Form submitted successfully, thank you.

Error submitting form, please try again.

Helmet Beauties

What do you do when you lose your hair stylist at the last minute? Well, you put your models in helmets, that’s what!

Last week, Nikki, Kat and I got together to do another one of those fun, portfolio building exercises. We made really good time, shooting four looks in four hours. Since my dad went back to Russia at the beginning of the month, I was flying solo with the lighting which made me a little sad - I love having my dad around.

Anyway, the big challenge here was the reflective surfaces of the goggles, face shields and the helmets themselves. I tried to figure out a way to avoid the reflections of the lights, but ultimately decided that they didn’t look bad at all, adding texture and dimension to the image.

Models: Kiley (Lmodelz), Jenna & Yana; Art Director: Nikki Sutton; MUA: Kat Sterrett. Thanks everyone for a great job!

kiley

The Queen of Transformers

A few months back, Nikki Sutton, Kat Sterrett, my dad and I, got together for a quick shoot - the kind we really love to do where it’s low-key, fun and low-pressure. Apart from my high regard for Nikki as a creative colleague, I think she’s an amazing model (i can see her rolling her eyes and shaking her head even as I type this, but I should know my dear - I’m the bloody photographer!!)

Anyway, as always, Kat did an amazing job with make-up and Nikki masterminded the looks. Vlad helped with the lights and me? I just stood there and pushed the button - working with these people makes my “job” ridiculously easy - it’s embarrassing really. :-D

polinaosherov_4139

Chanel N5

Once again, time has gotten away from me. I suppose being too busy to blog can be considered a good thing, but it makes me a little sad to not be able to share more quickly what I’ve been working on. The even sadder part, that I’m not going to be sharing any of my work today either. Why? Well, because my dear ol’ MacBook Pro has been at the Apple store for over a week now getting its logic board replaced (whatever the heck that is)! So yes, I have been Mac-less. :-(

I think though that after you watch the new Channel N5 advertising campaign, my lack of posting will be forgiven and forgotten. Man! I wish I could get to shoot something like this! Love everything about this “movie”. Check out the behind the scenes - pretty amazing stuff as far as what was done on location and what was done in-studio.

chanel

See for yourself!

Have a great week!

It’s that time of the year again - The Stutz Open House!!

Open House

Come one! Come all! The Stutz Open house will have an unprecedented 87 artist studios open for public scrutiny. Art, wine, cheese, chocolates and great people watching. You can pre-purchase tickets for $10 at branches of Old National Bank or pay $12 at the door. With art funding being cut left and right, come out and show your support. All door money goes to fund the Stutz Artist Fellowships and the cost of marketing the artist community to the rest of the world. It’s a great cause!

Check out the 2009 Guide to the Open House here (PDF file)

Hope to see you there!

ps. I have a handful of $4 off coupons I’m happy to hand out to anyone who wants to come. First come, first serve!

Amy is all dressed up for work with nowhere to go.

Yes, it has been a while. All my promises of weekly updates have been broken, but I swear it’s not my fault! I have been immersed in helping my dear husband go through an intense rebranding of his public speaking image. It’s been an excellent exercise to say the least and I have learned a ton about marketing, social media and branding. Soon, I shall be applying all this newly learned information to my photography brand. Big changes coming! With that, I would be remiss not to thank Kevin Swan, a local wedding photographer and a marketing/advertising whiz. If not for his patient exposition of the ins and outs of successful brand creation and marketing at our local Pictage Users Group (PUG), I would be completely oblivious to The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing. A sad oversight indeed!

But anyway, onto the pretty pictures you’ve stopped by to see, because surely you’re not here for my wit. :-D

With reports of skyrocketing unemployment rates pouring in over every news delivery service you could find, Nikki thought we might at least make the tough times easier on the eye. Our lovely Amy is looking sharp and ready to tackle any job, but no one wants to hire her, the poor thing.

Of course realistically speaking, our sad girl had other reasons to be down, like the fact that it was only 45 degrees outside that day and she was freezing her li’l, size zero, booty off. She was a trooper though and made the whole thing look completely effortless.

Huge kudos to my team of experts: Art Director, Nikki Sutton, who brought the desk, the chair AND the briefcase, make-up artist Beth Jerrels of Champagne and Lipstick who first made Amy look really beautiful and then made her all…runny and Berny Martin of Catou Couture who let us use his great clothes. lol! Last, but not least a big thank you to my wonderful father, Vladimir Osherov for his assistance with lighting.

On a side note, Lafayette Square Mall “security” gets big, fat FAIL for kicking us out of their already deserted parking lot in the middle of the shoot. Nothing worse than having to deal with a self-important mall cop who thinks he’s all that just ‘cos he has a uniform and a badge. sheesh!

Anyway, enjoy!

art director: nikki sutton; mua: beth jerrels; assistant: vladimir osherov

Jodie Hardy’s Silent Sellers Project

Last year, I helped Jodie with the Under Construction portion of her Silent Sellers project which is now on display in the Chase tower on Pennsylvania downtown Indianapolis. Jodie will be speaking about her project and the ideas associated with it this coming Monday at the Herron School of Art & Design in the Basile Auditorium at 6pm. Admission is free. Watch the video to see what it’s all about!

I shot the photo of Lindsey dressed in the caution tape and orange hazard fencing dress that Jodie ended up using in the window display downtown.

You can also read more about the project on the Indy.com site…. here!

Beautiful Erica!

Man, my life is rough! Working with super talented people, taking photos of beautiful people. Yep. Life sucks. LOL!

Seriously though, I love doing beauty shoots - they look simple, but are actually quite challenging. For one, the model has to work harder than she would if she was able to use her entire body - it’s all gotta happen in the eyes and secondly, lighting is the key to creating the best possible image and let me just say that there are a thousand different ways to light the same scene. 

I recently bought a couple of Alien Bee 800 strobes which I absolutely love. I still use my small strobes (Vivitar 285H and the Canon 580EXII), but I’ve found the recycle time is too slow for me when I’m shooting in the studio and not working on location. I work quickly and nothing beats strobes that fire every time. In this instance I used one AB800 strobe through a white shoot-through umbrella, a hair light which is this old, beat up par can, and then a 60 inch reflector disk, for fill. I also fired the second AB800 at the background behind the model. And that’s about it.

My talented team: Model: Erica; Art Director/Stylist: Nikki Sutton; MUA: Kat Sterrett, Hair Stylist: Lori Rae; Assistant: Vladimir Osherov. Thanks guys! Great job as always!

So here are a handful of images from the shoot. Enjoy!

PS. If you’re a model and want to get images like these in your portfolio, hire me! I have a TFP/TFCD list that’s ten arms long - even if you’re on it, there’s a good chance that it will be a long time before I get to you. And of course, paid shoots always take precedence, so put two and two together! Money talks!! :-D

posherov_5887ps

Secret Sale!

Kipp Normand, a collector of all things interesting and esoteric, was making room for new stuff and having a groovy little sale at a warehouse in Fountain Square, and Nikki and I thought, the place would make a perfect backdrop for a couple of girlfriends to show off some fun, new spring handbags from Handbagheaven.com and some funky sunglasses from the Sunglasswarehouse.com

Art Director: Nikki Sutton; Models: Marie & Anne; MUA: Kiralee Hubbard, Hair: Irina Green; Assistant: Vladimir Osherov

posherov_4987ps

My blog doesn’t work right in IE!

Everything was fine and dandy until I upgraded some plug-ins and now, my blog doesn’t do what it’s supposed in IE. Isn’t that always the way?? So for all you IE users, it’s time to bite the bullet and admit that Firefox is the way to go - no problems there at all. :-D

If anyone has any ideas on how I can get the NextGen Gallery and Lightbox 2 to work in IE, I welcome suggestions.

Sorry for the trouble. :-(

Inspiring words!

About a year and a half ago, I knew that I wanted to go deeper in my journey as a photographer and began researching lighting workshops. I found one that stood out from the rest -  Zack Arias’ OneLight Workshop. I’ve written about it before, but one day (one very loooong day) with Zack and a group of other photographers changed the way I shoot. Zack was a great instructor and an incredibly honest, down-to-earth guy. He held nothing back and gave me the confidence to “start somewhere” with off-camera lighting.

Watch this video and you’ll see what I mean. Thanks for sharing Zack - I know you did it for Meg, but it’s going to bless a lot of us creative types. :-)

Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to embed this video on my page, so click here to watch.