artalicious

This weekend I got to see my good friend Amanda and FINALLY meet her husband, Henri! It was wonderful visiting with them and it's so obvious how much they love each other (awwww…). In the photo above, it's me (with blonde hair!), Twan, Rhiannon, Amanda and Henri (Robert is taking the picture).

We also got to take some photos of the two of them (ok, ROBERT go to take some photos) and they came out so well. Henri will be sending some of them back to his family in Cameroon (that's right, at some point they'll be going back to live there and we might be able to go visit!).

Of course, it started to POUR right as we left to go OUTSIDE to take photos, so we took a small detour to the studio and shot some like this:


How cute are they? The rain let up and we went to Agnes Scott (where Amanda and I went to school) and took some more like this:




I hope they like them! Also, p.s. to Katie, Robert also got a nice shot of Rhi, remind me to email it to you!

Today's GPP is of Boomer. Because she needs a home! Here she is, looking majestic in Katie and Rhiannon's backyard. Her usual look is actually much more goofy.


~JML

Posted in: Amanda, Henri, Portraits, Rhiannon, Robert Hill, Studio, Twan on May 26, 2009 at at 12:14 PM 1 comments    

Let's just say the evening started out like this (bonus points if you see what's wrong):



And ended like this:



Ha ha! ok, it didn't really go down EXACTLY like that. The first photo is true. I can't spell and was in a hurry and didn't run spell check. The second photo is a great example of the face I make when I try to drink wine. Needless to say, I don't drink it very often. And now that I know what my face looks like, I may tone it down a bit!

In reality, the night started off really slow. Like, soul-crushingly slow. I didn't realize it until later, but our stretch of building was listed as last on the tour. So there weren't a lot of people coming through, and those that were there, were fancy art connoisseurs. I have nothing against art connoisseurs (I hope they buy my art some day!) but when you ask people like that if they'd like to have their photo taken being "decorated by Valentine's Day accessories," they give you a look that can be loosely translated into "are you high?"

I'll be honest, after the first hour of glares, we were ready to pack it in and visit the other studios. We were sure we'd misjudged the event and the crowd. Fortunately, our friends Luma and Tracy showed up and they were kind and posed for us. At that point, I think people saw them getting their picture taken and the crowd was picking up (and drinking a bit more) and we started having a much easier time of things.

We had some people who felt this way about Valentine's Day:



Though they made up at the end.


Our good friends Leah and Katie showed up and demonstrated the best way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day:



Another nice fellow stopped by and did a wonderful job modeling our "St. Patrick's ears":


Another friend of ours, Nicolette, came with two friends. They were creative!


Then, we helped a family embarrass their teenage daughter.


We ended the evening with these three. Who decided they wanted to find their own props.


All in all, the evening turned out really well. We met lots of new people (and remembered to get email addresses this time) and took a lot of fun portraits. The rest of the pictures can be found here.

I'd like to change a few things about our studio set-up for the next show. We need more art up on the walls for those who don't want a photo taken, but are interested in photography. Hopefully I'll also have some illustrations or paintings done by that time as well. I think we're also going to have to come up with photo ideas that are more creative and perhaps a little less cheesy.

And now, for the gratuitous pet photo! Today's GPP is of little Boo, our female cat. This was her first Christmas with us, when she was still young and innocent and let us stick tiny hats on her head.


This photo was used with several others in our Christmas cards that year. This photo is up in our studio and she got lots of compliments. Though I'm not sure we could convince her to be quite so well behaved anymore.

~JML

Posted in: Holidays, Portraits, RAD, Studio on February 9, 2009 at at 9:48 PM 1 comments    

I think I've mentioned on here that Robert and I submit photos and illustrations to various micro stock sites.

*Warning, the following may be very boring if you have no interest in stock photography.*

For those whose eyes just glazed over, a micro stock site, is a place like Shutterstock, where people (mostly graphic designers) buy royalty free images for between $1-$50. They are different from the macro stock sites (Getty Images being probably the largest and most well known) where images are sold as either royalty free or rights managed and typically prices start around $100 and go WAY up from there.

The other difference is that most macro stock sites (like Getty) hire professional photographers, models, make-up artists, stylists, etc. While the mirco stock sites (like Shutterstock) have photographers and illustrators go through an application process, and then accept the images that they feel are up to their standards. Which means if you're not very good, they're not going to take very many of your photos. It also means that if you're an amateur, this is a good way to make a little money while improving your skills.

Both micro and macro stock agencies pay their photographers some set amount per image sale. This fee ranges for anywhere from .25 to several hundred dollars. The most we've ever earned on one photo for one sale was $28. And that only happened once!

Now that's an incredibly simple description of how stock sites work. I could go on and on, but 1) that would be boring and 2) I'm also no where near an expert in this area.

Ok, so boring explanation over, here's some of what Robert and I have been doing in the studio lately. Mainly we've been working with different models and perfecting taking portraits over a white background. These are useful to designers, as the white background ads a lot of versatility to the image. When we first started out taking photos of models, we didn't have the set up we have now, so we had to hunt around for backgrounds. This meant we have a lot of photos like this:


And it means that these don't sell very well. She's a pretty girl, but her outfit and her setting aren't clearly selling or stating anything. Compare it to this image, which can sell just about anything, by photographer Yuri Arcurs (who, by the way, is probably the top selling micro stock photographer out there):


See the difference? Now that's not to say that images without a white background will sell like crap. They don't, but the background needs to support the overall look and message of the image. Something that our random bricks weren't doing.

So now that we have a "for real" set up, I'm hoping that images like this one:


Will earn more sales. The model above, by the way, is one of our favorites to work with. She's got a great personality and is so comfortable in front of the camera. Two great qualities when you're spending 3 hours locked in an 11x19 foot studio with someone!

The other kind of image that sell really well (and that I need to make more of) are vector illustrations. They're great because designers can pull them apart, edit them, scale them to any size, etc. Our top selling vector illustration is this one:


It's not sexy, but it's handy and it's earned over $100 since it's been accepted at various stock sites.

So our goals for this year are to shoot, shoot, shoot, edit, edit, edit and illustrate whenever we can. I've currently got a backlog of at least 500 images to go through (of which probably only 70-100 will be stock-worthy, and of those, probably only 50-60 will be accepted by the sites we submit to).

The sites that we currently work with are: Shutterstock, Big Stock Photo, and Dreamstime. I'm in the process of getting us accepted and set up with a host of other sites. I really need to get us going with iStock.

Ok, I'm stocked out for now. I need to get back to practicing some fine art. I'll be thinking more about that in the coming days.

~JML

Posted in: Big Stock Photo, Dreamstime, Getty Images, Illustration, iStock, Models, Portraits, Robert Hill, Shutterstock, Stock Images, Studio on January 14, 2009 at at 10:12 AM 2 comments    

I thought I would put up some images that we've been taking in the studio (and by "we" I mean "mostly Robert").

First, we had an open house of sorts with all of the other studios and the gallery. We took holiday portraits for anyone who was brave enough to step in front of the camera, and there were some fantastic results!

Here's a great one of our friends' kid hamming it up. When I asked her if he practiced this a lot at home, she looked at me and said she's never seen him dance like this before!



Then we got this cute image (which I took, not too bad I think!):



We also took a holiday portrait for our friends, Katie and Rhiannon with their dogs, O'Malley and Oliver. There was much waving of toys and shaking of treats and wearing of antlers (on the dogs). They went with this one for their holiday card.

We then thought it would be a great idea to traumatize our own dogs, so we brought them over to the studio and made them do embarrassing things with holiday decorations. No animals were harmed during this photo shoot, but I can't say the same for the decorations.

Here's Keira, plotting our demise as soon as this is over.


Aggie gets pissed off. Keira hits the floor.


All is soon forgiven. Much kissy face is seen.


They make up over a meal of holiday garland. Lovely. I launch myself at them to make sure they don't swallow any. Damn dogs.


The rest of the images can be found by clicking here. We ended up picking 4 different photos and printed them out with funny captions and put those in our holiday cards.

Next up will be some of our model photos we've taken for stock.

~JML

Posted in: Animals, Dogs, Holidays, Katie, Kids, Portraits, Rhiannon, Robert Hill, Studio on January 12, 2009 at at 1:15 PM 3 comments