2015 52 Week Project // Week 7: Getting Grungy (With Before & After + BTS)

Does anyone else sit on Tumblr for hours, late into the night, scrolling past all those cool street fashion images that they wished they had shot? No? That's just me? Well then, this just got awkward...

This week I took some inspiration from my Tumblr feed (and, as always, with the help of Pinterest) to create some awesome fashion images with Emily. This was a bit of a newer style of shooting for me, and though I've shot fashion before, this felt different: more effortless, less boundaries. The coolest thing about fashion photography is that you can basically do whatever you want, and it's acceptable! Posing becomes more exaggerated, and the typical ideals of beauty can be skewed. These are the things that have made me fall in love with fashion photography this year. 

Additionally, we were blessed with some amazing weather. I even got to break out the rolled up jeans (props to my pale self making an appearance) and didn't need anything more than a light sweatshirt. The sunshine allowed me to play around with some backlighting (which all photographers, whether they admit it or not, love some good golden hour sunshine) and gave me an opportunity to get some use out of my reflector. My awesome assistant, Mo, had the good idea of using the gold reflective side to kick in some added warmth to the shots. All around, it was a really consistent couple hours of shooting!

Shooting with Emily is so easy, and I knew it was going to be. I didn't ask her to wear anything too specific, I simply sent her a couple reference images, and I came to her apartment to see a couch full of wardrobe options. Emily is also the kind of girl who can flip on the model switch instantly; when shooting with her, you know you're going to knock out some solid images! This week, I got so many that I was happy with that I had to send them around to more than just my usual top secret 3 people to help me make a decision. 

Every week, I've come out of my shoots with more final images than the last. In Week 1, I had 1 single image, with no extras. This week, I had 11. Talk about an improvement! I've already been noticing changes in my photography that I haven't seen in a while: I'm progressing faster than ever and there's no sign of me slowing down just yet. I'm having a blast with this project, and it's one of the best decisions I've ever made for myself, artistically. 

Anyways, here are the rest of the images with this wonderful sun filled shoot with Emily. Enjoy!

Shoutout to Mo for snagging these BTS shots for me. I also noticed, after looking through them, that I tend to pose with the model while shooting them... because we all know photographers just wanted to be models in the first place and couldn't meet the requirements, so we were forced to get behind the camera instead of in front of it. ;)