A little slice of Heaven called CHURCH

Living in Los Angeles is indeed a trip. As the famous gossip columnist Rona Barrett once said; “Pick your enemies carefully or you’ll never make it in Los Angeles.” People tend to live in a dream world here where who you are is identified by the car you drive or the celebrity’s personal cell number in your iPhone. Young hopefuls flock here by the thousands hoping to make their dreams come true and the city supports that mission by placing more importance on material and superficial gains over spiritual enlightenment. LA denizens actually believe if they jog for two hours in the morning they are morally fit. As Craig Kilbourn joked, “People here in Los Angeles are disgusted now about a sex scandal involving Arnold Schwarzenegger. Apparently for seven years, he carried on a sexual relationship with his own wife.” Yep, that’s my hometown, love it or not.

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So I’ve been really busy lately. For one, we’ve been planning the seminar that’s taking place this up-coming weekend, November 7th and 8th. We’re almost sold out, which is exciting and I want to thank all of you who have purchased tickets and are planning on attending! It’s going to be really fun, the models are GREAT and the studio we’re using is just A+ professional, as are the people who run Smashbox. Secondly, I have been spending ALOT of time SHOOTING SHOOTING and SHOOTING some more! Here are some new pictures along with a Lighting Diagram on a test I did with just 1 Big Beautiful Light!

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One Poison Apple

Over the summer, Douglas Little hired me to shoot a campaign to launch one of his new extravagant products. If you can remember Mr. Little from this previous post, he creates curious but gorgeous goods. He’s mainly famous for his decadent candles, and this new product was surely going to top the list of all things sinful and delightful. Douglas’s new candle was a Swarovski crystal layered candle that retails for a cool $420 bucks! Since the name of the candle is Poison Apple, he wanted to play with the Snow White theme. He sent me one comp, that’s it. He wanted one single image to promote the product with, but the image was well thought out and planned. He wanted to use his girlfriend, the illustrious burlesque dream girl Leila as our model since she naturally has a Snow White essence to her. With her jet black hair and snow white skin, she really was the perfect choice for our model.

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New and Improved!

Since I enjoyed the last seminar I held in July, I decided to do another one! The opportunity to meet such great people from all over the world was an amazing experience for me! And all that talent in one room was humbling!! Come to find out, I have some very talented and accomplished photographers reading my blog and it was such a blast to meet some of them!

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All Images © 2009 Melissa Rodwell Photography

When asked to shoot an editorial for Genlux Magazine, Stephen Kamifuji, the creative director, gave me two choices: I could shoot a beauty story based on a man and woman kissing or a fashion story based on the famous love story of Romeo and Juliet. I chose the fashion story. The theme for Genlux’s fall fashion magazine is Love, so obviously kissing and Romeo and Juliet are story ideas that depict the theme. Honestly I would have liked to have shot a beauty story for Genlux because it’s been a few years since I’ve done one for them but when Stephen presented both ideas to me, for some reason I felt more inclined to do the fashion story. I worked with stylist George Blodwell again because I like his work and I like working with him. Whether George’s website showcases more celebrity dressing/red carpet styling rather than editorial, one has to remember we are based here in Los Angeles and our market is celebrity driven. Many talented stylists ( wardrobe, hair and make up included ) market themselves towards the celebrity market when they are based out of Los Angeles. If you click on the artists name that has a hyper link and actually check out the agency site and more importantly, the artist’s link, you will see that most agencies have a celebrity section along with the editorial and advertising sections on their artists.

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