Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil

     Drama, it's going to happen. How you deal with it depends on how bad it can get. I've been in situations before where I wasn't even apart of the drama but since I listened to the gossip it automatically made me just as bad as the person talking. Listening is good but sometimes listening can get you into a lot of trouble. I've been trying really hard lately to stay out of it all. I don't enjoy being upset or angry. I don't enjoy being talked about behind my back and called terrible things. I'm sure no one likes that, but it happens.
   
     The best way to stop the drama is to cut it off at you. If someone comes up and they start talking about someone negatively just stop them right there and don't listen to it. Venting I personally would call it gossip as well but at the same time if you're seriously upset at something, with a good reason, I think listening to that person's issues is fine. Everyone needs someone to vent to but be careful. Sometimes venting turns into gossiping. If you find yourself saying mean things or untrue things about someone just because you're mad... you may need to take a step back and stop talking.

     I'm a person that is all about telling the truth even if it hurts someone's feelings. What if you see someone doing something bad to another person yet you do nothing to prevent it? That makes you just as bad as the people doing it. We all have the power in us to make a difference whether its good or bad. The way to make an impact is just a simple act of kindness. If you see someone hurting someone, verbally or physically, you have every right to stick up for that person especially if they can't stick up for themselves. Situations like someone bashing another person behind their back and you're either the one being talked to or you hear/see it, you have every right to try and stop it and stick up for the person that can't be there to defend themselves.

     Staying out of drama is pretty hard. Especially if people are purposely starting things just because they feel like it or it makes them feel better because they're bringing someone else down. Unfortunately, that's how the world runs. If you listen to the gossip, gossip, or do nothing to try and stop it... you're just enabling things to get worse. I understand completely about getting angry at someone and then saying anything bad about them just to make yourself feel better. I've been there and I've done that but in the end it made me look childish. An adult is slow to anger and thinks before they speak or show actions. Biting your tongue and holding your emotions back doesn't make you a weak person, in fact, it makes you a strong person to be able to control yourself. Not everyone has the ability to control their own minds and bodies. It's a constant struggle I deal with everyday. There are plenty of things I'd like to do, say, wish I would of said or did, yet I don't because what you say and do can be carried with you for the rest of your life and I'd rather not be known as anything less than a happy and positive person.

"Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil"

Goals

     As an artist I've set some goals for myself. I believe every person, artist or not, should set goals to look forward to and want to achieve. Having goals in life is what drives us as humans. We HAVE to have something to look forward to in order to do anything. If we didn't have something to look towards for the future then nothing would get accomplished. 

    I have 3 main goals that I've always wanted to achieve since I was a child.

1. Galleries- I've always pictures myself in galleries. When I was younger I thought I'd grow up to be a fine art drawer, little did I know I'd be drawing with light and photoshop instead of charcoal and graphite. I don't want to be in just 1, I want to be in many. I want to share with others my work and what I see. Ever since I entered a fine art contest and I saw my work displayed I had such pride, even though at the time it wasn't good work, I fell in love with my work being displays for all to see. 
2. Teaching- I love to know things and I love to teach the things I know to others as well. I actually contemplated being a photography teacher at a university for a long time and then I fell out of that when I actually got into college and realized how immature adults can be as well. What I really want to do is host workshops of 5-10 people IF that and just teach them. Not just photography techniques but teach them how t art completely involved and inspired by art and even their own works. 
3. Books- I've always wanted to be in magazines. As many as I can. It's always been a dream of mine. What I want mainly is to have my OWN book. I'm not the best with my grammar and punctuation, I'm sure you can tell, but I've always wanted my own book with my work in it.

     These are my 3 main goals I have for myself and all of these have been life-long dreams of mine and I truly want to achieve each and every single one of them. Not a very long list but it's a list that I cherish and WILL accomplish one day. I have my eyes, heart and soul set on these and I'll do anything I can to make them happen! Just getting started is the most difficult thing a person can do. 

Artistic Style

     I mentioned a little bit about my style in a few other blogs and you can clearly tell in my photos. My whole life I've always been drawn to the darker side of things. Paranormal, horror movies, various religions, etc. I had this itch to know more and see more. I've always loved trying to find beauty in death with my images. I used to create gore images and eventually got out of that because as much as a shock value as it was, it wasn't what my heart truly loved to create.

     I'm not really a person that likes glitz and glamorous things. I've always lived in my means and tried to stay true to myself as an artist and person. Some key things play into almost every image that I create.

• Bare Feet- I personally hate feet. They're nasty and people don't know how to take care of them but at the same time I love the natural feel my photos have without shoes. Shoes can add or take away from an image and I feel like the type of work I do really doesn't need shoes. Also, as a kid I hardly ever wore shoes. I loved walking outside barefoot playing in the dirt and grass.
• Natural Appearance- I like to have no makeup, or hardly any, in my images and I like to have hair as natural as possible. Every person has natural beauty and I love creating beautiful images without having a load of makeup or fake hair. It's just something I prefer.
• Dresses- I mainly love older vintage dresses! They're my favorite. The reason behind it is because my mother would always dress me in these cute dresses trimmed with lace. They looked like baby doll dresses and I loved them! I guess that's just one way I use to incorporate my mother into all of my images. Not to mention she generally buys all the dresses you see in my images. 
• Long Hair- I am absolutely obsessed with long hair. I used to have hair down to my butt as a child and I just love how longer hair flows in the wind and drapes across everything so eloquently. I cut it to my shoulders as a kid and I have regretted it ever since. My hair is a lot longer now but I want it to grow more! 
• Texture- I LOVE textures. I got into this hole with my photography for a while where I was a purist. I didn't edit images and I tried to keep them to-the-books, but after I realized who I was truly as an artist I started to incorporate textures more. I have a whole texture library saved on my external hard drive of textures I took images of during a shoot or while exploring a location. I can't get enough of them! I really love the painterly effect they give an image. 
• Colors- Colors play a role in my images as well. Mostly colors are used to represent something like death, life, purity, good, or evil. I like to keep my colors in my images very low. I desaturate my images a lot because I don't really like colors too much. Okay, that sounds a little morbid but what I mean is while editing colors like hot pinks, bright reds, vibrant greens and yellows all really hurt my eyes to look at and I tend to try and get rid of them. For some reason my eyes are just very sensitive to brighter colors and bright lights in general. I have to wear sunglasses outside or my eyes literally burn from the light. I remember my mom having to hold my hand to walk me to the car one day because my eyes would NOT open as much as I tried... just a silly side story.
• Diffused Natural Lighting- I can not express how much I dislike studio photography. I can do it, I just don't like it. To me there is nothing like natural light. Ever since I started photography I've always shot in natural light. I've experimented with studio lights but never got anywhere with it because it's not something I'm generally attracted to. I love to shoot in completely diffused lighting. I hate hard shadows that the sun creates and much prefer "flat" light. I shoot either in the shade, when it's overcast outside, or during magic hour. Those are my favorite times to shoot and I love the beautiful lighting it gives.
• Abandoned Areas or Wooden Areas- I generally shoot in these types of situations and I love them. I expressed in my blog "Inspiration" why I love these locations so much.

     This is just a general list of the types of things I always try to incorporate in my images and why. I try to always go back to this list and make sure I'm sticking with it so I'll have a cohesive portfolio.

Here is a link to a short video of the location used here --> Behind the Scenes 

"Watered Down Fables"

The Fall

     I talked some about what inspires me and that kind of told a little bit about my style but my style goes a bit deeper than just a location. My art has always been on the darker side not always but mostly. I've always knew what my style was I just didn't know how to execute it properly until recently when I finally sat down and taught myself how to do these processes easier and what would be the most effective way to do things.

     Like I've said before, I get a concept in my head out of nowhere most of the times and I used to take that and run with it and end up doing a half way decent job of my concept, but not actually achieving what I wanted to in the end. The last bit of concepts I've actually sat down and planned them. I drew some sketches and wrote a little bit about each concept so I wouldn't forget and also would be able to reference them for when it came time to shoot them. Doing that has made shooting my concepts a lot easier and more therapeutic for me as an artist.

     When sketching, I would draw what kind of outfit I want, what the pose would look like, how I wanted things to lay out, etc. I'd also write things out like what colors are going to be involved in the image, location, if I want a blonde, brunette, or redhead, and write a little about the concept that way when I get to the location it will only take about 5-10 minutes of shooting and I'm done. It also helps when I have a model come out because I have specific instructions for my vision that makes it easier for them to understand.

     I always make it a point to have some sort of emotion in my work. Whether you feel it right off or not and whether it's the same emotion as someone else or not, I still try to tell a story with my work. 

     I usually don't talk about my work because I want the viewer to take what they want from it and interpret it in their own way, but I figured it would be nice to explain what I personally had in mind for my concept. This first image is called "The Fall". I originally had a vision that expressed my love for fall but not in the conventional way you'd think. What I tried to achieve with this piece was to show how fall is beautiful yet sad in a way. It's the death of one season but life of another. I symbolically showed this here. The leaves start out as fresh, green and healthy and slowly changes into brown, crumbling, dead leaves to symbolize life and death. I also chose red with her dress to symbolize this as well. Red can be portrayed as so many different things. Some people think of love while others think of power. Here in used red as blood. Blood in life and blood in death. I personally dislike the color red but symbolically it has so many different meanings plus it's a general fall color and it coordinated with the green from the trees. I used the red dress and green trees to also symbolize winter. What holiday is in the winter? Christmas. What colors do people think of to symbolize Christmas? Red and Green. 

"The Fall" (1/2)

      While I had "The Fall" in my head... I was laying down to go to sleep and couldn't stop thinking about my concept and how to push it a little bit further. I thought of how a girl became the season itself and became the tree that was losing its leaves. While the first image showed more of a happier side of it the image "Autumn" shows the, I guess you could say, reality of the season. People love this time of year and find so much joy in it but once you break it down and think about it... its all about death yet people still think its beautiful. There are so many things in this life what are beautiful and for people to find beauty in death is a little cynical don't ya think? Just a funny way to think about it.

"Autumn" (2/2)

Inspiration

     Inspiration. I get asked a lot about where I get my ideas and how I continuously create. It has a lot to do with my imagination and my whole life being completely engulfed in creative thoughts. I realized once my thoughts were free, open, and positive, I was able to allow myself to create easier. My mind wasn't cluttered with what celebrity was wearing what, who broke up with who, or he said she said nonsense. My mind was open to make my reality whatever I pleased.

     I get inspiration mostly from my dreams, feelings, or a story I want to portray. I get inspiration from colors, music, other art, poetry, or anything possible. Locations I love the most are wooden areas or abandoned places. I have this real itch to always shoot in the woods or abandoned areas. The woods I guess would be because of my childhood. As a child I would constantly go play and get lost in the huge wooden area in our back yard. Hour and hours I dedicated to climbing trees and just playing out there. I wouldn't really be doing anything specific but just play with my imagination. Ah, the memories already overflow me with happiness. I think the love for abandoned areas comes from the old abandoned junk yard in the woods behind my house. It wasn't big or anything but enough to just go on for days as a child and play. Also, there was a house down the road from me that was abandoned. Everyday after school I'd stare at it as we drove past it and always begged my mother to let me go inside or look around. She was too scared I'd get hurt or that there would be snakes in the grass so alas I never got to explore it. Later they tore it down and built a huge cul de sac of many two story houses. I'll never know what it looked like on the inside but my memories remember the outside like I visited yesterday. 

Middle floor of the building. There were 3 floors and 6 wings each. Quite an
adventure and took maybe 2 hours and I'm still not even sure we got
through it all or not.

     Another reason why I love abandoned areas is because I love how they each have their own story. Every time I walk into a house like that I can just feel the history and little bit of sadness but I love the ones that still have furniture in it. I know of an amazing one that still has photos and books and other things in it. It's kind of funny because there isn't an obvious place of what room was a bed room or a kitchen. The bathroom is obvious but for a two story house it's actually small on the inside. A good 4 or 5 models of mine have braved it and walked across a floor that shook every step you took. I love it so much! I think the adventurous side of me comes out when I find these places. "The Hunt". I never disrespect these places though. I generally don't touch anything and I don't destroy anything in the property. I respect it even though its abandoned. One thing I can not stand is when I find these places and they're completely ruined with graffiti or there is evidence of beer, needles, drugs, and other things. 

Taken while exploring. The texture
photos I got from this place is
amazing!

     Something else I like is placing new or pure subjects in the frame against the old, tore away background of the location. Something about the old with the new, clean with dirty, or young with old just makes me love it even more. I generally love models with pale skin and I will put them in pale or white dresses to give that essence of the pure with the old and decaying. 

     Like I said, anything can give me inspiration. Lately fall and just October has given me so much inspiration it's making my head explode with all the ideas I have. I love this month more than anything! Lately what has really inspired me has to be dresses. Not just white ones but really old vintage and long dresses. I just love the look it adds to my photos. I feel like it starts to complete them in a way other outfits couldn't. I'm not much of a fan of smiling in my photos or anything "glamorous". I try to keep it as natural as possible unless I have an idea that I really want to achieve using crazy hair and makeup. I don't use shoes in my photos, which is funny because I have way too many and I love buying more, but I keep it bare foot with natural hair if all possible. I will get into talking a bit more about my style and why I love it in another post!
 

Taken while exploring. I'm not a fan
of vandalism but this made me
chuckle. "Hello Again."

Let me paint a better picture for you. If
you've ever been in a really old church...
you know that old carpet smell? It was
like that x100. I couldn't breathe it was
pretty potent. 

     For this photo my inspiration came from a dream I had a couple of years ago. I'm not really sure what the dream was about or what it meant but this was a part of the dream and ever since I had that dream I searched for the perfect place to photograph my dream. I had no luck finding a place with a lot of stray books or papers anywhere until one day I visited this place and stumbled across this room. I saw it all the way down a hallway and I instantly knew that was the room that would be best to portray my vision. I made a straight line for the room and even stepped on glass along the way but completely ignored it and went in here and I turned to my boyfriend and looked at him and said, "This is the room! This is the room I've been searching for a couple of years now." Though he didn't really have a clue what I meant he didn't have any issues with escorting me back to this location when there was more light outside to shoot! If you look closely you can even see his reflection in on of the windows.

"Dreams Imagined" Taken October 31, 2013.