Up 2: Shooting stock images etc. etc. etc.

Here’s a fun January shoot from a week ago today:

Blog, meet Rosalie Nolfi, aspiring model and a little sweet pea.

Toodaloo,

-Melanie Rae

Photography by Melanie Rae – Radical, Professional Portrait Photography etc. etc. etc.

Here’s a quick intro to a new photo-book of interest (reposting from pdn):

Street Photography Now…

“Buy a good pair of comfortable shoes, have a camera around your neck at all times, keep your elbows in, be patient, optimistic and don’t forget to smile.”   -Matt Stuart

Here’s some relevant cell phone photography taken tonight by my honey at a gas station:

a thousand words

Have any of your own “Street Photography”?  Email Me Here: PhotographybyMelanieRae@gmail.com.  I’ll post my favorites (:

Freestyle,

-Melanie Rae

Of course my mind went to the possibility of having a photography show at a planetarium… Hmmm, do I composite images?, buy a fisheye lens?, build a robot camera? … and of course, what would I shoot?

I’ve got some ideas.  But of course, as our fortune cookies and valedictorians tell us, everyone has ideas… Go do it!

My trip concluded with my sister pointing out a photograph that they had on display of “The Eye of God”.  The image is a composite comprised of hubbell telescope shots as well as some wide angle photos from here on earth.  The subject is a Planetary Nebula called the Helix Nebula.  Apparently, the photo circulated in emails after it’s internet debut with the title “Eye of God” attached.  All sorts of add lib came with the emails claiming metaphysical and spiritual connection to the very real photograph and astronomical wonder.  All that aside, this picture is captivating and it bears an undeniable resemblance to an eye.

My sister’s sensitivity toward the image was moving.  We briefly discussed a shared openness to the potential of the unknown even so far as to question what is known at all.  I’m not going to start emailing my friends prophesy attached to NASA’s pictures of the day… but I love getting lost in “The Eye of God” and pondering these fractals, Thanking God for the complexity of creation, and asking myself, “what if….?”

tonight, tonight, toni-ight ah ahh:

Sam Goodwill practice bleeds into the sunday night ritual of cable tv & grub with friends.  In the space between Dexter and Boardwalk Empire I stole some shots of Jaclyn’s beautiful ornamental lemon tree at 1600.

As always, I employed the D200 and Tamaron 17-50mm.

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

Have a great week!, and “If life gives you lemons, sprinkle glitter on them!”

-Melanie Rae

Photography by Melanie Rae

nutshell: the sudden absence of Melanie Rae‘s online presence was preceded by my computer and external hard drives being stolen this past spring.  In response I picked up two retail jobs and buried myself in them to rest and heal after loosing over 10 years worth of work.  (no sobs necessary… the silver lining is subtle and sweet)

now: only working one of the two retail jobbies and started picking up my camera again.  My honey has been gracious enough to let me install photoshop onto his mac (and has since become addicted to shooting and editing himself).

Window to into my November:

2010 Copyright Photography by Melanie Rae

D200 – Tamaron 17-50mm, Youngstown, OH

current projects include: re-writing business plan, calendar due out Dec 2011, and stock shooting

Funny that my most recent blog update was posted when trees were budding and flowers were blooming; it is currently scarf weather once again and today marked the first snow flurry of the season.

What a wonderful world.

Yours Truly, back online-

-Melanie Rae

Photography by Melanie Rae

“Radical, Professional, Portrait Photography etc. etc. etc.”

I’m going to let the pictures do the talking:

17 March 2010 … Studio 217 …

D200 – Tamaron 17-50mm, Youngstown, OH

We had perfect weather.  This little guy was so conscientious; he was concerned about getting his feet/pants/sockies dirty… Mom reassured him that they owned a washing machine and a bath tub.  Note to self: let all little boys stick their tongue out at you, such great smiles follow!  Actually, maybe I should start sticking my tongue out at people…

na-nannie-boo boo,

-Melanie Rae

Photography by Melanie Rae

Beautiful

My Keri Smith Project:

-Melanie Rae

Photography by Melanie Rae

“Radical, Professional, Portrait Photography etc. etc. etc.”

A friend of mine gave me “The Guerilla Art Kit” because, she said that it reminded her of me when she saw it.  A compliment whether I am, in her eyes, someone who would act out guerrilla art… or if I’m just someone who thinks that stuff is cool.  A compliment indeed.  But let’s give credit where it’s due: Blog Readers, meet Keri Smith,

“author, illustrator, and guerrilla artist”

Get to know Keri, she’s someone I’d love to spend the day with.

About one of her books via Craftzine.com:

Nat: Please tell me about your book, Wreck this Journal. What was you inspiration in writing the book?

Keri: This book is so multi-layered, there are many things that brought me to it. I was thinking about how I have been able to stick with journaling for so many years, as an avid procrastinator it seems not in my nature to finish or stick with things for long periods of time. And yet i’ve been journaling for over 12 years now. For most people working in a journal can be intimidating — many are afraid to make a mistake. The journal itself becomes a precious thing. The blank page a big hurdle.

In looking through my own journals the answer I came up with is that I give myself room to make mistakes within the journal, and at times just use it as a forum for experiments. So the idea presented itself to make a journal where the context was solely based on experimentation. What if the purpose was not to make something beautiful, but in fact do the opposite. Make a mess. Try something different. Screw it up. Use whatever you have around you at any given time, not concerning yourself with having the right materials or supplies. all of that is irrelevant. a coffee spill becomes a source, a footprint, a gesture, a quick movement. So the book itself is filled with prompts of this nature which instruct you to systematically destroy it. For some people this can be incredibly freeing. For others it instills some ingrained terror. In our culture we are taught from a young age to not wreck books, (Don’t bend the pages. Don’t write in it. Don’t get it wet.) The book asks you to do the opposite of everything you were taught, a destructive revolution of sorts that hopefully leads you into some new places. What if you just tried the opposite of what you were taught? Where would that lead? It’s a kind of forceful challenge of the inner critic and it can be intensely satisfying.

I also wanted to create a work that was very much about a physical experience connected to daily life. Not sitting and thinking about creating, but making actual physical marks. What if we stopped thinking so much?

Keri’s Travel Journal:

About her hubby, from Neenah Paper:

A native of Ontario, Canada, Keri embraces the cold, even recently taking up barefoot running.

Fitness is a family tradition: her husband once biked from California to Maine. Upon completion, he asked her to marry him. “It was a ritualistic end to his single life,” she shares, “we had known each other for less than a year at the time and he told me if he finished the ride I had to marry him. I have learned a lot form him —because he’s nuts.”

About creating/blogging, from Neenah Paper‘s interview:

“I don’t believe in writing or creating something to suit a particular audience,” she says, “Why make assumptions? I stopped allowing comment on my blog. They inhibit me. If you create for someone else, you second-guess yourself. The more confidence you have in your ideas, the more risks you take. The more risks you take, the more you are rewarded.”

The best To-Do List ever, from her website.  I dare you to try one:

1. Go for a walk. Draw or list things you find on the the sidewalk. 2. Write a letter to yourself in the future. 3. Buy something inexpensive as a symbol for your need to create, (new pen, a tea cup, journal). Use it everyday. 4. Draw your dinner. 5. Find a piece of poetry you respond to. Rewrite it and glue it into your journal. 6. Glue an envelope into your journal. For one week collect items you find on the street. 7. Expose yourself to a new artist, (go to a gallery, or in a book.) Write about what moves you about it. 8. Find a photo of a person you do not know. Write a brief bio about them. 9. Spend a day drawing only red things. 10. Draw your bike. 11. Make a list of everything you buy in the next week. 12. Make a map of everywhere you went in one day. 13. Draw a map of the creases on your hand, (knuckles, palm) 14. Trace your footsteps with chalk. 15. Record an overheard conversation. 16. Trace the path of the moon in relation to where you live. 17. Go to a paint store. Collect ‘chips’ of all your favorite colors. 18. Draw your favorite tree. 19. Take 15 minutes to eat an orange. 20. Write a haiku. 21. Hang upside down for five minutes. 22. Hang found objects from tree branches. 23. Make a puppet. 24. Create an outdoor room from things you find in nature. 25. Read a book in one day. 26. Illustrate your grocery list. 27. Read a story out loud to a friend. 28. Write a letter to someone you admire. 29. Study the face of someone you do not like. 30. Make a meal based on a color theme. (i.e. all white). 31. Creat a museum of very small things. 32. List the smells in your neighborhood. 33. List 100 uses for a tin can. 34. Fill an entire page in your jounral with small circles. Color them in. 35. Give away something you love. 36. Choose an object, draw the side you can’t see. 37. List all of the places you’ve ever lived. 38. Describe your favourite room in detail. 39. Write about your relationship with your washing machine. 40. Draw all of the things in your purse/bag. 41. Make a mini book based on the theme, “my grocery list”. 42. Create a character based on someone you know. Write a list of personality traits. 43. Recall your favorite childhood game. 44. Put postcards of art pieces/painting on the inside of your kitchen cupboard doors, so you can see them everyday (but not become deaf to them.) 45. Draw the same object every day for a week. 46. Write in your journal using a different medium (brush & ink, charcoal, old typewriter, crayons, fat markers. 47. Draw the individual items of your favorite outfit. 48. Make a useful item using only paper & tape. 49. Research a celebration or ritual from another culture. 50. Do a temporary art installation using a pad of post it notes & a pen. 51. Draw a map of your favorite sitting spots in your town/city. (photocopy it and give it to someone you like.) 52. Record all of the sounds you hear in the course of one hours. 53. Using a grid, collect various textures from magazine and play them off of each other. 54. Cut out all media for one day. Write about the effects. 55. Make pencil rubbings of six different surfaces. 56. Draw your garbage. 57. Do a morning collage. 58. List your ten most important things, (not including animals or people.) 59. List ten things you would like to do every day. 60. Glue a photo of yourself as a child into your journal. 61. Trasform some garbage. 62. Write an entry in your journal in really LARGE letters. 63. Collect some ‘flat’ things in nature (leaves, flowers). Glue or tape them into your journal. 64. Physically alter a page. (i.e. cut a hole, pour tea on it, burn it, fold it, etc.) 65. Find several color combinations you respond to in public. Document them using swatches, write where you found them. 66. Write a journal entry describing something “secret”. Cut it up into several pieces and glue them back in scrambled. 67. Record descriptions or definitions of subjects or words you are interested in, found in encyclopedias or dictionaries. 68. Draw the outline of an object without looking at the page. (contour drawing). 69. What were you thinking just now? write it down. 70. Do nothing. 71. Write a list of ten things you could to do. Do the last thing on the list. 72. Create an image using dots. 73. Do 3 drawings at different speeds. 74. Put a small object in your left pocket (or in a bag), Put your left hand in the pocket. Draw it by feel. 75. Create a graph documenting or measuring something in your life. 76. Draw the sun. 77. Create instructions for a simple everyday task. 78. Make prints using food. (fruit and vegetables cut in half, fish, etc.) 79. Find a photo. Alter it by drawing over it. 80. Write a letter using an unconventional medium. 81. Draw one object for twenty minutes. 82. Combine two activities that have not been combined before. 83. Write about your day in an encyclopedic fashion. (i.e. organize by subject.) 84. Write a list of all the things you do to escape. 85. Cut a random shape out of several layers of a magazine. Make a collage out of the results. 86. Write an entry in code. 87. Make a painting using tools from the bathroom. 88. Work with a medium that is subtractive. 89. Write about or draw some of the doors in your life. 90. Make a postcard that has some kind of activity on it. 91. Divise a journal entry using “layers”. 92. Divise an entry using “layers”. 93. Write your own definition of one of the following concepts, sitting, waiting, sleeping (without using the actual word.) 94. List 10 of your habits. 95. Illustrate the concept of “simplicity”.

From her book Living Out Loud:

Ha! Between Keri and Bjork this is going to catch on:

Click Image for Free Money!

Am I a Stalker? 

kerismith.com

Wish Jar Blog

Flickr

Facebook

My pick from 100 ideas = “79. Find a photo.  Alter it by drawing over it.”  I’ll post the results tomorrow.

wishing you nothing and everything,

-mel rae

Sometimes people who are newest to photography have the freshest work.

I loosely got in touch with an old friend today.  He lived in Jordan for a bit… I assume that’s where he met Noor Renfroe.

I felt compelled to share her work with you:

From left: “Rain”, “Water Macro!”, “Heartbreak”

Noor on FaceBook, her blog, NoorRenfroe.com, Flickr

-Melanie Rae

Model Mayhem… I reference it soo much thus far in this blog.  Let me first say that the Creepy, the Halfwits, the Tasteless, and the Lewd all abide on MM.  But, I love to shop at thrift stores… you really have to dig for the good stuff; that’s kind of how it is on Model Mayhem.  One of those diamonds in the rough is today’s featured photographer.  Pierre Manning is a talent recognized on and beyond networking websites.

Shoot Studio in Montreal is the home base of 5 accomplished professional photographers.  (I do urge you to peruse the Shoot Studio website… all five Photographers have incredible images.)  Among them, Mr. Manning‘s work stands out as sensitive and smart.  Even the commercial and editorial work in Pierre’s portfolio seems to bear his signature.

I first found PM on MM and was stricken by the portraiture that he had posted, (alliteration was a grade school favorite of mine, can you tell?).  Further research revealed that I loved most everything that he put his hand to.  Here are some lovely images by Pierre Manning, Enjoy:

Here are some Links to more of this beautiful work: on modelmayhem.com, on PhotoServe.com, on behance.net, @ shootstudio.ca

Pierre!

After looking through these don’t you want to just book a shoot with a friend and shoot until something breaks?!

I’ll leave you today with a favorite Irish Blessing: “May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields and, [...] may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

-melanie rae

The recent post about Jason Ivany‘s photo was actually viewed and commented on by Jason himself… go here to see his comments and feel free to continue the discussion.  Thanks Jason for your insight.

Here’s a casual post.  Spreading the joy that my cat Monster brings just by being:

Who’s your favorite Monster?  We all know who mine is.

Rawr,

-melanie rae

Photography by Melanie Rae

“Radical, Professional, Portrait Photography etc. etc. etc.”