My "studio" I used for this set was actually just my guest bedroom. My mom is currently storing a gorgeous day bed she bought while we were living in India, so while I was brainstorming the setup for this set, I thought this daybed would be the perfect piece to include. The only problem was the daybed is not easily movable... and my brother's room is quite narrow (for photo-taking purposes, at least). We had about 5ft x 10ft to work with, but we somehow managed to squeeze the day bed, three people, a dog, and all my lighting equipment [...]

I don't have any footage for creating the costume for the Black Swan Queen. Sadness. But that's only because I didn't actually make the costume for this set! As I share in the vlog, I happened to stumble upon the PERFECT costume at the thrift store one day: the bodice was this beautifully beaded creation... and the skirt LEGITIMATELY looked like black feathers! I don't think I could have come up with a more clever design (or even found such incredible fabric for the skirt, at least not at a price that fit the budget), so there wasn't a second [...]

I shared almost this same text with the last speed edit I posted, but it's still a really good summary of everything I do while editing, so I thought I'd copy it over to this post as well: Generally speaking, it takes me about an hour to edit each photo and I almost always follow these same steps:   1 - Fix all the little things that need a bit of tweaking (small blemishes, recropping, etc.) 2 - Select out the subject so that later on I can make adjustments only to the subject or only to the background 3 [...]

This costume was a tricky one! While the cloak was ridiculously easy to put together (you'll see what I mean when you watch), the dress underneath was SOOOO finicky! There were a few times when I just wanted to pitch the thing out the window of my Kia Sportage while driving full speed down the highway. But I stuck it out (or ripped it out, on many occasions) and kept on trying. I'll be honest, this isn't my favorite costume I've created, and it's entirely because of the dang gold dress. But I do love how the whole look came [...]

It's always fun putting these speed edits together, maybe because it makes me feel pretty accomplished once I've compiled all the footage and sped it up. It typically takes me about 1 - 2 hours per photo to edit, so to see everything I've done to a photo condensed into less than 10 minutes is both fascinating and rewarding. Generally as I rewatch the speed edit, I can't help but think "oooh! Look at all those things I did!" I've touched on this before (and I WILL one day do a more in depth tutorial), but generally speaking I follow [...]

In this vlog, I share how I created and sources the costume for the Punk Princess Crown look that is part of the collaboration I am currently working on with Mystic Myne Jewelry. Over the next month and a half, we’ll be sharing each of the crowns in the collection, along with fun behind the scenes content detailing the creation of each of these shoots. I’ve prepared fun material like speed edits, before and afters, vlog updates, and access to the full set of images from each shoot (I’ll only be sharing a a couple images from each shoot with [...]