In Between

I always like the pictures I take in the Central Valley. It’s a place that always feels like home even though it feel less and less familiar as the years go by. Things change so quickly, you never know when your day to day will become a memory or something out of the norm. I never really know when I’ll come back here even though it’s where I used to wake up every morning.

This set of images feels special to me in a different way. I took these during a visit last year when I told my family about my pregnancy. These remind me of being in between things. Kind of like the weeks before making a big move where you know that your life is about to be really different, and trying to plan for it, but there’s no way you can fully grasp exactly just how things will change until it happens. Now that I’m on the other side of what I was waiting for, I like having these as a reminder of the anticipation.

At Home

It has been a strange year spending a lot of time at home that’s made it especially easy to be grateful about having a safe place to live. One of my favorite things to do at home is watching the light traveling through it.

DSCF5351.jpg

Color Gel Meetup

In addition to things like fun friend shoots, photographing different subjects/in a different context, another fun thing I like to do to stay in practice with photography in between my own shoots is looking for local Meetups and workshops! Meetup.com has a lot of photography groups! Or at least it does in Southern California, but I think photography is a pretty popular hobby in a lot of places. These groups are a great way to meet new people, make new friends, and of course, to practice or learn a new photography skill!

One group that I really like to join is an all female photography group. My favorite part is just that this group is especially uncompetitive and really does create this environment where it’s fun and safe to learn something new. One thing about meet ups and workshops is that they do cost money and that’s not always easy to splash out. These things can get expensive, understandably, because oftentimes the organizer is paying models, acquiring photo permits, paying a location fee, paying MUAs, etc. and you get to just show up and shoot (the easy/fun part!). The organizer of this group strives to keep the prices as low as possible which is another thing I really appreciate. It makes it easy to be kind to yourself and treat yourself to a fun experience.

In May, this group hosted a really cool, color gel shoot. This is something that was really perfect for a meetup because it’s something I wanted to try, but wasn’t really sure how to approach. The meetup let me practice this, and get some ideas for trying to set up my own color gel shoot which is something I am really itching to do! Here’s some photos I took that day. One of these is very obviously not shot with gels, but hey, I liked it.

HEAVEN

Heaven is spending a huge chunk of a day creating photographs and being with friends (okay and also one of my favorite Talking Heads songs). As I’ve been reviewing my photographs from this year and posting them here, it’s clear that a majority of these were captured with my friends! I really love that. Last Autumn, when I photographed my friend Anita, I could not believe how much fun I was having and just how blissful creating things with friends can be.

I also have been finding my way out of a little creative slump that hit me in the Spring. At the end of Winter, I hit a string of last minute cancellations from models I was working with and a no show and all of this, on top of some other things, left me without the energy for photography. It’s a lot of work to create images. The work is extremely fun, but it is hard work! I started to feel pretty drained and kind of questioned why I was pouring so much of myself into planning out shoots, creating moldboards, scouting locations, etc. when photography is something I do simply for the gratification of creating images that I imagine.

The thing is, that is so worth it! Being able to create is a privilege itself. Throughout this whole rut I was in, I never stopped creating, I just channeled it into different formats. I did a lot of story crafting, picked up some of the textile crafts I hadn’t been spending as much time with, and just created for the sake of creating. In regards to photography, capturing images during my regular life and going out to shoot with friends helped keep me from getting too rusty.

Anyway, these are some photographs from a really fun day with friends. I wanted to take photos on a roof, I wanted to photograph a friend from one of my past workplaces. We all split some space at FD Studio. It was perfect! I already shared a bunch of these over here, but there were quite a few images I really liked from this set so here’s additional shots!

Train

Remember when I was like, “I’ve been so lucky to spend time with other photographers”? As I look back on some of the photos I’ve taken this year, I love seeing how many images I associate with both the joy of creating something and also the joy from friendship and just being around people that seem to get you. Getting to experience these two things at the same time almost seems like it shouldn’t be possible because it’s just so nice.

This shoot from February was an example of that kind of combination. I worked with Vivian again (who I got to work with before on what has been my very favorite photoshoot to date) on a group shoot in Downtown LA. A lot of things did not go according to plan this day. Some of the wardrobe didn’t work out and it started raining unexpectedly pretty much as soon as we got there which threatened to wreck the beautiful work that the hair and makeup artist put in! I ended up switching things around a little to start taking photos under the overhang of the red line station while we waited for the rain to finish and then we made our way through Grand Park and over to the Broad. The Broad is such a beautiful and kind of surreal piece of architecture, I was glad to get some snippets of it in my lens.

I loved having another chance to watch my friends take photos! It was fun to see how everyone differs from each other in how to make images from things that I considered really obvious like composing shots, seeking out specific kinds of lighting, to things I never really thought about like the level of comfort in photographing in a crowded and dense area and also with a group of people which, as you can imagine, is really distracting!

Rainy Day Hangout

I’ve been really lucky to have made friends with other photographers in my area. Of course, it’s fun to “talk shop”, but I’ve really learned a lot by just spending time with other photographers, seeing how they shoot, talking about their approach. I’m someone that really likes to be in control so usually, when I’m organizing a shoot, I’m following a pretty thorough process that I’ve laid out for myself to ensure that I’m getting the kinds of images I set out to create. There’s really nothing wrong with this approach and actually, I find that having my process so well defined makes it easier for me to enjoy the actual fun part of shooting when the time comes. However, the desire to have everything so planned means I rarely would go out and shoot spontaneously. Overall, planning extensively has helped me more than it’s harmed me, but also, I would often feel reluctant to just get out there and take photos unless I really knew exactly what I wanted to do.

One of my goals for 2019 was to shoot more and my friend group of photographers really helped here! I’ve learned a lot more about what it’s like to shoot with less of a pre-defined plan and it’s been great! I still do quite a bit of planning overall and there are definitely certainly concepts in my mind that I wouldn’t shoot without thoroughly mapping things out. But shooting more spontaneously has helped me to develop a different muscle and has given me more confidence about my own skill level.

Here’s some photos from an afternoon spent hanging out and shooting with friends. This was back in January and the weather was split between being ultra sunny and raining/misting. Some of these are digital, some film. I was shooting Kodak Portra 400.

VoyageLA

A few months ago, I was really lucky to have a friend recommend me to VoyageLA. My interview was published back in April, but I thought I’d save the link here in case anyone who hadn’t had a chance to read my interview was interested.

Meet Denise Blanchet

Sunrise Skatepark Shoot

It’s been a minute! Back in January I got to wake up super early and shoot photos with some other photographer friends and models at a skatepark. I’d been wanting to shoot at a skatepark for a while! Skateparks are inherently interesting landscapes with lots of fun shapes and shadows.

I shot with both digital and film cameras on this one. I’ve been doing that a lot lately and it’s been pretty great! My film stock of choice for this was Kodak Tri-X 400. There were so many things that I was stressing over leading up to this shoot. It was my first time shooting with a new digital body, I was worried about oversleeping, worried that it would rain, worried that the skatepark was going to be locked up still when we got there since we were aiming for starting at sunrise, but really this ended up being a fun shoot to kick off 2019 with.

Mission San Juan Capistrano

I like taking a quick day trip on New Year’s Day. Not too far, but not a place it would be easy to see every day. Seeing different landscapes, people, and places wakes my brain up and that always feels like the right way to start something new.

On January 1st, 2019, I was in San Juan Capistrano. The last time I had been there was January 1st, 2015 and it was interesting to go to the mission’s beautiful courtyard to see how the plants had grown and changed in all that time.

Some photos from the mission are below! I shot these on a roll of Kodak Gold.

Coincidentally, these two frames were sequential on the roll. Historic and modern, arc to arc.

Wallpaper

I’ve been giving myself weekly, mini assignments as a creative exercise. One of the most fun projects so far was one that I was kind of expecting to be boring. My task was to make some phone wallpapers for a certain someone’s smartphone.

I had so much fun with this and actually ended up with a few sets! My favorite one is below.

Photographing Photographers

These are from about a month ago, from an afternoon hanging out and talking photography with Hector. Hector is a great photographer with an eye for interesting light and details. Photographing friends is so much fun! A huge part of why I love taking portraits so much is because it’s something you’re making with someone and I think that is so special. I really like these images we made together.

Being Seen

Hello World!

It feels a little strange to be writing so publicly, the internet is a big place. This is actually one of my biggest struggles with photography. Taking something that’s personal and making it available for the world to see is intimidating. Being seen always feels risky to me.

Fear is really powerful and it can be paralyzing. The photos in this post are from 2014. I took a really great photography class at the Armory for the Arts and it was the first time that technical aspects of photography really started to make sense to me. I was shooting black and white film, experimenting with shadows and light and doing lots and lots of double exposures. I loved taking photos and wanted to keep doing it. I even mustered up the courage to ask two of my friends to pose for me. I spent so much time thinking about all the ideas I had for images to make.

But then I just couldn’t move forward. I had hit a bad string of personal obstacles and that took a toll on my confidence. I wanted to take more photos so badly but I was too scared! Too scared to move, too scared to breathe. Too scared to fail so I was too scared to try. That year did end up getting a lot better for me and 2015 saw me spending more and more time with a camera in my hands. At the start of 2018, I made it a goal to just, at least try and it has been so worth it. I feel like photography will be something that I do forever and that makes me so happy.