it's been toooo long

latest look, click to view on lookbook:

outfit details ///

chain headband: actually a necklace, vintage, $1

black tank + skirt: old items I've had for a while

lace cardigan: vintage, $2

beige boots: vintage, $5

I know, I know, we are so bad about updating this blog you are probably wondering if we're just going to completely abandon it or not. Rest assured that we are just busy with school for a few more weeks until summer and then we will be blogging like crazy.

Sati is coming to visit me in Savannah around the 15th of this month, so we'll be doing lots of shooting and updating!

I get a lot of questions about how I shoot self-portraits. I used a remote for a very long time, but it stopped working for 5 or 6 months, so most of the photos I've posted have been taken with good old fashioned self-timer. I caved and decided to buy a new remote recently (I got the first from a local camera shop and this one is from www.adorama.com you can look up remotes on there and see if they have one compatible with your camera model!) since it's so much easier than running back and forth. Here are some tips for hiding a remote successfully. Ignore the awkward first poses in all of them, I was thinking about making these into animated .gif files so you could see exactly what I mean, but decided against it.

Against the body:

This is probably one of the easiest ways to hide a remote and offers a lot of different pose variations such as: hands in your hair, hands behind your back, hands crossed over, etc! Of course, it helps that my outfit is black on this one, since it doesn't make it as obvious. If you are wearing a light colored outfit you might try something else such as....

Incorporated into your outfit:

With this technique I usually use the fabric of my outfit to make a little "case" for my remote to hide it by grabbing a piece of something I'm wearing and making sure my remote is covered behind it. Possible poses using this technique: curtseying (holding skirt as shown), hands in pocket, hands holding jacket or overcoat with remote hiding on the inside.

Hidden in your surroundings:

This placement is probably the most limiting pose wise since it pretty much forces you to have your hands placed somewhere off your body and you have to actually have something around you to put your hands against.

For those of you who don't have a remote, a good technique for focusing quickly is by using something as a place marker in the frame while you are behind the camera on the tripod. Sometimes I'll put a prop that I've brought along with me where I plan on standing, then move it when I'm ready to shoot and focused. Other times, I will focus on someplace in the scene. For instance, if I were shooting the last remote picture manually I would focus on the area of the tree I'd be standing against.

Also, as you can tell from the remote sample pictures, I took off the cardigan and the outfit looks a million times more bland. This is one reason I love great vintage pieces that can add a lot to boring outfits.

I'll share some photographs I've recently taken (aka what has been consuming my time lately for college courses) in a post very soon and I'm going be updating more than once every two weeks again. My goal is 3 times a week, gotta get better and I pinky promise that we will!

Let me know if you can think of other ideas for mini tutorials, either photography related or anything else that I might be able to help with, and I'll work on them for sure!

xoxo,

Rockie