Photo Styling Tips

 

A while back I posted about how in the recent months I've been given the opportunity to style for some clients of ours at work.  As many of you know I work as a commercial photographer for a large printing company.  Our photography dept shoots for an arrange of commercial clients that sell clothing, food, medical supplies, and housewares just to name a few.  My managers decided to take me up on my offer to start styling part time after they saw my apartment on Apartment Therapy posted a few months ago. So today I thought I'd share with you 2 different type of styling tips for 2 different types of photography (room and product)  I've worked on these this week alongside one of our best photographers Mark.  He is so much fun to work with and a lighting genius to say the least!  I'd like to note that these are just my opinions/suggestions about prop styling and I hope that they give you something to think about for your next photo shoot.  I'd love to answer (as best as I can) any other questions you might have too on the subject of styling and photography.  Take care!

Happy Friday!

  Hooray we made it to the end of the week!  I don't know about you but this week was a bit of a struggle for me.  Feeling out of balance of sorts mentally and feeling some stress at my 9-5 job.  Most of those unplasant feelings have diminished a bit as I was able to sort out feelings last night in my hot yoga class. It's only been my second week going, but when I say it's transforming, I mean that I feel like a calmer, saner, and healthier being when I leave the class.  It's the best way (I've found so far) to decompress after a long week of work and it leaves me feeling totally refreshed to finish my last day of work on Friday.  Not to mention I sleep like a baby at night!  Transforming, I kid you not! And it's a fun way for Joe and I to schedule a gym date every week too! 

  I wish I could tell you that my weekend will be relaxing, but Joe and I have lots of exciting plans in the works for our new business adventure called Coach House Pictures.  So we will be designing business cards and website pages to get that side of the business more organized. Until next week!  Have a wonderful weekend and thanks for joining me this week :)

All Into Fall

Hi everyone!  I first want to give a warm welcome to those who have found my lil blog via BYW.
And a giant thank you for all your sweet comments I've received this week.  It has truly inspired me to keep posting everyday this week (so far), yippee!! Today I wanted to share a small table top duo I shot around this time last year.  Along with them I wanted to share a few tricks to compose a shot like this, without emptying your wallet.

  I'm always looking for fun and interesting surfaces to photograph on and this one I used cost only 99 cents at my local Michael's  craft store.  It looks pretty close to the worn surface look I was seeking.  Another source for inspiration is taking a trip to your local farm stand, farmers market, or orchard.  They tend to have the freshest in session produce you can find.  Plus they make for great holiday decor around your home after you've photographed them.  And finally try going on a walk in your neighborhood. It's fun to collect fallen leaves from the trees and inspect all the different varieties that surround you.  After your done with them put each leaf in between pages of a heavy book and come Thanksgiving you'll have a festive and creative element to add to your festive table!  Have fun!

Shades of Autumn

It never truly feels like Fall until I get to experience something in nature.  When the air is crisp and the smell of burning leaves fills the air.  This past weekend Joe and I packed our car and headed out of the city for a much needed time in the country.  We met up with some friends in McHenry at Stade's Farm.  It's a quaint family owned farm located 50 miles outside the city. It was definitely worth the trip!  We had a blast taking a hay ride to a REAL  pumpkin patch were we picked out the best looking gourds.  My friends jokingly asked if this was better that shopping at Aldi, where I usually go to buy my pumpkins.  And oh was it ever!  We stayed until the sun went down indulging in there famous hot apple cider donuts, hot coco, and sweet corn on the cob.  Later that night we headed back to my good friend Alise's house were we carved our pumpkins and roasted all the yummy seeds! We had a blast and can't wait for next years fall outing!

Free Download: Vintage Bias Tape Labels

  I thought I'd start the week off by sharing a fun free download I worked on over the weekend.  I have a small but plentiful collection of vintage bias tape that I've been sourcing from flea and antique markets for the past few years.  And having been inspired by Katrina lately (and all her lovely design downloads), I decided to share with you a few of my favorites from the collection, in 3 color ways, and turned them into labels for your personal use.  I like to use these as captions in my posts and I'll probably be using them as labels for my sidebar tabs sometime in the near future, I hope :)  Until then, enjoy these here!

Photo Frame: EV Photo Chic

Craft Product Review: Scissors & Punch

Crafting is one of my great loves! And to find products that are smart, help me to save time, and create great results? One of my goals is to find these products, test them and then share the results with my lovely readers! This weekend I tested out my newest Martha Stewart crafting products for an upcoming project and they are now an essential part of my craft closet.  The first product is fringe scissors, they have 5 scissor blades in one handle. A great time saving tool to create your own streamers and other fringe like projects, like my fringe backdrop.  And the second is an all over circle punch.  Unlike most paper punches, where you can only punch a shape on the border of the paper, this punch lets you punch anywhere on your paper. Which means you get more punches per paper and less waste, great! I used a medium weight card stock to create this paper garland. Thanks Martha for creating such handy tools for crafters like me :)  Oh, and the product design is easy on the eyes, so I don't mind displaying any of her craft products either because they just look so pretty.

Photography: evphotogal
Fabric Ribbon: evphotogal
Blog Template: Pugly Pixel