This made my head hurt

Today I came across this amazingly talented and creative photographer. His name is Romain Laurent and he is from France.
As I looked through the pictures on his website I came across his series called "tilt". 
Each picture basically shows a model that stands somewhat upright in front of a tilted background with the position of her feet and everything totally in place.
Looking at these pictures really made my head hurt as I was trying to figure out HOW in the world he did that.
And I bent my head and checked out feet, dresses, shadows and it just made sense.
I really was close to getting up to see whether I could stand skew like that. I guess that would be something you´d really like to see, right?? :D 
Aaaaanyway, I couldn´t just settle with not knowing how he created the pictures so I started searching google.
It didn´t take me long to find what I was looking for.

Here is an example of one of his pictures:

 Picture by Romain Laurent.

You can check out the whole series HERE.

And THIS is the link to the article in which his post processing tips and tricks are revealed.

Now I will go lean against a wall... :D

Being in front of the camera

A couple of days ago, my husband took a few pics of me so I´d have a decent profile pic for my facebook page.
I found it quite hard to look natural and relaxed on camera.
Is there any other photographer out there that feels the same way?
I figured that being in front of a camera every now and then is the perfect exercise for a photographer. That way he or she will not forget how clients feel when they are standing in front of the camera.
Especially without a counterpart to interact with, looking natural and not posed can be hard.
We ended up listening to a comedy CD whild Danny took pics of me bursting into laughter! :D
Maybe that does the trick and I should take one to every shoot I go to? I´ll give it a thought.

Here are some more pics, besides the one I posted in yesterdays post.

Why I love what I do

I have been thinking about writing this post for a while now and I´m not sure about how personal or not personal I should get.
But I always love to read stories of people telling why they love what they do so I´ll just give it a try.

I have never dreamed of becoming a photographer. Not even a little bit. Not even with a tiny little thought in my head.
My husband loved photography long before we met and so me getting in touch with photography was predetermined.
I have told the story about how I came to be a photographer and how I fell in love with photography HERE.

But here´s why I fell in love with what I do.

When I was 16 years old I knew this boy. He was my boyfriend and we had this great innocent teenage relationship, holding hands all day and giggling on end.
One day he went home earlier than I had expected with some weird excuse.
I didn´t read much into it back then but the next day when I called him he was still in a weird place.
And I just didn´t get it.
Another day later my parents tried to tell me as gently as they could  that he had committed suicide the day before.
For me that seemed like the end of the world. I thought we were meant to be. I couldn´t imagine being without him for just one day. I fell into a deep hole of depression and doubts about myself and God.

As dramatic as that day was in my life and the hard time that came after that, looking back I can now say that it resulted in some of my best decisions.
God carried me through this and gave me amazing friends and a family that was there for me when I thought I´d die.
He protected me from being hurt any further and opened my heart at the right time to be ready to meet Danny, the love of my life, who is now my husband.

Now what does this have to do with my love for photography? It is actually quite simple. I have not only seen dark, depressing and hopeless but I´ve been there.

With my photography I wanna catch the opposite: the light (and not in a technical sense although that helps), hope, the love, joy and laughter of people, the hope in humanity and the love of God who looks at his tenderly formed creation with a smile.
I love capturing couples that can´t keep their eyes off of each other, children that are running around, making nonsense and enjoying themselves. Those moments of joy when a mother looks at her newborn baby and you can almost hear her heart beating faster.

That is why I fell in love with photography, BIG time.

Picture taken by Danny Cloete

Mentoring session with Nadia Meli

Last week I was at this gorgeous girl´s house. She´s my age and she´s an amazing photographer.
Let me back up a little.
A while ago, my friend told me that I´d have to watch this video by Nadia Meli "Five tips when you start your business".
I did. I thought it was great! Then I read her blog. Went to her website. Checked her out on facebook. And somewhere in between someone had written a message about how great the mentoring was with her.
Now I had been looking for a course to improve my photography for a while but I couldn´t find one that would NOT cover the basics of aperture, ISO and shutter speed. So I thought this would be a good idea to book a mentoring with her and I did.
I was so excited those days and weeks (and, okay, I admit it, months) before the mentoring and now it is already a week that´s past since then.
Now don´t get me wrong, that´s not because it wasn´t good or anything. On the contrary: It was INCREDIBLE.
There was just a lot of information for me to process.
The mentoring was supposed to be 6 hours, but when we weren´t done with my questions she just continued until all my questions were answered.
In the end I had a headache from oh so much information and inspiration and the night after I hardly slept. I think I´m still not done sorting through my head and putting her tips into practice. :)
So that´s why it took me a week to write this blogpost.

But seriously: If you´re thinking about getting serious with your business and you don´t really know how to step up your game and take it to the next level, book a mentoring session with Nadia.
There are people, that are natural teachers, that have a heart for teaching and enjoy passing their wisdom on to others. And Nadia is such a person.
Her motto is to make people feel like they belong, like they are home. And I did feel like I was sitting at home with a good friend, sipping tea and talking about our passion for photography.
Thank you , Nadia, for all your time and effort! <3