Emily Bregger

I met Emily Bregger a couple of months ago for a very quick shoot out by the Great Salt Lake with her friend Kyla and her two horses.

I learned at that photo shoot that Emily is a ballerina and later discovered that she has been involved in ballet for 15 years and was recently the Snow Queen in the Nutcracker this past Christmas season.

I love working with ballerinas.  What better way to incorporate grace and beauty into a photograph than to work with one who has trained for years to be graceful and beautiful?  So we got to talking and decided to do a photo shoot at the Salt Lake City Library where we could take advantage of the amazing architecture to show off her grace and beauty.  I had previously worked with a pair of ballroom dancers at the same location and just love the architecture.

Below are some of my favorite images from our photo shoot:

Ashlyn Cardoza

Despite her young age, Ashlyn Caroza is a very experienced model. Just looking at some of her past photo shoots you would expect her to be well into her 20s, but she's actually still in her teens (though from talking to her she can't wait to be older).

Many of Ashlyn's photo shoots have been so fantastic that you might not even guess it was her. Take a look at some of these for example:
 
JOSH ROSSI PHOTOGRAPHY - 1960 Spy Series
MATT SPENCER PHOTOGRAPHY - My Three Selves

So as I got to talking with Ashlyn, she wanted something simple, something that was just "her".  And what better way than a Fitness photo shoot.  With Fitness it is basically just her and the camera. No fancy makeup, hair or clothes. No photoshop.  Just her.

I should also mention that Jillian, who was our MUA for this, did a fine job with a clean makeup and hair style for Ashlyn.  I told her that we didn't want anything fancy, just a nice clean look and she did great!

These are some of my favorite images from our photo shoot:

Astrid Munevar: In a word - Fun!

It had been months since Astrid and I first talked about doing a photo shoot, and Monday night it was about to happen. Due to circumstances that I won't mention (smile), she was late ... and had to leave early.

After she quickly changed and did her hair and makeup, we had a total of 51 minutes from start to finish (from first picture taken to last).  And I have to say, it was a wild ride!  Even counting 4 changes of clothes (5 sets of clothes total) within that 51 minutes, I still managed to take 694 images.  YES!  SIX HUNDRED NINETY-FOUR!

And this was not a "spray and pray" type of photo shoot.  The fact is, Astrid was just "that much fun!".  The speed with which she could change poses and expressions and do something different in between each shot was incredible.  Yes, I gave her some direction ... turn this way, bend your arm that way, hold your hand like this.  But mostly ... it was all her.  And in the end, I picked a total of 127 images to process and give to her.  That's more than 2 images for every minute we spent working together.  I'm not bragging ... I'm telling you it was all her! :)

The theme for the night was to be a Fashion / Catalog type of photo shoot.  To put on some clothes and (in most cases) try to "sell them to the viewer".  I say in most cases, because every now and then I threw in a different type of crop or pose or lighting, but we covered a lot of ground.

Check out some of the fun pictures we made that night: