Thursday, January 21, 2010

What do I do?


Live Music Scene - Images by Erica Stavis

In the last month i've wrestled with trying to re-design my website to truly showcase the work I do best. I have so many different photos and my strategy thus far has been to shoot and post everything that I think is decent. Last week my friend/teacher Owen Murphy sat with me and gave me some advice on how to re-invision my site and re-think how I edit my galleries. At the MVS lecture last month I was also reminded that users should immediately get a feel for the kind of work that I do.

Knowing that my site is a smorgasbord of galleries each with a surplus of images i've begun the process of trying to streamline and edit the work on my site. Before I go and slash slash away i'm thinking I need to categorize the genres i'm strong in. So far i'm thinking:

  • Live Music
  • Street Portraits
  • Parades & Second Lines
  • Festival Culture
I want to make sure that each category is distinct enough to house a series of photos that look unique. I've taken a stab at editing my gallery in the 'Live Music' category and have it showcased on my homepage and embedded as a slideshow at the top of this post. The question is...will people see these photos and say...wow those are some sick shots!

After a long talk last night i've also decided to explore some other Photo Template sites that might showcase my galleries better.....more on that later.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

It looks so good I wanna eat it





December marked the first edition of New Orleans new food magazine "Edible New Orleans" I mentioned in earlier posts "beer shoot" and "Yummy Photos" that I would have photos featured in this issue and indeed I did. Check it out if you can ..hopefully the editor was happy with my work and we'll see more shots in future issues. The mag. is slated to be published quarterly.

I will be updating my site soon to include a section of published work which will include tear sheets of magazine and book work. Keep posted.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Damn its cold....



But that doesn't stop me from taking a nice long walk around my neighborhood to take random pictures of trees even though its 30 degrees outside. While walking back from the gym yesterday I couldnt help but notice how beautiful and still it was outside due to the severely cold weather in NOLA. I went inside grabbed my camera and walked right back out.

On my block most of the trees are now completely bare. The sky was a strange purplish/yellowish color and I had to go and somehow capture the beauty of the trees blowing in front of it. (cheesy I know) I started shooting and immediately realized that I didn't have the best lens on for night shooting and decided to just go with it. I got, what I think are some interesting and abstract results.

After reviewing the pics on my computer at home I started thinking about a conversation that was had the PhotoNOLA Six Shooters event. There was a lengthy dialogue about successful contemporary photographs. A few panelists were arguing that photographers could focus simply on making beautiful photographs, while others argued that the recent fashion in photography calls for photographer to be more conceptual with their work. These pics made me think of this for some reason.

Haven't posted images on my site..but a few samples are at the top of this post.....as always welcome comments.

Take my picture..please



The holidays are a wonderful time to not only see you family but use them as subjects for portraits, especially if one is a complete ham and loves being in front of the camera. Uuummm Noah ;) ! As it turns out, kids of a certain age will let you pose them in almost any way as long as you email them the photo later so they can show off professional looking shots to their friends when they get back to school. Besides making the rest of your family so happy by sending pictures, it is great practice to work with people you know well before venturing off to take pics of complete strangers.

See some samples of family shots here.

So, over the next month I will be asking a few of my friends if they would like their portraits taken. One of my goals for these 'friend portraits' will be to somehow capture the spirit of each individual and of course make them look amazing. So for all you friends out there please let me know if youd be interesting in sitting for a portrait!