I was exited and couldn’t wait to meet her and see the dresses she was working on. Upon meeting her and looking at the dresses she had made, it look less than 5 minutes to realize we were EXACTLY on the same wavelength as far as how we each visualized these images. Vintage, long gloves, martini glasses…..Mad Men!

And so I assembled my team, some of whom I’ve worked with before, and some with whom I was itching to work with – finally, after being in New York for two years, I feel I have found a great group of people I can work with on commercial shoots and personal projects. Angela, who did Dariana’s hair and makeup in a shoot late last year was on set, as was stylist extraordinnaire Colby Milano, and the beautiful Kelsey Lear Lafferty who came in from Philadelphia for the photo shoot, and my friend Darcy Rogers assisted me.

I had been dreaming about this shoot for days on end and knew, in my gut, that this shoot was going to be a success……and indeed, I couldn’t have been happier.

Everyone was at the top of their game, Adrina’s dresses were simply beautiful, classic and elegant and I was able to shoot in my studio space on my very own 9′ white seamless with a new medium softbox as my source of light. It was amazing.

I wanted to shoot clean and simple and use a few props here and there. This is the kind of shoot that I would love to take on location, maybe find a cool hotel lobby or a place with some vintage furniture or a bar with character.

It was really great to have an energetic crew and create images this way. Feedback and suggestions were made, we tried different things – some worked and some didn’t – and I took away many lessons from this experience – some that one will read and say “duh!” while others that are not that obvious.

1 – Working with a stylist enriches your vision, which translates into images that might otherwise be just OK.

2 – Having an open mind and listening to suggestions from others on set who are also in this together is important. It’s important to listen, to try, to shoot it in a different way and see the outcomes on screen (I shot these tethered so we could all see and make adjustments as we went).

3 – Expect the unexpected – doing #2 led to a variety of images, many of which worked well.

4 – Pintrest ROCKS! It is serving as my mood boards and inspiration boards for work that I want to create – on set and on location. Sharing this board with everyone before the shoot and asking my team to share their ideas was important – this way we were all on the same page well before the shoot.

5 – Treating everyone with respect is kind of a big deal. I speak from personal experience from many many photo and video shoots. I’ve been yelled at, humiliated and treated badly on set by other people in the past (unrightfully so) and I don’t EVER want to make anyone feel that way…..feeling like you want to crawl into a hole or just run out of the room because someone  yelled at you just to show off…that’s not right…. SO,  I treat everyone the way that I want to be treated. Simple as that.

Posted here are some of my favorite images and thanks again to my wonderful team. You rocked!

My fabulous team was:

Model: Cherry Fu
Wardrobe: Daina Martin
Makeup: Deja Smith
Hair: Vicktor Stevenson
Assistants: Fernando Paz + Yue Edwards

Now I have seen Shantell perform plenty of times in the year we’ve known each other, and I must admit that this was one of my all time favorite shows. There is something about the cello, the way Anna plays so passionately classical and contemporary music and Shantell’s imagery on and around Anna that blew me away.

Without further adue, here are some images from that uber special evening.

Q&A with Shantell took place after the performance.