Shooting in the Gulf...........

The title is synonymous with Stravinsky’s famous ballet, whose jarring rhythms and narrative of a pagan ritual in which a girl dances herself to death caused, arguably, the most famous riot in the history of classical music. But while Dalton Louis‘ face-painted, dancing model could easily be interpreted as the maiden from Stravinsky’s ballet the photographer’s inspirations were not quite so dire. Model Alexandra isn’t …
       

“All you can do is be confusing. Don’t ever empty the bucket of mystery. Never let people define what you do. It’s not about zigging when you should zag. It’s not about doing something unprecedented and unpredictable. It’s just about never being a word, or something that is not in the process of transformation.”

2012 started with an upheaval of change. Painful, gut-wrenching, seismic change. From January 1^st, my life began a new journey. Part of that new journey was my reconciliation with the way I see. The thing is, I’ve always been a little weird. I’ve been told my work is “edgy” since my college days. “Dark, mysterious, seductive, depressing, edgy, suicidal, achingly beautiful, tortured, cathartic”…..these are all words I’ve heard over the years describing my work. So I tried to conform, to shoot in a style that wasn’t mine but would appease the masses. I shot freckled girls in denim jeans on white backgrounds holding puppies and smiling toothy grins of teenaged innocence. I’ve shot long legged girls in itsy-bitsy bikinis on pearl sanded beaches with come hither eyes. I’ve shot commercially acceptable, masses approachable, clean, honest and totally sans “edge” fashion photographs.

When I wrote that on my Facebook on the morning of my shoot, a good friend of mine who’s also in the industry commented: “Wow, your life certainly doesn’t suck!” The thing is, these shoots are what we work so hard for so long to obtain! And what a perfect day it was for our Chanel shoot! Blue skies, crystal seas and a crew that was both talented and fun, this was one of my favorite shoots this past year! Oh and did I mention Chanel? If you know me at all, you know how much J’aime Chanel!

After an incredible Twitter Frenzy, we have our winner ! It was a very close race, but after tallying all the votes, our winner is Reikko Navarro, who I might add here, won by a mere 1 vote on Twitter. Congratulations, Reikko! We’ll be sending out your DVD to you right away! Thanks to all 8 photographers who participated in the contest. I honestly loved everyone’s photograph and to me, you’re all winners!
Some other important news: Due to an overwhelming demand we’ve decided to make our DVD available as  We understand that some of you don’t want to deal with waiting for shipping. In fact, what we’ve heard more often than not, is that some of you don’t even want to have to wait at all! Since I aim to please, now you can watch Fashion Photography EXPOSED instantly!

ow! I have to say, there were some really outstanding submissions for the contest tweeted to me this past week. So, first off, a BIG thanks to everybody who participated in the contest and especially to those who even joined twitter for the first time just to submit your photograph. It was amazing to see everyone jump on this contest and tweet their work to me!