My logo in light

Nerdy Tech Details: 8 second exposure at f/4.5, ISO 200.

"Faeries" Clothing and styling by KMK Designs

Fellow Libertine Asylum member brand and friend of ::PhotoSynthetique, KMK Designs, has just had a feature on the Steampunk/Neo-Victorian blog Melancholy Romantic! In it you will find two of my images, as well as images from other local photographers Nic Abrego and Karrah Kobus, along with several national photographers that KMK has worked with. I can’t possibly say enough nice things about KMK, they are an absolute delight to work with, true professionals, Kaitlyn is an amazing artist and her designs are beautiful!

You can go become a fan of theirs on Facebook or just skip that and go right to their Etsy shop to buy fantastic things!

Jen V.

Back on November 4, I had the pleasure of being part of a group image shoot that also included the amazing photographic talents of Joshua Spotts of Stray Things Photography, Carla Haglund of Fairshadow Photography, and Brian Timm (who doesn’t have a website yet that I know of, but I’m sure he will soon. And many of you will know him as my incredibly awesome assistant on bigger shoots). The subjects were some of the incredible cosplayers that frequent Anime Detour, and their outfits were awesome! I had a blast working with everyone and it really made me feel like I need to get motivated on my own eventual cosplay (I’m hoping to make a techpriest costume), but of course life has prevented me from starting it yet. As this would be my first real make, it would have nowhere near the build quality that many of these individuals were displaying! I was seriously impressed and I sincerely hope that at the next Cosplayer Photoshoot (yes! There are plans for more!) that even more talented costume makers will turn out to show off their talents. After all, you spend so many hours and so much money building the perfect cosplay, to let it go unshared with the world (or only in blurry hotel hallway photographs captured by cell phones) seems like a tragedy!

Now the images from the Cosplayer Photoshoot are available online for all to see! (Well, as of Friday 12.09.11 morning, Brian Timm’s are not yet available, but will be soon!) Go check out these kickass photos!

The Cosplayer Photoshoot was sponsored by Anime Detour, the Geek Partnership Society, and CONvergence Events. Concept and gracious hosting by the always fantastic Eryn Sophia. Watch my blog or Facebook page for details on the next Cosplayer Photoshoot and I hope to see a lot more amazing costumes at that one!

Are you a cosplayer who would like to make a really fun, custom photo set of your costume? I would love to work with you to create a set that fits your character! Please contact me to find out how!

Check out the images!

Parseltongue

Today’s post is just a way of saying thank you to the awesome crew of Saturday’s shoot with Meagan Marie. I can’t share the details of what we were shooting or any of the images just yet, but I think it’s going to be pretty awesome! A special thanks to my aunt Lorin Plante and the crews of Fire Station #12 of Minneapolis and Ambulance #4279 for their willing participation, despite not being entirely sure of what was going on, as well as a super special thanks to the anonymous dispatcher who basically forced the EMTs to come out and be a part of our shoot!

I’m so happy that we had such a great group of people out to help us. It was fun hanging out with everyone, and they were fantastic at both being a great photo crew and in their assigned roles!
The following people are awesome:
Meagan Marie – This was her concept, her shoot, she came up with nearly all the scenes and planning, and was an amazing subject!

Jeremy Blankenship – Came through with some great makeup with very little notice, and was cool enough to even hang out for the whole day to do touch-ups.

Ri Zoldak – You made a great victim!

Jenifer Vinson – You knew exactly how posh we needed you to be.

Jeremy Christianson – For being able to be our dark man.

Leah DeGarmo – You looked perfectly ill.

Thea Hildebrand – For driving us head-on into the shot.

Ben Reeves – For totally looking like a frat boy when we needed one.

Brie Auske – Her assistance made the make-up fantastic.

Britty Ukestad – Who most certainly can’t be mistaken for an old woman, but played a great one anyway as well as being our hapless handywoman and gracious host for several shots.

Dave Terres – For being appropriately scary!

I’m sorry that I forgot Batman’s name, but he looked awesome as the other half of our posh couple!

Did I miss anyone? I hope not! It was a great shoot and I can’t wait to share it with everyone!

(Image above is completely unrelated, just something else I was working on and I felt that this needed something other than my words here.)

Triple Rocks - Badlands, South Dakota

I meant to get this posted earlier, so you sadly only have a few hours left to take advantage of these deals! I’ve done my best to compile all of the current deals by members of the Libertine Asylum into this one post to help you find great ways to support local businesses with your cyber credstick dollars.

KMK Designs – Take advantage of ready to ship items in their sale section, as well as getting free shipping by using the code “KMKCYBER” at checkout!

Blasphemina’s Closet -  Use the code “CYBERMONDAY25″ for 25% off! If you check out Blasphemina’s Facebook page, you can also find details on how you can assist her in a children’s book drive!

Scoundrelle’s Keep – 15% off of all items, including GIFT CERTIFICATES! That’s crazy! Go get some!

Apatico – Use the code “CYBERMONDAY” to get 50% off of all items in the Apatico store!

Bionic Unicorn – Use the code “magic” to get free shipping on all items!

By supporting local businesses, you are helping us all build a better community of artisans!

Design by (damn)aged.

This took much longer than it should, due to the fact that we ended up using a studio not really set up for proper photography at MCAD, thus necessitating far more editing than I had expected. Finally, though, SGMS photos have finished and are ready for sharing! While I have tried to edit a fairly equal number of images per model, some  models had the opportunity to spend more time in front of my lens than others and so had a few more images to easily edit than others. If you’re interested in seeing more images of any particular design or model, see below!

I have posted the entire show on Flickr. If you are unfamiliar with Flickr, to download an image, you click “All Sizes” above the image and choose the size that you would like to download. The images posted there only go up to a max dimension of 900 pixels and have my watermark on them (albeit a smaller version than normal). If you are interested in purchasing the full resolution, non-watermarked images for making prints or sharing with family and friends, you can do so over here on Smugmug. As a special promotion, any model/design that sells two or  more products (prints or digital downloads) on Smugmug, I will edit up several more images of that model. Naturally, this is limited by the number of usable photos obtained of each model, but most had quite a few more great images, I simply can’t get back to editing them now. This is mostly so that I can gauge people’s interest in seeing more!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me!

I know what happened, I started to take the business side of  my business more seriously and this is what happens. I can’t just sit and edit the whole time anymore, I have to respond to client emails, return calls, compile expense reports, do homework, backup libraries, polish lenses, make time for family and friends (doing poorly at that last one). This is why not everyone starts their own business. It’s hard work, extremely time consuming and really hard work. You have to love something a whole lot, be truly passionate about it, to be willing to put with all the bullshit. I do love photography, I can’t imagine ever doing anything else with my life, and I know that this career is the right choice, I just wish there was an easier way to ease into it.

Without being an assistant, of course. I can assist another photographer for short periods of time, but I’m just too much of a control freak in this area to effectively assist long-term. Ask anyone I’ve ever tried to assist (and in some cases, co-shoot with. And anyone who is taking photos of me in a professional capacity has to deal with a lot of direction from me. I just have a very good sense of the way that I want things to look and I have difficulties trusting others to capture it just right.)