Woohoo! Check it out!

Short post, because it is a link of my photo series "Adults eating like Babies" on  How To Be A Dad ! Please go check it out and share!

Sugar Addict

For this series, I wanted to look into addictions. My father passed away 5 years ago with hardened arteries due to chronic alcoholism. I have had other family members and friends who have faced and beat addictions to harmful substances like marijuana, prescribed pain killers or cigarettes. Dietitians now say that America's expanding waistlines are due to sugar addictions. I wanted to share some images that express our need to fill a void in our lives, or at least attempt to make it more bearable. Some people escape from reality with books or internet. Others do it with hours at the gym or gossip. Reality TV is the most popular way for people to escape these days. What is your fix?

M&Ms in a pill bottle.

Candy cigarettes. We learned that they burn and char quite quickly like marshmallows.

She wasn't fond of the candy, but super stoked about the Sprite!

Big League Chew bubble gum. She spit it out and handed the bag to me. I really like bubble gum, but chewing it is not "lady like".

Can you guess what the powdered sugar was supposed to represent? My model had fun getting messy.

Mind your Manners!

Here is another personal project that I ended up using for class. Please note, I don't have a fascination with food, it is just easier to get people to model for me if I offer it to them :-) .

First off, I would like to thank Jim's Burgers and Eggs for allowing me to come take photos during their down time. I also want to thank my lovely cousin for modeling for me.

I want to challenge what is expected. As a youth, my mother made me walk around the house in high heels and books on top of my head. Elbows were never allowed on the table. In our house, the children were taught manners which aren't priority these days. This group of photos titled "Mind your Manners", has a 2-fold message. The first is pointing out how the youth these days are not expected to learn table manners. The second is for some reason manners are expected to go hand in hand with young ladies in the pageant world.

The burger and fries were delicious!

Courtney did everything perfectly wrong with little direction; it was great! Gotta make sure the dress doesn't get dirty. 

Who needs napkins? Hands work just as well!

Jim's uses shredded lettuce, making the burger even messier to eat!

She couldn't let go of the burger while eating the fries. Who knows what might happen to it?!

I was so grateful that Jim's allowed us to set up my lighting equipment. Luckily there were no other patrons there at that time to make Courtney self conscious. 

Still not gonna put that burger down to get a drink. I love her dimples!

The messy burger was to delicious to look at the camera. Did you notice her elbows on the table the whole time? Winning!

My artistic genius is recognized by my instructor as well!

I am currently taking a Digital Darkroom course with the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division.

This assignment was to produce a creative collage. My 7-year-old (autistic) son was quite wiggly, explaining that he was purposely giving me different angles to capture. He is a boy after my own heart. The background is just my front yard, nothing fancy. I didn't use any special lighting technique. ISO 100,  f/14, at 1/160 sec. Golden hour sun light and my 55-200mm lens. 

They really like me!

I just got an email yesterday from the guys over at How to be a Dad in which, well, I will let you read it.

Hey Danielle,

          A friend shared a link to your series of adults eating as babies and I ruptured something from laughing so hard. Amaaaaaaaaazing. I'd love to feature them on my partner Charlie's and my site, howtobeadad.com, or on our Babble Voices platform. We're really sensitive to crediting and linking, so that would happen of course.
What say you? Can I please? Pretty please pretty p!ease pretty p!ease?! ;)
-Andy
P.S. I have cherries to put on top of my pretty pleases and I'm not afraid to use them.

So, yeah, I am pretty stoked. I can't wait to work on my other projects and get them out there for all of you to enjoy the silliness that is in my head.

Transcontinental Family Photos

I was contacted a couple months ago to help a client in New Jersey with a special family photo.

One part of the family was here in Arizona, the other part in New Jersey. 

I took a group shot of the Arizona family members.

And the other photographer Allan Reider took photos of the New Jersey family members.

Allan took a stab at combining the images in the composite below. 

When I worked on the composite below, I warmed up the skin tone of the family members from Mr. Reider's shoot, edited out the backgrounds, placed them as if they were sitting in the original group shot and added shadows to help them blend as well. Considering where the chair seats would have been, I positioned the additional individuals accordingly. I removed the shine from direct lighting and scaled them to fit. I also had to consider where the dog would have been positioned in respect to the seated family members. I noticed that there would be a discrepancy in the little girl's dress so I used another photo from that shoot to fill it in. Over all I think this was a good collaborative work. I would have preferred for the other photographer to use the same backdrop and lighting pattern as discussed in a phone conversation prior to my shoot. I am not certain I will work on another collaborative project again, but we shall see. 

Adults eating like Babies!

Babies enjoy food more than adults because they don't have to worry about propriety. Sometimes it is good to get messy. I am so grateful for all of the awesome volunteers who came out for this messy and super fun shoot!

Aaron is a High School English teacher.

Lindsay is a circus performer.

Mike is a costumer.

Mikayla is a High School graduate

Remy is a model.