Meeting the community

Hey all, it’s been a while since my last post. Since October I’ve been keeping busy living the dream, doing freelance work and meeting some incredible people along the way. Here’s some of what I’ve been up to!

In October I had the honor of taking engagement photos for an old coworker of my fiance’s, in Port Huron, Michigan.

Erick and I actually met in Port Huron. It was really great not only being home, but getting to work with wonderful people in the place I love. Even though it was raining heavily that day, nothing could dampen Liz and Brennan’s spirits and we got some amazing shots at the Blue Water Bridge, Lighthouse Beach, and The Citadel Stage.

Per usual, Nori just waiting for me to finish editing engagement photos so that we can play.

Spanish teacher encourages language retention through communication

Later that month I was tasked with working on a story about a successful Spanish program at Sacred Heart Academy in Mount Pleasant, Michigan.

Nagazi is a band of brothers bonded by metal

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I also got to cover a local metal band who were pursuing their dreams of making it big. They recently unleashed their third album and went on tour in November.

My sweet girl trying to stay up with me when I’m working late.

With a focus on research, Central Michigan University, is putting its stamp on the scientific world

I’ve always loved science, but it’s never been my strong suit. So when I was assigned to meet with and do a story on multiple researchers doing brilliant work at Central Michigan University I was excited, but admittedly also nervous. I was worried that some of the information I received in the interview would too technical and I wouldn’t have a full grasp on the concepts and therefore would have to ask a lot of additional questions to clarify. I was worried about looking like an idiot. Luckily, the researchers I met with spoke in layman’s terms and my fears were unnecessary.

Janet Strickler is driven by community

Janet Strickler, co-chair of the Mount Pleasant Women’s Initiative during its ‘Look Who’s Talking’ luncheon, on Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018, which drew a record crowd of 450 attendees. The Mount Pleasant Women’s Initiative is an endowed fund of the Mt. Pleasant Area Community Foundation.

I first met Janet Strickler just before graduation when I had to do a story and a video with narration (link here). The nonprofit center in town was having an open house so that members of the public to get a closer look at the organizations housed at the center. Additionally, it was to formally launch the campaign to purchase the nonprofit center from Victory Church, from which it currently rents. Strickler made a lead contribution in honor of her late husband and she spoke at the open house. I remembered her specifically because she had me teary eyed when she spoke about her husband. She is truly a powerhouse with her involvement and philanthropic efforts and is such an asset to the community.

Studio portraits

This week in the studio we were photographing portraits, images of people with props or something that tells a story about the subject. My models were Amanda and Kendra.

Amanda:

Amanda was a blast to have in the studio. She played a lot of rap music that I’d never heard of and told me a lot about modeling she had done in the past so she was really easy to work with. Amanda plays softball and in recent years has also taken up guitar so we decided to just shoot both since we had enough time.

Amanda Kelley, 25,  just started playing guitar within the last year. “I’ve always wanted to play an instrument,” Kelley said. “I’m a person that always has to be doing something with my hands.

The image above was taken at f-stop 18, ISO 200, and a 1/160 shutter speed. We started off shooting with her guitar, mostly based on the fact that we forgot her softball bats in her car back at my apartment. (Shout out to my wonderful boyfriend for coming to the studio, getting her keys, going home to get her bats, then bringing them back to us since we only had one hour in the studio).

We also experimented with faraway shots and different poses to try something you don’t see as often when you see someone with a guitar.

Amanda Kelley, 25, poses with her guitar. “When I was young I would listen to music and half the time I didn’t even hear the lyrics because I was too focused on the instruments,” Kelley said. “My stepdad gave this guitar to me on Christmas last year.”

The image above was taken at f-stop 16, ISO 200 and 1/200 shutter speed.

The softball shots were a lot of fun and it took me so many tries to get a photo of her throwing the ball in the air and actually capturing the ball but I finally got it.

Amanda Kelley, a broadcast and cinematic arts major at Central Michigan University, throws her softball in the air. “Softball is something I decided to do because I was bored and I loved it,” Kelley said.

This image was taken with the same f-stop 16 and shutter speed of 200 and still at ISO 200. I thought I would have to move it up to capture the ball’s movement, but the flash helped significantly.

I really wanted to share the last photo because it was so random and I told her to give me a face showing me how much of a badass softball player she is. This image is the result of that remark.

Amanda Kelley gives her game face posing with her softball training bats and softball. “During the summer I would practice 3 or more times per week so I would do better at the games,” Kelley said. “Every game I played was a double header so I wanted to be prepared.”

Kendra:

Kendra saved my butt. I originally had another model lined up and the model messaged me the night before saying he was too swamped and would be unable to meet in the studio anymore. Kendra worked with my boyfriend previously and she responded to an SOS message I put up on Facebook saying that she’d be available during the studio time I had scheduled and could help me out. This is what we came up with.

Kendra Peabody, 23, is pursuing a degree in family studies at Central Michigan University. Peabody said television shows like Cupcake Wars and Baking Holiday Championships got her into baking. “When I was around 15, I actually helped my neighbor bake my parents an anniversary cake for anniversary,” Peabody said. “That was the first cake I ever got to bake that was completely homemade. It’s always been a dream of mine to own a bakery.”

The image above was taken at ISO 200 with f-stop 16 and a shutter speed of 1/200. I bumped up the shutter speed to make sure we caught the cracking of the egg considering we only brought two.

We ran out of eggs pretty quickly and the concoction that we were making was very pretty smelly and gross looking so we started messing around with the ingredients we had such as flour and we ended up with the image below.

Kendra Peabody, from Ionia, Michigan, blows flour at the camera.

The image above was taken at f-stop 16 and ISO 200. I set my shutter speed at 1/200 again so we could blur the flour to see movement, yet still stop it enough that you could tell what it was.

For the shoot, Kendra brought her mixer from home and we had also brought measuring cups, flour, eggs, and an assortment of spatulas and anything we might end up wanting to use. But when she walked into the studio she said, “you know I really just want to throw some flour around, could we do that?” And we ended up with that image. It was so much fun to make a mess and really capture the excitement on her face, though we ended up with a lot of images of getting a bunch of flour in her hair.

2015 Detroit Electronic Music Festival

A bit late, but the 2016 Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF) is returning to the Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit May 28 through May 30. Last year snapping some shots for Channel 95.5’s Mojo in the Morning, here are some moments from last year.

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