The Bettie Page

A less-boudoir/more-pinup styled shoot has been in the stars and on the agenda for me for quite some time. I'm grateful the ever vintageous and notoriously Bettie-Page-like Christina was happy to model! She did great and looks beautiful in her very own hand made pinup gal suit! I love the idea of the famous photo mock: posing the subject exactly as a celebrity or famous photo with similar lighting and attire. I'd love to do more of this with respect to vintage movie stars, such as the tutu shot of Marilyn Monroe, or the formal Sabrina shot of Audrey Hepburn. Perhaps remaking iconic celebrity imagery could be offered as boudoir type portraits, or more timidly as senior portraits, or even to promote fashion design or other sort of commercial advertising. Can't go wrong with the classics.

Famous mock of Bettie Page on the beach!

I fantasize about finding a niche for fashion photography of men and women. Nothing is more fun than directing fashion shoots and making just about anyone look fabulous. My Bettie Page doppelganger is certainly in queue for cover girl if ever I need one! Thanks, Christina!

Albums Like No Other

Page spread from 10x10 Flushmount album, featuring floral composite.

Sometimes I wonder what happens to my clients' images if I haven't been commissioned to publish them into an heirloom quality album. I envision them inserted in a DIY low quality photo book template... or worse, logged away on disc in some box waiting to be unearthed by a future child who tries to view them on whatever technology is available, only to get disc misread errors. I can only guarantee that a DVD will last as long as the technology I'm aware of; I can't read the future. I mean, what could we fathom of 2012 when our high school mix tapes that spoke our passions were stored on 8-tracks?

As time attests, our most treasured heirloom images are best preserved in printed materials. Sounds old school, but who knows what could happen to the abstract "digital soft copy"? At the end of the world when the magnetic poles shift and we lose all our wifi's and databases and electricities for gosh sake, what will we do?

The spatial landscape, with portraits.

I'd like to plug in the value of professionally designed photo albums. I know that a lot of wedding clients asking for packages without albums are in the end making photo books themselves *hands on hips*. That's all a fine practice if you like templates and cheap book binds that come unglued after a couple years, but over here in the world of art and narratives, we don't like to make photo books. We like to make Storybooks. We want them to A.) documentarily mean something, and B.) last forever (or at least for a hundred years, and that's a pretty nice chunk of time).

You'll notice in these examples how intertwining event details really brings forth the vigor of the moment. The designs are totally different for everyone because the particular shapes and colors of their images physically determine the layout of that particular page. Space is an artistic cruciality; larger images and more open space make greater statements than a page filled with a bunch of little squares.

"First Look" composite with vineyard fauna and reception table card.

I love the dynamism of The Composite (a.k.a. the collage). No template can do this for you, and I don't even want to fathom trying it with non-digital design methods (i.e. your parents' wedding album). It's fully an artistic digital design, like painting. The eye and skill for this is what you get with professional graphic design services.

If clients are not making photo books or wall decor, then images are sitting on a disc somewhere collecting time. Or they're sitting on Facebook being pushed down by updates. Is the internet the new 'attic treasure box'? Really? What happens to it in my End of the World scenario?

Individual images can make bold statements. Put them on your wall. Groupings of images can make bolder statements. Cluster them on your wall, or publish them into an album. One image is like one word. You can't always tell the full story with one word. Lots of words make a story. Lots of pictures make a storybook.

I want to be your historian. I'd love to archive some things for your museum. Take some time to ponder the value of that!

Outtro page, 10x8 Flushmount album.