaper than fabric.

Finally, I borrowed Jeff's setup to take a few photos of my newest ring. In retrospect, it probably needed a better cleaning first, and I need much more practice lighting gems.



The ring is sitting on what looks like wood, but is in fact the side of an Ikea basket. Props to Jeff for thinking that one up!