Shiseido

My latest product shot. This was sooo hard to photograph. It took nearly 4 hours, but the bottle looked so cool that I had to finish. It was a great learning experience, though!

Perfume Shot and Movie Sets

This week was much more successful. Jerry was there to help me through the whole shooting process this time and gave me much-needed tips! I am much happier with my result this time.

I love the shape of this bottle! It was really tricky but fun to shoot. When Jerry said that it was going to be interesting (aka hard) to shoot, I thought, "Aw crap..." But it was actually a really cool experience. And it felt good that he said "This is your shot, not the ad? It's very nice! Great job!" :)

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Some other cool stuff that happened

For one shoot, we went to a studio to photograph a city-- built ENTIRELY out of computer parts. It was sooo cool! I couldn't get very good pictures on my camera phone, but here's basically what it looked like:

It even had little street lights!! So cute! 

This studio was also the place where many big/famous films were shot. When we were there, they were shooting a Vizio commercial and there wasn't much for me to do, so I went exploring for a bit. Here are some pictures I found on the wall of the sets...

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INCEPTION

THE DARK KNIGHT

THE AVIATOR ( I love this one. He looks massive!)

CHRONICLES OF NARNIA (I thought this was pretty cool)

RESIDENT EVIL

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And, here's a hybrid car charger in a mall parking structure. I've never seen spots dedicated to them in a mall before...

First Personal Shoot

So, I know a lot of you were wondering what the heck was in that box with all the lights pointing into it...

After about 3 hours of hard work (by myself), I still didn't get the lighting right... lame, huh? Well, turns out, I have a lot to learn. But I did get some good-ish shots. It didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it, but I'll save this product for a more advanced day; I need to start with something that's not see-through or reflective (baby steps). And next time, Jerry will be there to help me with the lighting. It's amazing what you don't learn in school! :P

But, here's the final product (so far), my first official personal piece during the internship:

MetroMint LemonMint Water (sounds yummy, huh?...)

Pretty good, considering I did it all by myself, huh? ;)

As for the rest of my time here in L.A...

I'm really enjoying it. Sure there's days when I get sick of all the traffic and the ridiculous gas prices, but all in all, it's a great place. The people here are friendlier than the stereotype they have. I went to a church activity and met a bunch of really fun, cool, down-to-earth people (took me a while, but I finally found a group that I get along with!). I'm trying to decide where I'm going to go from here (stay here, San Diego, Orange County, the bay area...) My internship ends at the end of June, then from there, I'm free to have a REAL job!! Crazy! But it's great. I've applied to many places and have already had interviews, so we'll see how I did!

And I'm due for another shoot sometime this week, so watch for that! It should be a lot better! :)

First Week: Done

I promised you more pictures, so that's exactly what I delivered.

You may get sick of them, but, oh well. At least I kept my promise :)

The rest of this week was better because of 3 things (not necessarily in this order): (1) I got to help photograph products (my favorite subject matter), and (2) I GOT a decent amount SLEEP!! Ok, I may have overslept. But I'm technically still a college student, so I deserve it :) (3) I explored Los Angeles a little bit with some of my family. Granted, it took us about 1/2 hour to go 5 miles, but we still got out.

For the shoot, we photographed a brand of stage makeup made by Ben Nye. I guess the musical "Cats" used his cosmetics line and he was the makeup director for 20th Century Fox. Pretty cool, huh? The founder's son, Dana Nye, currently owns the company and he came by with some of his most recent product to photograph. It was pretty cool stuff (I thought it looked a little weird for a cosmetics line, but after I knew what it was for it made sense) and I got to learn what to use and what not to use for lighting products. And I learned a lot about post-production. It was a great 2 days :)  Oh, I got a tour of his factory (a fringe benefit of being the photographer) and it's so cool! They hand-make all of their product in the building. Looks like a LOT of work, though. And I got some free "Zombie" makeup that could be fun for Halloween... haha.

Here's some shots of our photoshoot:

 Some of the makeup. Pretty weird colors, huh?

The setup for the shoot

Another angle

The main assistant Taylor joking around while adjusting the lights. Yeah, we have fun here, sometimes :)

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Then, I got to spend some quality time with Gucci (the dog), AKA take her on a walk and play with her while we waited for the roomies to come home...

So I thought we should take at least one pic together :P

And the sky was really beautiful from being cloudy all day... I have a much better pic on my DSLR, but I'm too lazy to get that one right now. I'll post it soon, though.

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Then, my eldest sister and her family (who lives in Riverside) came to visit me, so we went to lunch and then went to The Grove L.A., which was really cool. It was like it's own little city tucked into Los Angeles. 

All of us (minus Jeff) on the roof

Overlooking the city

There was a live concert, which was really nice and relaxing

A pretty fountain. Kinda reminded me of the one in Vegas, because it did some cool things and lit up at night.

It was a pretty good first week. It started out slow and stressful, but ended quickly and fun :) I learned a lot about what being a photographer is really like. Work long hours to make and keep a living, but also keep it balanced with your life outside of work. Jerry, the photographer I'm interning with, takes weekend off of work, and that's the way it should be. He's not lazy by any means; he just has a family and a life. Working with him has taught me that you should work hard, but also take the time to enjoy life and take one day at a time. I'm really happy to be here. And though it's stressful for me at times to have moved out here with basically no friends less than an hour away, it's a good time for me to be independent and discover what I want in my life.

Covergirl Mascara Shoot

I FINALLY got back in the studio...and am glad that I actually remembered how to use the equipment :P It was fun though. So, I made some mock-up ads for Covergirl Eyelights mascara, so don't pay attention to the design, because that's not exactly my forte...and ignore the makeshift brush strokes... haha. I just like to make mock-up layouts so I can see how my photographs would look if they were to go in an ad. But photographing it was sooo much fun and just makes me that much more excited for my internship :)

Anyway, as you can see, one ad is for regular mascara and the other is for waterproof. The waterproof one didn't turn out quite as well as I'd hoped, but it's good for now. I'll learn how to do it better one of these days... :P