Etre Touchy Glove Contest… Extended!

23, March 2010

Now Your Votes will Determine the GRAND PRIZE Winner!

grand prize etre

Honestly, there were so many great entries that it was difficult to choose the Top Three! So David and I came up with an idea and we ran it past the people at Etre Touchy Gloves. We asked them to send us 7 more pairs to give away so we can have a total of 10 Winners! Being the awesome group of people they are, they happily obliged! Now each of the 10 initial winners will receive a pair of Etre Touchy Gloves sent to them by me!

But wait, there’s more! We haven’t stopped there. Now we’ve decided to up the game and give away a free ticket to either my LA Seminar or to David’s  2 Day Retouching Workshop to the top winner from the 10 finalists! The winner can choose the dates which work best for him or her on either workshop! You can also choose to give the Ticket to a friend! And instead of me voting for the grand prize winner, I am going to let you guys vote on the winner! So go ahead and visit the forum HERE to CAST YOUR VOTE!!!

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What’s In My Ditty Bag

24, February 2010

Melissa Rodwell's Ditty Bag

Ditty Bags! A quintessential part of every photographer’s stock, a ditty bag  holds our essential necessities for a shoot. I don’t know what you guys call it but I got used to the term years ago and always lovingly refer to mine as a ditty bag, even though I get the strange looks from my ’20 something assistants. When researching the reason for the name I found this great little article about ditty bag:  The Ditty Bag is “a small bag in which a sailor keeps small tools and equipment, also personal articles” according to John Rogers in Origins of Sea Terms: A modern Glossary of seagoing terminology. They did and still do have one main purpose: to hold a sailor’s personal possessions and some tools of the trade. They have even been referred to as a “housewife” because they held all the essentials for repairing clothing, personal belongings as well as everything that was needed on deck!

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Knowledge is Power!

10, February 2010

Coco Chanel

The second half of day two of my seminars addresses the business side of fashion photography. I jump in by reminding my students that one of the biggest mistakes photographers make is forgetting that fashion photography is a business, like any other business, and the purpose of being in business is to obviously make money. That’s kind of a no-brainer, right? We are all aware that we need to generate revenue in order to survive. However, after reminding my students of the importance of remembering that this is a business, I then ask them WHY they are interested in pursuing fashion photography. I mean, why aren’t they interested in say, food photography or portraiture, weddings or cars? Aside from teaching at my seminars, I also answer a huge amount of emails. And again, I ask the people emailing me with questions about how they can make it as a fashion photographer, why are they interested in fashion photography as oppose to other avenues of photography. What baffles me is not very many people can answer that question. What IS fashion photography? I mean, the answer is right there: FASHION photography is about the fashion. It’s the business of photographing the fashion for either editorial or advertising purposes. It’s about selling the clothes! The CLOTHES!!!!

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Location is Everything!

21, January 2010

Honest Critiques

location1

Writer’s Block! It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, it’s just that sometimes I don’t know exactly how to say it. I wish I had it in me to break off some fabulous technical tips and insight on how to light for black clothing (use side light) or an insider secret on a great beauty shot (use a model with great skin to begin with) but I think I want to write about something else. I know that I haven’t been writing a lot lately.  The truth is: I AM BUSY!!! I’ve had a smashing great start for the new year! I’m meeting today with a client for a huge gig that will be a monthly contractual job for 12 months. Love those kinds of jobs!! Getting ready for Dubai in March and I’m so excited!! Just booked my plane ticket yesterday and have already done a couple of interviews for some of Dubai’s newspapers and magazines.  Shooting for my book! Shooting for CHURCH, which has now become a regular client needing me to supply monthly images for their upcoming website. Prepping a shoot for MIRRIN Magazine, based out of the UK that I will shooting next Tuesday. So, yeah……pretty busy!

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Know It or Blow It

20, January 2010

Are You Using Protection?

fd_april24-knowit_or_blowit

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