Lighting and Portraiture

Wednesday, January 6, 2010
I bought two cameras over the holiday break, a SuperHeadz Digital Harinezumi 2 and a Canon S90. The Digital Harinezumi 2, or Zumi 2, is a plastic "toy camera" built from the ground up to take really crappy-looking pictures with a vintage-inspired feel. Think Diane and Holga cameras. There is even a movie mode to capture terrible-looking movies, too, great for hallucinogenic dream effects. The Canon S90 replaces my old pocket camera, the Canon SD550. I think it might even replace my Leica D-Lux 4, too, because flash photography on it is excellent. It turns out that I can't take the Portrait Photography course I wanted because enrollment is now closed. The maximum number of students in most of these advanced photography courses is ten to twelve and some of them fill up fast. I may have to wait until next year to take it. In its place, I'll take either Lighting for Editorial Photography or Photo-Based Installation.

Wednesday, January 13, 2010
I attended my first Lighting for Editorial Photography class today taught by Michael Bryant, staff photographer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. "I'm convinced that most of our students don't know how to use flash properly," he said. That might be true, since we were all taught to use ambient light as much as possible. Michael presented examples of his work, which included amazing images all created without the use of Photoshop! "By the end of the course, you will be able to make images just like these," he said. Pretty damn cool.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Today in Lighting for Editorial Photography class, we learned some basic flash concepts, reviewed an equipment list of items we'll need for at least 90% of our projects, and reviewed students' past work. "You have a really good eye," Michael said to me. I admitted that lighting for nightclubs was a real challenge for me and he gave me some tips. "We're here to help you with lighting," he said. Cool. In Portrait Photography class, we studied the three gazes of the sitter: confrontational, averted, and looking away. A portrait could exhibit two or all three. We reviewed the use of Lowell DP lights, tungsten lights also known as hot lights, and the use of umbrellas.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Today in Lighting for Editorial Photography class, we learned bounce flash techniques using a bounce card, an Omni-Bounce, and a Lumiquest bounce. We also learned how to use a light meter to meter flash light. Our first assignment is to use different bounce techniques to light three different scenes, a portrait, a small group of people, and a large group of people. A good picture has a subject that looks like it pops out of the environment. We had our first critique in Portrait Photography. Each of the eleven students had to shoot snapshots of people we didn't know from two disposable cameras and select their ten best pictures to show the class. We were asked to choose our favorite snapshot. A couple of people chose more than one. Two of the thirteen selected were from my set. "It's a great shot," the professor said of my picture of two Asian kids dressed as Civil War soldiers pretending to blast each other with plastic shotguns. Some of the students started chiming in as to why they liked the picture. We also learned how to use the Hasselblad camera and were given a lecture on voyeurism and surveillance in art.

Thursday, January 28, 2010
I was thinking about why some students take photography and some of them might take great pictures, but nothing about what they do really distinguishes themselves from anyone else. There are thousands of bird photographers, so what makes someone think he or she can capture the next great bird image? Wouldn't it be more exciting to delve into the one or two unique things you are truly passionate about than to limit yourself to what everyone else does? • After listening to a lecture by artist Sam Durant, I can say with great conviction that using art to convey your political views is something I have no interest in whatsoever. Durant believes that all art is political in nature, but I don't believe that at all.

Friday, January 29, 2010
I teamed up with one of my classmates to shoot a model she had hired for her photo session for Portrait Photography. The model was friendly, easy to work with, and had gorgeous, expressive eyes. After my classmate and I finished our work for our class, I helped her and the model with their fashion shoot. They thanked me for my really helpful posing advice and lighting skills.

Sunday, January 31, 2010
After being bored to tears at the Sam Durant lecture, I found the Orit Hofshi artist talk at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) to be engaging, entertaining, and inspiring. Hofshi is a woodcutter and printmaker who studied at PAFA and has travelled the world finding inspiration from such countries as Germany, Ireland, and her native Israel. She discussed her monumental work, "If the Tread is an Echo...," made of wood panels that span 24 feet by 12 feet and has a shelter construction in front of two of the panels and an overhead hanging woodcut making it a three-dimensional work. The work is a combination of woodcut and print. Traditionally, woodcutters display all of their works in print, but Hofshi explains that some of her woodcuts have added depth and dimensionality that would not be seen in a print, so she included the woodcut in place of roughly half of the panels. The work looked awesome when seen from thirty feet away in the audience. After the talk, I had a chance to examine the work up close and it looked even better. Hofshi encouraged us to touch her woodcuts. "God, this must've taken forever to make," I thought to myself. It was simply amazing.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Last night, one of my fans stopped in to buy me a drink and to congratulate me on my "Clublife" gallery at the William Way Community Center. He gave me a gift in the form of a coffee table book titled "Physique," which is filled with gorgeous black and white photographs of nude athletes.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010
In Lighting for Editorial Photography class, we learned more bounce flash techniques and the use of a Stofen diffuser or Tupperware container as a diffusion dome. In Portrait Photography class, we learned strobe techniques using professional Profoto lights and power packs.

Thursday, February 4, 2010
I shot a number of images today for part of a Portrait Photography class assignment. We were asked to design three images using one model in three different environments. The model must be looking away from the camera in each image and the three images must form a narrative. I designed my own twisted version of love and friendship in honor of Valentine's Day. The mirror in the second picture shows the man's hand holding the flower. There were six other images we had to do to show a confrontational look and the averted gaze. I have four assignments due in the next two weeks, so I'm glad I got this one done. Both of my models thought these images turned out great.

Sunday, February 7, 2010
For an upcoming Portrait Photography assignment, our class was divided into groups and we were asked to research and select a famous Hollywood glamour portrait and imitate the lighting as closely as possible in our school's studio. My group asked Tasha, our beautiful equipment room manager we see every day, to be our model. There were so many challenges to this assignment that it was difficult to get the lighting to look exactly right. On several occasions, we came really close, but it was never quite exact. The image of Tasha on the right is one of the better shots we captured following the sketchy instructions found in a Hollywood glamour lighting book. The actual lighting setups are a closely guarded secret so the book only provides basic ideas of how they could have been achieved. We were exhausted after three hours of lighting, so we took a break and goofed around with different lighting setups and placed ourselves in the pictures. This is me getting all hammy like I usually do at my parties. Ironically, the group member who shot these pictures is a Russian woman named Alina. My other group member, a foreigner from China, had a difficult time accepting me as a transsexual because he believed that a transsexual was someone who changed their sex through vaginoplasty. I told him that that was an antiquated definition and that nowadays a transsexual need not have that final surgery.

Saturday, February 13, 2010
I find self-portraiture to be the easiest yet most difficult form of photography. With minimal training, it's not hard to look good smiling and posing while your camera snaps pictures of you every few seconds, but it's a much greater challenge to place yourself in a scene and capture the mood or feeling you want and it's almost impossible to capture a scene that has all of the exact nuances you are looking for, especially if you are doing it all by yourself. My goal with the voyeur project in my Portrait Photography class is to recreate the feeling of gazing upon an intimate moment as seen through the eyes of a voyeur. For this project, I set my camera's brightness, contrast, and sharpen settings to maximum, set the ISO to 6400, and shot in monochrome to capture a surveillance camera look and feel. The final images had to look gritty, somewhat creepy, and erotically charged. Self-portraiture is a hit or miss, so my first pass through the over 1,000 images yielded 67 I'd be fine with showing in class. I have to reduce the number of images in my second pass.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
I saw Eleanor Antin's lecture today at Penn. She's one of the great artists of our time. It's refreshing to see such a successful person be so down-to-earth.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010
In Lighting for Editorial Photography class, we learned about fill flash. We also critiqued our first and second assignments. It's a little unfair that one of my classmates is a professional photographer with her own photography studio. Her pictures were flawless and one of her models was breathtakingly beautiful and curvaceous. This model was the type of girl who could make me look really bad if she stood next to me. It reminds me of how far I have to go in order to be like her. I will constantly strive to reach that ideal each and every day. I met with my Portrait Photography professor today during his office hours and he liked the results of my voyeur project so far. We selected images that could be edited out to make the grouping stronger. I already reduced the number of images to 30. A handful more should make the grouping much stronger and less repetitious. Basically, I will be presenting six sheets of anywhere from two to five images per sheet and each sheet will be read as a single image.

Thursday, February 18, 2010
We're supposed to write two artist lecture response papers for my Portrait Photography class. I'm done with one of them. It's about Eleanor Antin, one of the most prolific artists of our time. She came to Penn this past Monday to speak. The second paper will be about woodcutter Orit Hofshi. I saw her speak at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Friday, February 19, 2010
I completed my Orit Hofshi paper. Yayyy!!!

Sunday, February 21, 2010
Today I visited the newly-opened Garces Trading Company and bought a wedge of Valdeon, a rich and creamy, intensely-flavored cow and goat's milk blue cheese from Spain, to use as a prop for my latest Portrait Photography assignment in which we had to impersonate three characters. For my first character, I chose Minnie Mouse and my goal was to make sure I had lots of cheese all around me. There were a lot of cool people working at the shop and I got an odd stare every so often from the patrons, but I believe most people figured that someone dressed as a Disney character had to be doing so for a good reason.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010
In Lighting for Editorial Photography class, we learned about syncing two flash units together and setting the proper ratios for the front and back lights. Unfortunately, one of the sync cords had a short in it and we couldn't get it working perfectly, so we'll have to continue part of our training next week. In Portrait Photography class, we critiqued our Hollywood portraits. Everyone did well, although some were looser interpretations of the original portraits than others.

Sunday, February 28, 2010
This week the self-portraiture continues at Atomic City Comics where I dress as a Japanese comic book girl. Being the geek that I am, I bought a bunch of Groo the Wanderer and Spiderman comics. Kristin Nichols photographed all of my poses.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Stationary objects are easy to photograph compared to scenes filled with people because people add a random element to a scene and any person who doesn't know how to pose and freeze a pose at the proper moment will look odd. There is very little science to posing other than ensuring that your body be as flexible as possible through good nutrition and exercise. Even if you're not that flexible, you can still get some decent pictures by understanding your body's limitations and working around them. The first rule of thumb in posing is to imitate what looks good and to try to see if it will work for your body type. There are plenty of flexible people who don't have my body type and wouldn't look good doing some of the same poses that I do, but sometimes a slight variant of a certain pose might look better for those people. It is important to vary your poses and not do the same hand-on-hip poses that are so cliché in transgender photography. A lot of great poses can be seen in men's and women's magazines, fashion shows, films from the 1940s, vogue balls, etc. Don't limit your knowledge of posing to just the latest Frederick's of Hollywood catalog. Practice and perfect your posing in front of a full-length mirror and mount your camera on a tripod and set the self-timer to shoot some pictures and evaluate your progress. Most of my pictures from the Nineties were all shot in this fashion and the poses in those pictures compare favorably to the poses I do today.

Friday, March 5, 2010
Dana and I had lunch at White Dog Cafe where we discussed a variety of topics, including the interesting revelation about my being shy and introverted. "How did you overcome your shyness to be able to wear a Minnie Mouse costume in public?" she asked. "There is one thing I fear more than being in public dressed funny and being judged and criticized by others," I said. "I fear failure. The fear of failure motivates me to succeed. That's why I always put my best foot forward in everything I do. If I'm hesitant in any public situation, it's because I'm overcoming a fear of being in front of a large group of people, not because I fear they will think I'm transgender or a man or some kind of clown." • I started putting on my after-work makeup around 4pm. It was very light makeup with black eyeliner and mascara, lavender eyeshadow, and lip gloss. Two Asian students stopped by and saw me looking this way while I answered all of their computer questions. They didn't bat an eyelash probably because a lot of people in my work environment see me wearing eye makeup and lip gloss all the time. One of my coworkers lauded me for mastering the natural look and asked me for makeup advice for his upcoming theater production. After work, I visited Vox Populi to see the Dead Flowers show. One of the exhibits was a very cool video of Johanna Constantine wearing a yellow latex bodysuit. After Vox Populi, I went to Khymer Art Gallery to marvel over some beautiful Asian paintings and sculptures.

Saturday, March 6, 2010
I've had a love-hate relationship with my Bogen-Manfrotto tripod ever since I got it in 2007. It's a rock-solid professional tripod that has one huge drawback for a little girl like me... it's heavy like concrete! I stopped into Calumet today and checked out all of the new carbon fiber tripods, especially the Gitzo tripods that my school likes. They're so light! The one huge drawback to carbon fiber tripods is cost. $1,000 for a Gitzo compact tripod and Markins ball head. There are cheaper carbon fiber tripods, but this combination is the best for portability.

Friday, March 26, 2010
For my assignment in Lighting for Editorial Photography, I had to cover my flash head with a hand-crafted snoot to create a spotlight effect. We were told to aim the spotlight to brighten mostly the main subject's face and we needed to do both indoor and outdoor scenes. Today I was in one of the server rooms I do work in and decided to make myself the subject of one of my photo sets. In order to capture the environment properly, I had to set my camera and flash units on manual control. I wanted great detail across the entire image and I wanted to capture the ambience of the environment, so I set the aperture to f/22 and the shutter speed to 1.6 seconds using my flash meter readings as a guide. If I were to use one of the automatic modes on my camera, the image would've looked like any of the thousands of snapshots you see where the subject is very bright and the background surrounding the subject is too dark. Some photographers exalt the virtues of using only ambient light, but an image captured that way can look too busy, as seen in the first image below. Contrary to what some people believe, flash can actually add depth and direct someone's eye to the most important parts of the image. Most people would leave the flash on the camera, but then the center of the image would be brighter than the edges and that is not what we want. We need to mount the flash on a light stand and control it using an infrared wireless commander unit. I aimed a second flash unit covered with a blue gel at the server rack to my left to add a bluish sheen to the silvers and blacks in the scene. Both flashes fired with the wireless commander. I repositioned the camera and flash units to get a better angle and reduce the distractions in the room, as shown in the second image below. The only drawback with this kind of self-photography is not being able to manually focus on exactly what you want. I had to estimate the focus on my face by using the keyboard as my focus point. The room was also unbearably chilly from the air conditioning. Unfortunately, the air coming out of the vents was so strong the camera was gently rocking back and forth on the stand much of the time. 1.6 seconds might not seem like a lot, but it is, especially when you have to freeze your pose long enough for the camera to capture it. The intent of this exercise is to show how professional-looking results can be achieved with the strategic use of portable light sources.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Today in Lighting for Editorial Photography, we took a field trip to my classmate Mechelle's photography studio, basically the living room of a house that is currently being renovated. The twelve-foot high ceilings give the space plenty of potential. Our professor taught us how to use gels to create different coloring effects. During class, Mechelle noticed my jeans, asked me where I got them from, and I told her. "They're really nice!" she said. She said I could use her studio whenever I wanted. Mechelle gets a tie vote with Sarah for being the nicest girl in class. • In my Portrait Photography class, we took turns lighting and shooting a nude model named John. When John first walked in, he looked kind of average, but when he disrobed, I was like, "Whoa, where'd that body come from?" I can now see why he's frequently called upon to pose for our art school's drawing classes. Each student had only 30 minutes to set up lighting and shoot. We each had two assistants and our professor to help us, but I was pretty self-sufficient in what I wanted to do. The purpose of this assignment was to get a feel of what a real time-limited shoot might be like. Here are some sample pictures:

That last one is a damn good shot. After the shoot, my classmate and I had a little fun doing mid-air acrobatics. It was her idea.

Sunday, April 4, 2010
I'm excited about the new carbon fiber tripod I ordered, a Benro C-1691M8. It weighs just two pounds, converts into a monopod when needed, and comes with an Arca-Swiss-style ballhead. It's not a Gitzo, but it's the company Gitzo would've used to build their tripods. I now have my sights set on a Nikon D3s.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Today in Lighting for Editorial Photography, we learned some trade secrets for photographing food. Perhaps the most important point is to light food from behind using a large softbox. We learned that not all of the food you see in ads are real. Some food products are made of wax or glass. The splash of an alcoholic beverage in a martini glass, for example, is nothing more than glass shaped to look like a splash.

Saturday, April 10, 2010
I was given the green light by my Portrait Photography professor to show the class what I call extreme nudes, my concept for what I did last semester in my Body and Photography course with all of the kaleidoscopic images of my nude body. One of my kaleidoscopic images actually won this year's prize at PennDesign's Undergraduate Juried Exhibition. I reasoned that the entire class will be turning in straight shots of the nude model we shot, so everyone's work will look the same. My goal is to present nudes from a fresh, new perspective that is both hauntingly grotesque and beautiful at the same time.

Mechelle and I had a great photo session today. She's a relentless perfectionist, adjusting every control on her camera to obtain the perfect shot. "It's not just about composition, but also about exposure and lighting," she said. She likes having total control of her camera with manual mode. "I've never used any of the automatic modes. You pay good money for the best camera, so why would you use just 10% of what the camera is capable of?" she remarked. I agree. This is the same philosophy that my first photography professor instilled in me. Mechelle, her husband Ash, and I walked over to nearby Starr Garden Park where we did some fashion shots of me with kids playing football and basketball in the background. One of the basketball players watched our shoot quite avidly behind a fence. Every time I turned his way, he smiled. Several kids came up to us and wanted to be in our pictures. Their mother was cool with it. I introduced myself to every child. A six-year-old named Charlie asked me, "Why do you sound like that?" I grinned. "I have a cold," I replied. I must've sounded like Bugs Bunny with hayfever! It was slightly chilly out and everyone who wasn't playing sports was wearing a jacket. The cold weather didn't bother me. I've been known to model two-piece swimsuits in 30 degrees Farenheit. We ended up with a set of awesome pictures. It was a win-win for both of us because Mechelle and I now have new material for our portfolios. After the park, we did some studio shots using her Broncolor Minicom 40 lights and a beauty dish. Mechelle looked at my web sites and reviewed many of my pictures. "Honey, your web site pictures don't do you any justice. You look much better than that!" she said. I wanted to say, "I know, I know," because 99.9% of my pictures were taken in poor lighting conditions with an on-camera flash that just blows out my features. Mechelle commented on how beautiful my face, hair, and back were, three features I feel are my best assets. "These pictures we took today are amazing," she said. Her internship with our professor, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, made her into a better photographer, she admitted.

Sunday, April 11, 2010
Today I was on location at Washington Square Park with Kristin and Chris, two of my friends who generously donated their time for my final project in Portrait Photography. Kristin took the pictures and Chris controlled the lighting. Chris was in some of the pictures dressed in a tux. We got some nice compositions in this challenging environment. People walked by and thought Chris and I were posing for pictures as bride and groom. "When's the bridal party coming?" one of them asked Kristin.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
My professor in Lighting for Editorial Photography liked all of my pictures for my colored gel assignment, except for the ones with tungsten light. I might have to do those over for a better grade. In my colored background pictures, he liked how I colored my model and background. I colored my model yellow-orange with an Arri 150 spotlight and colored the black background using a strobe covered wth a purple gel. He liked the color combination and wished he could've covered what I did in one of his classes. Mechelle showed a picture of me wearing a green top with gold jewelry in front of a green-colored background for her colored background pictures. Other classmates showed their food photography pictures, which are actually due next week. • I spent a few extra hours last night printing my nude portraits for my Portrait Photography class. A couple of my classmates didn't like the yellow-orange color cast I used and one even questioned why I chose to turn in "freaky" images like that. "Because turning in what everyone else is turning in would be quite boring," I replied. It's been stressed time and again in my classes that we are taking art classes, even though they are listed as photography classes, so limiting yourself to just photography would be a very narrow way of thinking about how you should approach each homework assignment. I am shocked that some of these people who call themselves art students can't think outside the box. My professor reviewed my final project pictures from this Sunday's bridal photoshoot and, on the whole, he liked them, but felt they looked too much like they're from a catalog. "I wanted that look," I said, "because my goal is to show elegant, high-fashion pictures of transsexuals during the day doing everyday things like going to the park, eating at a sidewalk cafe, riding a horse, or walking around the waterfront. We've seen enough pictures of transsexuals at night or at parties. Outsiders tend to look at those pictures as crossdresser or drag queen pictures." "Is your goal, then, education as well as an art project?" he asked. "Yes," I replied, "I'm trying to prove that there are transsexuals like me who can go out during the day and look like any other female model out there. In so doing, I'm not trying to appeal to badly dressed, unkempt transsexuals who can't even make enough money to pay for a cup of coffee at the end of the day. Those transsexuals just make us all look bad." He nodded and understood. "I do see many transsexuals in Philly," he said, "and usually the Asian ones are the most passable." I told him about Saturday's photoshoot and how three kids flocked to me to be in pictures with me. He liked that. "It gives a heartwarming feel to the photos," I said, "and I believe the reason why their mother had no problem with me is because I look nonthreatening. If I was six feet tall with an imposing build, I'd probably scare them off." I admit that my final project is very ambitious and covers new, unexplored territory, which is why I have to carefully select who I want as a model in my pictures based on their look and how they present themselves. • Sarah, an MFA student, said to me after class, "I'm so glad you're in my classes because your work forces me to think in ways I hadn't thought of before."

Friday, April 16, 2010
Having a gorgeous model to work with always makes a photographer's life easier. If you were to ask me who is the most beautiful transsexual in Philadelphia, hands down it would have to be my friend June who is beautiful in so many ways. Well-known in the LGBT community for her work with ASIAC and a wonderful role model for many transsexuals, June gave me some awesome Top Model-like poses for our fashion photoshoot that was shot on location at the Irish Memorial in Philadelphia.

Saturday, April 17, 2010
Speaking of obsessions, camera equipment is an easy thing to obsess with. My latest toy, a Nikon D3s, arrived yesterday and it is really big, really fast, really powerful, and really big. I know I just said that, but it's a really, really big camera. I could design a bodybuilding program around it. The D3s is the undisputed queen of low-light photography. Take a look at this ISO 8000 picture of my stovetop. Most cameras would give you really splotchy pictures above ISO 800, but this camera allows you to read the label on a bottle under extremely dim light.

The first lens I purchased for my D3s is the coveted Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S. This lens is widely regarded to be one of the best wide angle professional zoom lenses for 35mm and Digital SLRs.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Today was my last class in both Lighting for Editorial Photography and Portrait Photography. My Lighting class was held on location at the Philadelphia Inquirer photo studio where Michael, our professor who is also a Philadelphia Inquirer staff photographer and Pulitzer Prize finalist, taught us how to light a model using different fashion photography techniques. (Being around talent like this is why I feel fortunate enough to go to a school like Penn rather than anywhere else.) The photo studio was huge and warehouse-like with high ceilings. Along the walls were every color backdrop paper imaginable. A multicolored splotchy cloth backdrop was used for a lot of in-house studio work. Two large softboxes were at our disposal. One was so large it could make an offensive lineman look small by comparison. It was exciting to be in such a nice space. "You look pretty," Sarah said when she saw me. "Thank you," I replied with a smile. I had no styling product in my hair, just a polishing gloss to add more shine to it. Eyeliner, mascara, lavendar eyeshadow, and MAC lip gloss were my only makeup products. I went for a simple, minimal look because I wanted the natural beauty of my face to shine through. Our model for today's photoshoot was up and coming rap, R&B, and soul artist Superia. Mechelle asked me to help give Superia posing tips since this was her first professional photoshoot and her first time modelling. I got her to relax and smile and showed her the proper placement for her hands and feet. Michelle told Superia that I was a great techno artist, so we got each other's phone number because she wants to colloborate with me on a project. It's been almost three years since I produced anything, so I hope I haven't lost my skills. After class, Michael guided us around the pristinely clean offices at the Inquirer and introduced us to a few of his colleagues. "You should all get an A for putting up with him," one female colleague said. "Last time I'll give you a weekly basket," Michael retorted. We all laughed.

"You're getting more and more gorgeous every time i see you," Tasha, my school's equipment room manager, said. "Thanks Tasha!" I replied. My top probably subliminally influenced her. I realize it takes lots of guts to wear a top that says "Gorgeous" on it. One of my classmates, Alina, complimented my makeup even though I was hardly wearing any. I think the fact that I didn't mess with my hair makes me look better and younger. • I got an A for my freaky nudes. I'm most proud of this A because I turned in very unique work.

Saturday, April 24, 2010
My friend Mechelle commented that the pictures on my web sites don't do me justice. Well, now I have a set of pictures that actually do because she shot these in daylight with her Canon 1d. Admirers, take note, these are not even the best pictures in the set. The best ones show warmhearted moments with me and a couple of darling little neighborhood boys who remind me of my sons. These boys' mother had no issue having them pose with me.

Mechelle knows I'm a makeup artist and likes the way I do my makeup, so she asked me to do makeup for one of her upcoming photoshoots. Stay tuned because tomorrow I'm photographing Kristin Nichols in the studio and next week I'm photographing the gorgeous Faye with her little doggies!

Monday, May 3, 2010
Over the weekend, I worked on a photoshoot with the lovely Faye and her friends enjoying themselves at Hawthorne Café. With photos of Faye, June, and me, I now have a collection of twelve really fantastic images that support my theme. I want to further my work on this project by photographing as many passable transsexuals as possible in a variety of daytime situations with the requirement that the transsexual interacts with normal, everyday people in her environment. My goal is to prove that all of these beautiful women could be walking, talking, or coexisting among you.