GraceNMichelle #geekgoddesses rough sketches

I'm no illustrator. Sketching perspective concepts has always been a challenge for me.

I am pretty handy at drawing an overhead floor-plan on graph paper. And that is actually a great start for me in the pre-production phase of the shoot. I start with an easy overhead plan, pick a camera angle or two, and sketch away.

I got a few snapshots from GraceNMichelle of our Geek Goddesses photo shoot location. It will be a familiar one, because we're using one of the usual vlogging settings of GraceNMichelle and Daily Grace.

The concept, the geeky activity that we decided on for these two goddesses is (surprise) vlogging. We're going to be paying respectful homage to the Numa Numa, Chocolate Rain, and lonelygirl15's out there who open up their lives on the you tubes.

The humor in this one will come from the moment. We're going to be seeing them seconds before their taping as they feverishly prepare the room and themselves for the camera. We talked about in our concept meeting that there have been so many times that they are shoving trash or underwear out of the frame of the webcam before shooting to give the appearance of a clean, tidy room. We're going to catch this moment in a fun way. Maybe they'll be all dolled up from the waist up, and wearing PJs and fuzzy slippers from the waist down.

Right now Risa, our Artistic Director (that's her rough sketch above), and I are thinking of the composition and shape of the photo. It's still a little bit up in the air, so I may make a trip to the location for some more scouting shots. Next we'll be figuring out what props we want in the shot that GraceNMichelle would probably try to hide.

More Geek Goddess posts HERE

shooting a series - the nuts and bolts

I had an idea to shoot a series of highly stylized photos. It's been one of those ideas that snowballs and picks up other ideas along the way. I'm thinking self-promotion, printing a photo 'zine, traveling to Georgia for some of the shoots. The ideas keep coming, and the spirit of collaboration is getting my creative friends excited about it.

I've decided that to me the creative and collaborative process of photography is as much (if not more) of a motivator as the final product.

AND I'm going to chronicle the process here and on twitter. I've already started, so there will be a little bit of back tracking.

The big idea is a series on Geek Goddesses. These will be stylized portraits of beautiful women doing geeky stuff. I have some notebook pages filled with ideas like Dungeons and Dragons, lab experiments and comic book collecting. I'm working with an Art Director/Stylist to really make the details look right. We wrapped just the other day on a shot of model Lauren Reeves pretending to read Cosmo, when she's really reading a science book.




Below is the sketch that my AD Risa Puno came up with for the edited image above. We have a few that really closely resemble the concept sketch, but we also wanted some variety and a few tight/vertical shots that could be used on a promotional piece.


I'm mostly shooting this project with what I have available to me. I'm getting friends to model and talent/location scout. I'm using my own apartment and borrowed locations for the sets. I'll probably end up renting props and costumes of some kind, but I'm hoping to find most of what I need.

Let me know if I've left something out. I want the whole process to be an open book.