During college I discovered producing videos and taking pictures to be the best excuse to investigate all the things I find interesting.
I grew up in Fort Smith, AR and went to The University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for college. I studied communications, creative writing, documentary filmmaking and towards the end, got into still photography. Luckily I started working in a multimedia lab as a freshman and was able to teach myself many of the skills I have. After college I worked as a Multimedia Support Specialist at the UofA for 2 years. I then moved across the country to become the first Media Coordinator for the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. While in Santa Fe, I got to know and work with some of the best photographers in the world. I also had an amazing opportunity to spend a few months working down in Mexico and feel like I took a few giant steps in my photography education.
Recently I spent a few months traveling around and taking images for my photography portfolio. That traveling eventually took me to Maine where I became the IT Manager for the Maine Media Workshops for a season.
Currently I'm living in Atlanta and attending the Portfolio Center working on building up my Photography Portfolio.
If you're interested in hiring me as either a photographer, video producer, digital/multimedia consultant, or even just an assistant, please get in touch with me!
So, as mentioned in the previous post, I just finished up my 2nd quarter at Portfolio Center where I’m working on building up a commercial photography portfolio. Besides the lighting class I was in, I was also in a class called Environmental Portraiture in which the goal was to take various types of portraits on location. Each assignment had various educational goals and each one got progressively harder. My instructor, Joel Silverman, was great and taught us a lot of retouching techniques too. We had 6 deliverables (deliverable = what we show to our critique panel at the end of the quarter). But I’m only posting 5 because I wasn’t happy with one of them…
Author Portrait: create a black and white portrait, at twilight, of an author for use in promo materials
Artist Portrait: create a portrait of an artisan in their workspace for an ad
CEO: create a portrait of a young hip CEO for a magazine article
Kitchen Composite: Shoot a kitchen then shoot a studio portrait and composite them together for an ad
Country Music Singer: create a composite of a country music star with a beautiful background for promo purposes
June 19, 2009 - 3:20 amDenise - god i love this :-)
June 19, 2009 - 7:35 pmAngela Gray - In looking at the kitchen composite, it seems like it would be really tough to get the scaling right- to have the person be just the right size for the background. Yours looks perfect though! And I love the CEO portrait.
June 25, 2009 - 5:16 pmdjd - these are awesome! My fav of these tho is the author portrait. The background is soft but the arch is there and with his curly hair makes me think of him as a roman god. love that it's black and white.
So I just finished my second quarter at Portfolio Center, an intensive graduate level commercial photography and visual communications program. One of my classes this quarter was called Intermediate Lighting taught by Tom Abraham. We had four deliverables (deliverable = what we show to our critique panel at the end of the quarter). The assignments are based on a theme assigned by Tom, but we are pretty much free to interpret it and shoot whatever we want. Here are my finished shots.
1- White on White
This was my favorite image of the quarter and also the first one I shot.
2- Something Shiny
3- Mixed Lighting (mine is strobes mixed with sunlight)
4- Three Light Portrait
This one is my roommate Shaun. He kissed a moving car while riding his bike a few days before this picture was taken.
My critique panel seemed to like these images and the head of the photography department sent me an email saying
“Great critique! You’ve made some long strides this quarter. The panel was impressed with your lighting for 2nd quarter. You have a good sense of what’s good and what’s not. You didn’t try to sell us something that wasn’t good and we appreciate that. I loved the white on white!”
I’ll post the pics from my Environmental Portraiture class tomorrow!
June 19, 2009 - 7:41 pmAngela Gray - These pics look awesome to me (of course I'm no expert)! Do you have models provided, or do you have to find people yourself?
June 21, 2009 - 11:28 pmkendrick - Angela, we have to do all of our own production work, meaning we find models, locations, props, wardrobe, and hair/makeup... the only thing the school provides is some lighting gear and some studio space, both on a limited basis...
June 25, 2009 - 5:20 pmdjd - love the first one...white on white. His dark skin makes toe photo pop. Your mixed lighting makes me want to know who she just killed and why!!! Guess that's the idea... to intrigue.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 2:01am Posted in School Life
So here I am again with just one week before I step in front my critique panel and present my photos for the last 10 weeks. I’m actually really excited because I feel great about most of the images I’ve been working on. I’ll post them here after I’ve printed them all and there’s no more photoshop work to be done.
Oh, which reminds me, I’ve been spending A LOT of time in photoshop lately. I’m learning some really great techniques for tweaking my images and making them look the absolute best. My standards are getting higher, which is exactly why I needed school. I’m actually having a good time retouching my work. I never liked the tedious process of professional retouching but now I’m enjoying it. I’m looking forward to what my panel has to say about it.
I’ve also learned a lot about lighting. The first few weeks of this quarter were pretty rough as I fiddled with the power packs and lights and various modifiers and light stands and backdrops etc… It’s a lot to take in and my images were coming out pretty bad. However, I was able to get better and with a modest amount of reshooting I was able to nail my assignments and I had fun doing it.
Photoshop and Lighting are both really important elements, but the thing I’ve really gotten from this quarter is that now, I can pick up a magazine, flip to a picture, and I understand what it takes to get that shot. I may not know every trick of lighting or styling, but I have a good understanding of how to approach it like a pro. The idea that nothing is luck, it’s all planned out and executed with control and precision.
I’ve also been shooting some stuff for some of the design and art direction students. I hope to post up some of the finished work in the coming weeks. It should be cool to see my photos in the ad campaigns!
One thing I noticed about this quarter though is that I’ve barely shot anything that wasn’t related to school work. I wanted to drop in a photo or two on this post, but couldn’t even find anything good enough that wasn’t something for school. I’m ok with that for now, but I hope that isn’t a sign of things to come. I want to keep photography as a hobby too!
Anyway, I gotta get to bed, as I have a meeting in about 6 hours. I can’t wait to post my photos next week!
My mom sent me an email about this place called The Vortex here in Atlanta that she saw on the travel channel. They serve a variety of interesting burgers including one called The Elvis Burger.
Here’s what the entrance looks like:
The Elvis Burger consists of a juicy half pound burger, fried bananas, bacon, and a large slathering of creamy peanut butter. Yep, Peanut Butter on a burger… interesting… I’m a big fan of a peanut butter so I knew I had to try this epic burger. So last night was the big night.
First of all this thing was huge! Probably at least 6 inches tall. As I ate it, I got lots of peanut butter and hamburger juice all over my face and hands… I liked the combo of sweet fried bananas mixed with the peanut butter but paired with the bacon and burger just didn’t seem to fit together that well. There was definitely a flavor fight happening in my mouth. I don’t think I would order it again but I’m really glad they make this thing and I’m really glad I tried it. I do want to sample the other burgers on the list, like the Double Coronary Bypass Burger! yummy!
This first one is actually from the Intro to Photography one day seminar I taught back in March. The model’s name is K and I will be shooting her for a school assignment next week. Yes, there is a reflector in the shot and yes I shot that between the legs of one of my students, but the story behind this is that I was down on the ground while my students were on the stairs working with the model and shooting her, I just stuck my camera through a horizontal slat on the stairs and shot upward and got this pretty cool shot…
The one below is some of my friends from school, (LtoR: Stewart, Sam, Missy) working on a poster project many many weeks ago. You can see my laptop in the background with a pretty picture on it. Yeah I did that on purpose!
The next three are from Lighting Class. The first one is in our studio at school, and the second and third are at a studio here in Atlanta where we sometimes have class!
This one is just a random shot of one of my studio setups for a photo I took. I’ll eventually post it online, but for now, just know that I had somebody sitting in that chair and I got a great portrait of them!
The one below is from my illustration class called Perspective. It’s pretty interesting!
This last one is my friend and classmate Monica. We were out shooting on location and I was standing in as a model while she set up the shot, I just shot this one from the hip without looking through the viewfinder and was pleased that I actually got a halfway decent shot!
May 25, 2009 - 11:51 pmNichelle - you know what they say. reach one teach one.
anyway, i need you to teach me..or at least give me some tips on how to build a cpu or better yet upgrade a processor-- in plain english.
btw...how's atl?
My friend Lyla is working on some design projects involving World of Coke, the Coke Musuem here in Atlanta. So one day she coerced me into tagging along as she made a visit. Of course I brought my camera and snapped a few pics!
It was moderately interesting, but my favorite part was definitely tasting all the variety of drinks that the Coke company manufactures. They have over 60 options available and you just walk around and try as many as you like. I tasted about 12-15 and that was plenty.
So most of you probably don’t keep up with modern pop music and I don’t blame you, I don’t really follow it either. But recently my favorite band, who happens to be a rock/pop band, got back together after 4 year hiatus! Yes, Blink 182 is back together and will be touring this summer! I’m pretty excited and will do my best to make it to a concert…
That’s definitely one of the best things ever, but this post has so much more to offer: check out this video!
Awhile back my mother decided to start raising a unique breed of cats called “Naked” sphynx, called that because they actually have little or no hair. Perfect for people who are allergic to cats!
So anyway, I snapped a few pics when I was in town last month.
Or you can find more pictures and a lot more information, including available kittens and prices by checking out her cattery site: www.hopescircle.com!
The above photo is Leigh Anna, my classmate in our Location Portraits class. The photo below is my class (taught by Joel Silverman- center, red shirt, big camera) in Wynn Park learning a little about natural light portraits. I like this class a lot and look forward to really getting some good portrait practice.
My friend Diana was driving on a major road in here in Atlanta two days after that big wind storm we had that knocked down so many trees, when she went through an intersection that had a non-functional stoplight and her Volkswagen Rabbit was struck by a big pickup that wasn’t paying attention.
Luckily she only had minor injuries to one knee, but the car couldn’t be driven. I was close by so I went to give moral support while she waited for the tow truck. Now she’s dealing with insurance companies and doing that whole routine. No Fun!
April 21, 2009 - 4:47 amDenise - snief * poor car. that looks awful :-(.. thank you that you were there with her. my heart stopped as i received the message.
thanks kendric :-)
April 25, 2009 - 8:32 pmkendrick - well I'm glad I was close by... Luckily just the car was hurt!
April 26, 2009 - 12:41 amdjd - ouch!! Glad your friend was ok.
by kendrick
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