In this installment of our assignment series, we bring you the phrase “Done Me Wrong!” Since this assignment runs through Valentine’s Day, we figured we’d run a little anti-Valentine’s Day theme.

Our assignment series is open to all photographers, professional, semi-pro and rank amateur. We’re hoping you’ll wanna play along.

Your assignment is to illustrate the concept “Done Me Wrong”. This might be a photojournalistic exercise or an artistic construction. We leave it up to you to define the phrase and how you will interpret it. The most creative entry wins! Actually, everyone wins. We will post all of the entries on our facebook page, and post a few of our favorites on our blog, complete with a link back to your blog or website.

Images should be sized to 590 pixels on the long side. If you need help figuring that out, ask your favorite Shootstyler! And by all means, slap that logo on there if you have one! Email your entry to:

assignment@shootstyle.com

The images will be used on this blog, Facebook, and a few select images may make a post on the Digital Wedding Forum, just ’cause we’ll want to show everyone’s cool ideas off!

We’ll have an album on our Facebook fan page. When the entries start coming in, we’ll post them there first. Check in with us at Facebook if you are looking for some inspiration.

www.facebook.com/ShootStyle

The deadline is February 14, a Sunday. If you’d like to think about “Done Me Wrong” at events you are already shooting, we think that would be pretty keen. If you want to go do something wacky and outside of your usual style of photography, even better!

Let’s have fun doing this together!!Assignment series: “Done Me Wrong!”

I’ve been thinking about collaboration lately. A big part of why I am involved with ShootStyle is I feel like by collaborating with other creative artists, I am able to be much greater than I am by myself.

Last week Stacey Doyle came up to shoot a Deanne and Thorton’s wedding in Northport, Maine with me. We’ve worked together on a few weddings already, and we both love it! At some point in the wedding day, I like to wander off with the couple and find a beautiful vista or quiet little cubbyhole that illustrate the feel of the wedding venue.

Last Sunday, I turned to Stacey in the middle of this photo session at Point Lookout and asked her what she had seen for interesting locations. She had seen this bench on the way on and had made a mental note of it as a good photo location.

Once in the space, I started thinking back to Michelle Turner’s talk at Mystic on posing. Michelle is doing a posing workshop at our next Shootstyle model shoot and so it has been on my mind. I tend more towards gentle suggestions to the couple (“Go hang out over there and just talk/kiss/hang out”) but in this one location I did some actual posing, based entirely on Michelle’s concepts, guiding the couple into place.

It was fun, it’s not a ground-breaking image, but it is a nice quiet moment, brought about by three photographers.

:)

Walter Van Dusen’s annual winter get-together held in Mystic, CT is one of the bestest venues for photographer education and mingling in New England. It’s an event that the ShootStyle team wouldn’t miss for the world. This year, we arrived a day early to practice with some models and fellow playmates Erin Chapman, Kate McElwee, Carol Savage, and Jeannie Worley Turnock. Here’s a smattering of the photos we took:

ShootStylers Stacey Doyle and Michelle Turner could not have more different styles of approaching and photographing a wedding day if they tried.

Stacey and Michelle showcased their differences at this year’s Mystic event, presented by Walter van Dusen. Mystic is an annual learning and networking event held in CT. We ShootStylers sat front row to support our girls and especially Stacey as she held her first presentation.

While Michelle likes to photograph the details and portraits, Stacey is more comfortable disappearing into the background and capturing raw emotions.

To prove how their differences can work, they photographed a wedding together last month in Mexico. These 2 have clearly defined styles that their clients specifically hire them for. Throw them both together onto the same event and you get an interesting mishmash of editorial and photojournalistic styles.

I would best describe these girls as ying and yang. Whether it’s natural light or external lighting, posing or loose suggestion, there’s no wrong way to approach a wedding so long as your client is educated about what they are to expect. Showcasing a particular style in your marketing and NOT showing what you don’t like to/want to shoot is the only way to go.

Since I personally love shooting details AND love being a wallflower, I fall somewhere in between these girls’ styles.

While I can’t sympathize with Stacey when she says details leave her “cold inside”,  I appreciate her need to not be seen and her love of the unscripted moment. Though I side with Michelle in her use of mostly natural light, her love of those details, and her use of Photoshop and textures to enhance images, I find that I’d rather skip wedding portraits all together.

Stay tuned for Michelle and Stacey to show and tell their sides of the story soon!

~Zofia

The ShootStylers went to Western Maine in November to mingle with some Maine photographers. Carol Savage, Samantha Warren and Amy Salerno shot with us. We met up with local models Elizabeth Baumhoff, Erica Carson and Joanna Reese. We duded them up as backwoods Maine beauties and then trundled up to Grafton Notch State Park and worked in the Screw Augers Falls and Moose Caves areas.

The entire outdoor shoot lasted a mere hour and a half, as the shortened November day got the best of us.

Hair and makeup by Ambiance Spa in South Paris.

In this installment of our assignment series, we asked participants to illustrate what “Cheer!” meant to them.

The approach could have been anything from a photojournalistic exercise to an artistic construction. We left it up to the photographers to define the phrase and how they interpreted it.

The most creative entries won (see below) Actually, everyone did. We posted all of the entries on our facebook page, and posted a few of our favorites on our blog, complete with a link back to the photographer’s blog or website.

Our assignment series is open to all photographers, professional, semi-pro and rank amateur. What a fantastic collection of Cheer! we received from so many of you!

Thank you for playing and now …. The Winners!!!

First place is Melissa Mullin's girl with leaves

Second place is Jocelyn Mathewes' smilie faced boy

Third place is Cory Ann Ellis's girl in pink jumping off chair

Stay tuned for our next assignment coming soon!

In this installment of our assignment series, we bring you the word “Cheer!”

Our assignment series is open to all photographers, professional, semi-pro and rank amateur. We’re hoping you’ll wanna play along.

The assignment is to illustrate the concept “Cheer”. This might be a photojournalistic exercise or an artistic construction. We leave it up to you to define the phrase and how you will interpret it. The most creative entry wins! Actually, everyone wins. We will post all of the entries on our facebook page, and post a few of our favorites on our blog, complete with a link back to your blog or website.

Images should be sized to 604 pixels on the long side. If you need help figuring that out, ask your favorite Shootstyler! And by all means, slap that logo on there if you have one! Email your entry to:

assignment@shootstyle.com

The images will be used on this blog, Facebook, and a few select images may make a post on the Digital Wedding Forum, just ’cause we’ll want to show everyone’s cool ideas off! :)

We’ll have an album on our Facebook fan page. When the entries start coming in, we’ll post them there first. Check in with us at Facebook if you are looking for some inspiration.

www.facebook.com/ShootStyle

The deadline is December 15, a Tuesday. If you’d like to think about “Cheer” at events you are already shooting, we think that would be pretty keen. If you want to go do something wacky and outside of your usual style of photography, even better!

Let’s have fun doing this together!!Assignment series: “Cheer!”

Stacey Doyle came up to second shoot a wedding in Maine last week and got stuck with me in a Hurricane. The couple had decided on an outdoor wedding with the only shelter from the storm being a tent. The couple and their guests were a hearty bunch, and rolled with the raindrops. They slipped and slided on the dance floor and so did we.

Here’s a shot of Stacey’s feet at the end of the night and the shoes the morning after. They’re posed ceremoniously on my light case. We were two walking mud puddles, it was like being at Woodstock without the hallucinogens.

Our first Assignment was really a big hit! We had a ton of participation and even more positive comments from our facebook friends! We had a small panel of independent photographer votes and we came up with the following three winners:

Our grand winner, by a landslide was Rogier van Bakel, who submitted this gem, which is “The moment after my knock-knock joke”.

Following close on his heels was Shootstylers Earl Christie,

and Michelle Turner:

The rest of the entries can be seen here on this online gallery.

Thank you all for playing : Fetching Photography,  Lelia Marie, Carol Savage, Michelle Stapleton, David Brainard, Jennie and Dave of Strawberry Road, Jessica McDaniels of Boston Baby Photos, Shannon Burkert Sullivan, Steven Mastroianni, Steven Wexler at Euro Entertainment, and Jon Fischer!!! We can’t wait for our next contest, it’s going to be a doozy!! (stay tuned)

The ShootStylers hit the streets of Boston joined by talented photographers Allana Taranto from Ars Magna Studio and Jennie Sjursen from Strawberry Road. We were also joined by some of our favorite couples: Rachel & Adam, Jackie & David, Leila & Ryan, and Caralyn & Erik. It was a combination ‘trash the dress’/engagement shoot, so our couples brought clothes they didn’t mind getting dirty. Have you ever  seen  a row of women in the Starbucks restroom line, all waiting to put on wedding dresses? Now we have! We split off into small groups, roaming the city looking for interesting backdrops. Later in the day, we all met up and everyone switched groups. It was a fun way to meet some new people, reconnect with old friends, and take create some images we hope you’ll find interesting.