Why I Love What I Do

I know it has been a few months since my last post. I'll do my best to get better at this. I recieved a message this morning prompting this post.

This past weekend I had opportunity to work with a reletively new model. I had been coming out of a slow period business wise and had recently got a message from her expressing interest in working together. It was only a short time into photographing this young woman I saw a vast amount of talent. Very relaxed, and flowing in motion, but also spontaneous and lively. After a few hours and around 800+ photos we called it a wrap.

In the time going through and sorting the images I do as I normally would for any new model. I sent a couple follow up messages giving feedback on her work, tips and advice on photography/modeling and a couple of leads for continued work.

This morning I received this message:

"You are an excellent photographer and you help each model see the beauty, not only skin deep, but the beauty within themselves. You have given me confidence on a whole different level and I appreciate all the hardwork and help you have and will put into me! I honestly could not thank you enough! :)"

And this is why I love what I do. The opportunity to work with someone with talent and enthusiasm is a big part of my art. Meeting new people from all different backgrounds and careers gives a whole new perspective to what I do. And no matter what background people have on set they become an artist. On set things become a fluid dance of movement between model and photographer with breaks of laughter.

For some people is a freee expression of art, for others it's a time for self discovery; but no matter their reasoning from their talent and expression we make art. A snapshot frozen in time of those emotions.

I've gotten the oppotunity to work with a lot of great ladies and guys doing this and every once in a while I find these people, who change the game and inspire me to continue moving onward and upward. So thank you very much to all of you. I appreciate all your talents, skills and words of encouragement.


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And for all the readers and other supporters thank you too.

I'll hopefully be back this weekend with a new post on Summer Fashion.

Cheers,

-Be

Pin Up: a look at vintage american modeling

There's something about vintage americana. The 50s is the most famous and probably most defining decade of Americana. The 50s is seen as the time period of the American dream. Classic cars, baseball, apple pie, the birth of rock and roll, and the American pin up model.

The term pin up originated in 1941, but the style of art had been around for a number of years. Starting in the 20s pin up art began establishing itself to the modern form we know today.

The style of pin up focuses on the allure, innocence, playfulness of the model. Taking the ordinary every day looks and chores and making them more "interesting" in the eyes of guys.  Take the work of Art Frahm for example. A website dedicated to his work gives the tagline : The study of Celery on Loose Elastic.

As you'll find on the website many of Frahm's most famous images feature a woman with grocery bag(s) containing celery and to her amazement her underwear has dropped to her ankles with a suprised male onlooker. 

Another popular Pin up artist is Gil Elvgren. Again taking the ordinary and just giving that little extra nudge.

 
Showing that playfulness and making what would seems to be the playful task of looking at a globe to making it just a bit sexy.

The last pin up artist we'll look at is Alberto Vargas. Son of a photographer, he became one of the most famous pin up artists and his work, Like that of Elvgren, has helped define the classic poses of pin up art.

Pin up art has been featured in paintings, photos, and tattoos.

The past few months I've taken some time to research and do my own pin up work. I've had a lot of fun working with different models and I'm sure there will be more work to come. Here's a few samples of my work. They have very simple editing but I hope to learn techniques to create a painted effect to make them appear more authentic:

Models: Elizabeth, Katie, Kristen Liz & Lonna; Make up: enigma.machine.design, Painting Faces, Beauty by Olivia.

Check back soon for my post of summer beach wraps and fashion.

-Ben

Return of Fashionable Fruit

A while back you may remember a mini set I posted with the lovely Lonna who was wearing fruit as jewelry. While it was a wonderful set, it just wasnt complete. So about a month or so after that shoot we decided to add more to the project.

I needed something brighter, more fun. So for the first look we tried Yellow with Starfruit and Lemon

I really liked the look of  both but the lemon seemed to be more vesatile and fun.

We played around with some earrings made of lemon peel.

And at the suggestion of her boyfriend we even took a few shots of her eating the lemon. (she wasn't too fond of that one)

Overall I'm very happy with the look. The brightness of the yellow matched her top. And this helped give a more casual commercial look to the photo as opposed to the more high fashion style look we had with the blueberry and kiwi. For both the lemon and starfruit I kept the jewelry aspect very minimal using just the black satin ribbon as a choker/necklace. The simplicity and contrast works very well in my opinion. For the make up the subtle yellow helps accent the fruit but not take focus away. Yellow can be a very harsh color but I think this blends quite nicely.

The next look we moved on to something bold. Red is such a strong color and there were so many options. Unfortunately cherries were out of season so I went with my second choice (and probably my favorite fruit) Strawberries.

For the strawberry we went back to the artistic and fashion style like the first series. I love the pose that shows off the natural conture of the body. The idea of natural forms works very well in a series focusing on fruit. Like the yellow we kept the make up minimal but the rose color really pops quite well.

This second photo really shows the almost mask like effect with the eye make up and the subtle graduation of color. Also I particilarly like the grouping of strwberries in her hands.

After completing this set of photos I created a cologe of the four looks, one from each color.

I absolutely loved working on this series. It was a very fun creative process. Lonna was so great to work with and both Olivia and Nicole did great jobs on make up. 

My next series I'll be talking about is a vintage pin-up series I've been working on. Look for another post in a few days featuring that. Also Look for an upcoming post on Summer fashion: Beach Wraps.

Have a great day,

-Ben

Spring is here, new beginings.

Hope everyone has had an enjoyable winter. Things have been very busy for me with shoots and studio changes. I've started a few new projects in the past 3 months. Back in January I started expanding the beauty make up area of my portfolio and in February my studio changed managers and we've been remodeling the entire work and office space.

Expanding the amount of beauty and artistic make up in my portfolio has been so much fun. I've had the opportunity to work with 3 amazing make up artists and quite a few talented models. Here are a few samples:

Models: Jenna Claire, Renee Archbold, and Katie O.

Make Up by: Olivia J of Beauty by Olivia

Model: Carissa Lee

Make Up: Shoranda Iyez of Painting Faces

Model: Kristen W.

Make Up: Nicole Barry of enigma.machine.design

I absolutely love the creativity in each of these photos. Olivia, Shoranda and Nicole all have very different styles and their work is always spectacular. It has been a true pleasure to work with them and photograph their art.

One of my other new projects is summer beach wraps from local Rochester designer Peiris Clothing. It has been awesome opportunity to do some work for them and really puts me ahead of the game for my summer work. Samples and commentary on that work will come later this week.

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. Updates on projects and upcoming ventures to be posted startedx next week.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun holiday with friends and family.

~Ben Miller~

Red Balloons

Many of you may know about my red balloon project entitled 99 Red Balloons after the song  of the same title. I came up with the concept after hearing the song while editing photos. I was further inspired to do this project after discovering the french film Le Ballon Rouge. 

The project features models in various settings and styles with red balloons. It's a very simplistic, playful, and artistic project.  In completion the project will have 99 images of models with balloons. For the first stage of the project I'm planning to start with 33 models and use 3 images of each model. Following the completion of this stage of the project I will showcase the images in gallery showings. Eventually I plan to expand the project to include 99 models and then showcase one photograph of each model, and take that series to gallery showings.

Currently I have worked with 10 models on this project since starting it this past summer. In the next month I hope to add 3 more models to this project, putting me just past a 1/3 of the way completed for the first stage of the project. Above you'll see a preview of the work I've done so far. You can view more samples on my facebook page.


Enjoy and have a happy Thanksgiving.


-Ben

Good Fruit, Great Fashion

Well it's been far longer than I expected but without further adeiu here is my post on fashionable fruit.

While this may not be practical, it's a lot of fun.

The first fruit we have today is kiwifruit. The fruit gets its name from the brown flightless bird 'kiwi' which the outer fuzz resembles. The fruit is native to China but the common kiwi we see today was originally cultivated in New Zealand and interestingly enough is now primarily grown and exported from Italy. Another interesting fact is that the fruit is a berry, quite an odd look compared to common berries like blueberries and rasberries.

I chose kiwifruit due to it's wonderful color and bright fresh look.  I also chose it as the greens really compliment the models tan/olive skin. The make up shows a darker almost jade style appearance to contrast the almost peridot color of the kiwi. The black beads in the necklace highlight the small black seeds in the center of the fruit.

The second fruit we have is blueberry. Another berry, this time with wonderful deep colors. A native perienial plant in North America and Europe. Blueberries have amazing  deep blue and violet colors which are complimented nicely by the make up. In the jewelry I paired the blueberries with rectangular pewter beads to contrast the organic spheres of the blueberries.

Hopefully in the weeks to come I'll have more fruit photos I'm hoping to do a set with rasberries and  maybe something bright like grapefruit or lemons.

Also look for a post on my Red Balloon project.

Have a great day, and remember fruit isn't just healthy it's fashionable too.

-Ben