Erin’s Modeling Session
Posted on August 27, 2008
Just to give you a fair warning, this is a PG-13 post! This was one of my favorite shoots all year! It reminded me of the good old days back in college when I had a new project every week. My good friends Maria & Ashley were my faithful willing models and we were always going to crazy places to take pictures. Only back then, I was lugging around a huge 4×5 large format manual camera. Although I loved every minute of it, I must say I’m thankful that digital cameras have come so far. It was MUCH easier to climb around the bridge you will see below with my digital camera than it was with the large format.
Erin does some modeling on the side and when she asked me to take some shots of her for her portfolio, I was flattered and super excited. Although we had never met before the shoot, I knew a lot about her because she is engaged to my friend Aaron. Donny is actually going to be a groomsman in their wedding next Fall. To me, Erin is one of those people you feel like you’ve known forever after hanging out with her once. She was so nice and easy to get along with…and she’s not afraid to tell you what she thinks – I wish I could be more like that sometimes.
As you will probably tell from the images, Erin is a natural in front of the camera! We started at the railroad tracks and after getting yelled at & threatened by a mom who thought we were “completely inappropriate”, we moved on. Erin & I are convinced that they only way she could have even seen us is if she was following us and spying on us – oh well! She was not afraid to get down and dirty, and even though she was a little afraid to climb the bridge – she did it anyway. (And just as a side note, the bridge was completely secluded so there was no threat of anyone being offended by the bathing suit pictures).
Erin ~ you were awesome to work with and I look forward to getting to know you better! You are gorgeous and are going to be such a beautiful bride next year :)
How well do you know yourself?
Posted on August 20, 2008
Inspired by a new friend & fellow blogger (this is reverb), I decided to take the short version of the Myers-Briggs personality test. Last November a group of us took the StrengthsFinder 2.0 test during a church leadership retreat and I was very interested to see how the results compared.
I’m sure most of you are have heard of and are aware of the Myers-Briggs test because it is probably the most well-known and respected test available. StrengthsFinder takes a slightly different approach and is quickly gaining popularity. The basic premise of StrengthsFinder is to realize your strengths and concentrate on those rather devoting too much time on improving your weaknesses. Tom Rath (the author) believes a person will be much happier and more fulfilled when he/she is living out their strengths rather than constantly fighting the uphill battle to improve weaknesses that he believes are ingrained during childhood and will more than likely remain weaknesses throughout our entire lives.
Tom Rath’s goal in concentrating on our strengths is not meant to give us an excuse to give up on our weaknesses, it is meant to give us a strategy for managing them. Also, the whole point in taking the test is to discover and distinguish between strengths & weaknesses. Once you know what they are, you have a better understanding of yourself and will hopefully be able to figure out ways to work with your weaknesses (i.e. teaming up with someone who is good at something you’re not, etc.).
All in all, I think both tests compliment one another and are a pretty accurate representation of who I am. I encourage everyone to take some time to discover, in your own way, who you really are if you haven’t already. I know for me it has been incredibly eye-opening and has given me a better understanding of why I think the way I do and why I do the things I do, etc. Obviously neither test (or any test really) is a COMPLETELY accurate representation of who you are, but sometimes they can help you better understand yourself. Plus, I just think they’re fun!
The short version of Myers-Briggs can be found HERE. Unfortunately, you have to purchase the StrengthsFinder book new in order to get the code to take the test, but you can find it all over for only about $10.
So, without further ado, here are my results:
StrengthsFinder:
These are my top 5 strengths (in order) and the book’s explanation of the strengths.
1. Responsibility - I am emotionally bound to follow through with anything (large or small) I commit to
2. Includer - I want to include people and make them feel part of the group
3. Belief - I have certain values that are enduring - these values cause me to be family-oriented, altruistic, spiritual, & ethical
4. Achiever - every day starts at zero and I have to achieve something tangible to feel good about myself
5. Input - I am inquisitive & have a busy mind
Myers-Briggs:
ESFJ (Extroverted, Sensing, Feeling, Judging) and my personality makes up about 10% of the population. From this test I learned:
-My primary mode of living is focused externally…I tend to deal with things according to how I feel about them
-I am a people person, I value friendships & true relationships, I tend to be able to easily empathize with people, I can usually see the good in just about anyone (this is also listed as somewhat of a weakness because ESFJ’s sometimes have a hard time accepting a difficult truth about someone they care about)
-I am responsible, dependable, committed
-I am service-oriented
-I am energetic/driven/self-sacrificing (sometimes to a fault)
-I am sensitive and tend to wear my heart on my sleeve
-I have a strong sense of what is right & wrong
-I tend to control environments around me/I am stubborn
-I act on emotion and can be irrational, naive, & vulnerable
-I do not see situations in black & white, but rather every color of the rainbow
-I am impulsive
-I cannot stand conflict or criticism, nor am I the best at conflict resolution
And just because a photography blog post is not complete without pictures, here is a shot I got while taking Corey’s senior pictures. We were walking to a bridge and I looked over my shoulder and spotted this graffiti on a dumpster. I couldn’t resist!
Back from Nashville
Posted on July 9, 2008
Nashville was an absolute blast! Even if you’re not a country music fan (which I’m not), Nashville is a fun city. There is so much to do…and man did we cram a lot into our weekend. Here are several pictures from the weekend (excuse the quality of some of them from the point & shoot :))…
I fell in love with these shadows that the table centerpieces cast at the Country Music Hall of Fame:
Pews from the historic Ryman Auditorium:
A few from Broadway (the main strip):
We sat right in the middle of Broadway and watched the best fireworks I’ve ever seen!
Some live music :) The guitar player with the long hair on the left is only 23 and he was the best guitar player I’ve ever seen!
Here’s the boys acting gangsta during our pit stop in Louisville:
And Donny and I making a fashion statement:
Here’s the whole gang enjoying a drink at the Opryland Hotel:
Here I am playing Elvis’ piano at the historic Studio B (one of my favorite parts of the trip):
All of us outside Studio B:
So typical…
beauty is in the eye of the beholder…
Posted on June 25, 2008
For some reason, I LOVE dandelions! I think they are absolutely beautiful. Well I’ve been wanting to photograph a dandelion ever since they started popping up this season, but I never had a chance until now. This single dandelion popped up in my backyard and I jumped at my opportunity before Opie did :)
International Documentary Challenge (IDC)
Posted on June 10, 2008
One of the highlights of my year so far was definitely the weekend I had the privilege of participating with team “docuNATI” in the International Documentary Challenge (IDC). The basic premise of the IDC is that each team has just five days to make a short documentary (4-7 mins). All creativity - research, writing, shooting, editing and adding a musical soundtrack - had to be completed beginning Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 8 AM and ending Monday, March 10, 2008. To make things more challenging, on the morning of Thursday the 6th each team was given the choice of 2 genres as well as a broad theme that must be addressed in their film.
Our genre was NATURE and our theme was CHANGE. These happened to work perfectly with what we really wanted to shoot - which was the idea of “Down Syndrome Art”. The way we tied everything together was with the tag line “one chromosome changes everything…” The CHANGE in one chromosome determines whether a person is born with Down Syndrome and since people are a part of the natural physical world, incorporating NATURE was easy. Visionaries & Voices, an art studio for people with disabilities, was kind enough to let us film their brand new studio in Northside and interview their artists.
Directed by Brandon Faris, there were 6 of us who made up our team, and we all brought a different aspect of creativity to the table. My role was to take still shots…but I ended up getting to try my hand at some video as well. Brandon’s team participated in this challenge for the first time last year and their film was chosen as one of the top 12 finalists. All of the teams chosen as finalists get to go to the film festival in Toronto - which I hear is a blast. This year the challenge has grown substantially and there are over 100 teams competing from 12 different countries.
Although our film, titled “bright | simple”, did not make it to the finals this year, I definitely don’t regret the time and effort we put forth to make this film. It was so much fun spending time at Visionaries & Voices and getting to meet all of the new artists. The whole experience has been such a blast and an awesome opportunity…and the icing on the cake is that it was all in the name of art. To see the “bright | simple” video and some of Brandon’s other cool videos, click HERE to be directed to his blog .
Brandon filming an interview and Brandon & Donny way up there on the crane:
The outside of the new studio and the executive director of V&V, Victor Strunk:
Here are some of the talented artists:
A sampling of the artwork:
