***“…I’m here for a good time, not a long time. Life is too short not to wear fun clothes.”***

Ruby Marx - 2023.

September 23, 2023

I think sometimes you have to celebrate your challenges and failures along side of your victories. This session was a challenging one across the board. Ruby and I may have locked in this shoot over a month ago, but a week ago she let me know that she just wasn’t feeling as energetic as usual and wanted to take things a bit more low-key than the costume shoot we had planned.

Cool. No problem. I’m here to do the work. I don’t care all that much what I’m doing, as long as I’m doing it. Also I prefer to test new equipment on more “low stakes” shoots anyway (not to brag, but most of the time I really do like being a photo industry secret agent and getting to play with pre-release toys…this will come back to bite me in just a few seconds).

I’m not sure what happened this time around, but I think I was fighting my equipment from the first frame. My first mistake was thinking I could use good quality lights with a poor quality modifier. I’m spoiled I guess with having access to better equipment, but I still can’t believe I can notice a difference with something I relied on not too many years ago. However, that was only the first battle. No matter what troubleshooting I did I kept having blank frames where my strobes just didn’t fire. I have some troubleshooting to do, and even though I’m happy with what we ended up getting, I’m still a little disappointed we had to cut things short (even if it did mean we did get more time mobbing around a new antique store and Target for the afternoon).

***“…what’s got you looking so sad, boy?”***

Montañita - 2022.

October 22, 2022

I don’t think I’ve ever photographed an actor like Montañita. Our session very much was like a scene from a play. Every frame I took was analyzed and poured over as soon as it popped up on the monitor.
”What is going through my head”
”What am I trying to say here?”
”Why is he so sad?”

It really was something fascinating to be a part of, and I’m actually pretty surprised at what we were able to make together.

I honestly thought this was going to be a standard headshot session, but instead we worked through a great conversation that covered a whole range of topics from “What is the best insole for dress shoes?”, “How does hair gel work?” and even discussing the finer points of pickup trucks and bargain hunting. The hour session went by so quickly that it hardly felt like work at all.

The photos below are just a small taste of what we shot, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

Check out more of Montañita’s work at his website mountaininthemaking.com and on social media @transg0d

***“…my gender identity is bloody boobs…”***

Nicky - 2022.

October 15, 2022

“So I’m not saying that I’m just going to throw a sepia filter over these and put them in the blog, but I’m also not not saying that either”.

I think this is a first for me. Usually, I struggle to get one Halloween post up each year, but this time I have managed three so far. This shoot wasn’t my typical fare. I didn’t go into it with any grand concept. I didn’t even know what to expect when Nicky said they were bringing blood and fangs. I just let it happen. And what happened was this unintentional vampire-western that I couldn’t have asked to be any different.

I can’t say that anything in this post will go into my portfolio long term, but that doesn’t bother me. I had fun, and I did the work. That is what matters the most.

And if you made it this far, now the opening quote will make a little more sense. But I warn you, there are some spicy images past this point. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Fandom Nerdlesque - Send Noobs: Leveled Up Promo Shoot - 2022.

October 10, 2022

This shoot has easily been two years in the making. It’s funny how a global pandemic can just up and shut down an entire entertainment industry for a while. But let’s start at the beginning and work forwards.

The Fandom Nerdlesque is one of my favorite clients. Even though I still cringe when producer, Sig Sawyer, calls me (his words not mine) “The best cosplay photographer in Atlanta”. Back in 2018 I was invited to shoot some high speed video during the promotional shoot for the first scripted video game themed show “S3ND NOOBZ”, and I was excited to be invited back to create the promotional materials for it’s sequel show which debuts at Anime Weekend Atlanta later this year.

A lot of this material came from me teaching myself Affinity Designer sometime in mid-2020. I had just recently finished up a batch of comic book covers for The Fandom (Which mark my words, one day will see the light of day) for another show that ended up being canceled. In a fit of sadness I designed what would become the Gameboy assets that I got to use for this series.

To make things even better and several orders of magnitude harder, I decided to shoot part of this campaign on actual Gameboy Camera hardware, resulting in the some of the most thought out, lowest resolution images I have ever created.

Click for larger

Magenta Marie as “Player 1”

Dillon Darling as “Donkey Kong”

Desire Evoquer as “Jinx”

Titan Moon as “Naked Snake”

Sasha Sindragosa as “Springtrap”

Kil La Queenie as “Spyro”

Pixie Twixt as “Navi”

Violin Hips as “Anika”

At the time of this blog post, I’m fairly certain that tickets to Anime Weekend Atlanta still are available. And as far as I know that is all you need to see these nerds take their clothes off on Friday night of the convention.

*“…would you mind asking your housemate to help me with something?”*

Caitlin - 2022.

October 01, 2022

The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed one of the photos from this series appeared on the front page of the website back in July, and you would be right, because that’s when I put it there. The secret is out, we can all go home now.

But in all seriousness, I’ve been waiting for October since the summer. Hopefully by the time this blog actually posts to the internet the air will have that familiar comforting chill, Target will have FINALLY put out their dollar Halloween stuff (I’m still mad that hasn’t happened already as I’m writing this in the past), and there will be a Spirit store living inside of all of us where there once was a JC Penny.

What started as just a cute spooky dress turned into an idea that came together just hours before we ended up in the studio, and I hope you all enjoy the fruits of our unearthly labors (Pumpkins are fruit right? Probably not…but let’s just roll with it, ok?).

Made it this far? How about a little farther? At the time of this posting, Caitlin is currently competing in the 2022 Face of Horror competition and just recently made it to the Top 10 of her group. If you have a moment I’m sure she’d appreciate a couple of extra free votes to get her one step closer to winning.