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somewhere between a handshake and two kisses

jude mooney

Homage…

I am excited to kick off a creative new year with a group photography show at Toby’s Feed Barn in Point Reyes Station…

Each photographer was asked to pay “homage” to something and I chose to pay “homage” to the amazing women I have been lucky to photograph.

We would love for you to come celebrate with us this Sunday….

I want to send a special thank you to: Michael for bringing us all together, Jude for hanging my photographs while my family and I were crossing the country, Mary and Nicole Fassbinder for the amazing frames, Sean at Light Waves for facillitating the printing, Tyler for the awesome postcard, and Arann for everything else.

Thank you,

What’s in a Name… (please vote)

Dear Readers,

My stock photography partner, Jude Mooney, and I are in the process of choosing a name for our business. Can you please help us by voting on your favorite name listed below. The competition closes Monday evening at 7pm EST… so please contribute your votes before then. Thanks!!

  • Hazel
  • Jane Photo
  • Jane Harper Photo
  • Green & Greene
  • Sweet Pea & Ragamuffin
  • Rusty Thimble Photo
  • The Greens
  • Hazel Jane
  • Hazel and Jane

The idea behind the some of these names (hazel & jane) is that we are creating an alias- a
mysterious female character.

We are submitting this week…

Jude and I met yesterday and picked our top 15 photos to submit to the stock agency in order to hopefully get accepted and hopefully start getting paid for all the fun photo shoots we have been having. Here are 5 of our favorites that have not been posted yet… to see some of the other ones (preteen rock-star and skater girl, bed in field, woman on bicycle) click here.

Don’t worry we only took one photo of crying baby, after her sister knocked her with the plastic fish and before mom picked her up. So no babies were mistreated in the making of this photo… but even crying she is still so cute.

It was hard to choose only 15, we have so many more that we love… so hopefully we will be admitted to the club and then we can put them all in. Thank you to all of our beautiful and wonderful models!!

What does stock photography mean?

Another Petaluma photographer, Jude Mooney, and I are working on building a library of images to join a stock photography agency (click here to see related posts.) So we have been asking everyone we know to help us by modeling for us so we can have enough photos to join… but some people are hesitant to volunteer to be models because they are not sure what stock photography means.

Our photo shoot last week with Kira, is a good example of what it means to be a model for us. It means you doing what you do best, in your environment, and wearing lots of different outfits…. sometimes your outfits, sometimes Jude’s. I think you can guess which outfits are Kira’s and which outfits are Jude’s.

Jude, as well as being an awesome photographer, is the expert stylist in our team. She is really good at details and making sure that everything looks perfect… whereas I am the spontaneous-seize-the-moment and come-as-you-are photographer… which has a different set of advantages.

Once we are accepted (fingers crossed) to an agency, the photos can be selected by magazines and businesses that need photos for stories or promotional campaigns. So instead of hiring photographers to take specific photos, they go to the stock agencies and buy the rights to use the photos. Therefore, the photos need to be somewhat generic and simple. We don’t get to choose what or how the photos are used… but we figure if we take wholesome, happy lifestyle photos then most likely the photos will be used by wholesome happy magazines and businesses.

At first I had a hard time getting used to staging everything and creating fake scenes… but I am really enjoying playing with Jude and with all our wonderful friends who are volunteering for us. We are always looking for more volunteers, so if you are interested in being a model, in exchange for some fun and funky photos, then let us know and we’ll come play photos with you too, even if you don’t have a chicken.



3 photographers playing in a photographer’s playground

Today was SO fun! Three photographers… Jude, Jessamyn and I decided to have a stock photography play date. We each picked a place, a theme for outfits, divided up the day and then we started shooting.

Jessamyn wanted a natural lifestyle photo shoot, so she picked a cafe where Jude and I laughed, talked and ate cupcakes (photo link soon to come.) Jude wanted a conceptual photo shoot, based around the green movement, so her shoot involved Jessamyn dressed head-to-toe in green clothes and playing in a green field.

And for my shoot, I chose complete and utter randomness: local salvage yard and sun-dresses.

There was no greater meaning or significance to my choice, other than I discovered this incredible place last week during my search for a bathtub, and I was completely amazed as I wandered through the 7 acres of rows and rows of forgotten metal ghosts.

The potential for fun was endless.

Luckily the owner was completely fine with us wandering and playing… his only rule was “no climbing” and that rule was only briefly bent, very slightly, once.

Funny enough, he didn’t tell us not to remove clothing, and the fabulous stack of bathtubs just happened to be tucked way far in the back of the 7 acres, so we were able to dive in deep when no one was looking. Yay for amazing and beautiful Jessamyn.

I have no idea if any of these photos are stock potential, but to be honest I can’t say that I care much if they are… I just loved the process so much and now I love the photos, so as far as I am concerned, the day was a fantastic success.


Too many cooks, not enough eggs….


My friend Kelly saw that I needed an idea for Jude and Paige’s Adventures in Stock project, so she called me up with her vision: bathtub, full of eggs, with her, cowboy boots and a bird’s nest in her hair. I said, “Perfect! I’ll get the tub and eggs.”

I have been wanting a tub in a field shot for a long time….but the eggs part was all Kelly. So I spent the day running around, gathering and hard boiling. I quickly realized that the 3 cartons of 5 dozen eggs (180 eggs), although it sounds like a lot, is not much when you want to fill a bathtub. So I put in the call for Kelly to buy more eggs.

So she bought 3 more cartons of 5 dozen eggs, which we didn’t have time to hard boil, but even filling the tub with blankets and covers, 360 eggs were still not enough.

Another problem was that we had two very different and competing visions… one wanted wild and mysteriously arty, and the other wanted tame stock…. so 360 eggs later, I am disappointed to say that I don’t think either of the visions felt very satisfied with the results.

But as always, we learned lots of lessons: more eggs, one vision, less cooks and try and mark the hard boiled ones because trying to find out which ones are raw, by spinning and shaking, is very time consuming…. and can lead to broken eggs in your ear if you shake too hard.


Two Brains are Better than One

This is another ‘Paige and Jude Adventure in Stock Photography‘ photo shoot. Although once again, I have to give her credit for everything, the bed in a field idea, all the logistics, the models, and the props… well all the props except for the monkey mask and flower. Those were my genius ideas and they are sure to be a favorite for all the banks and insurance companies that are looking for generic photographs for their brochures.

The next photo shoot is on me, so I have to start brainstorming. Any suggestions?

the un-birthday birthday party

Sunday’s Un-Birthday Party was the Un-Official Launch of Paige and Jude Photo, a Partnership and Adventure in stock photography. Petaluma photographer, and my new friend, Jude Mooney, has been dreaming of stock for the past few years… and she decided in order to make her dream a reality, she needed a partner… and lucky for me…. she picked me. So we started our journey by having an un-birthday party in her brightly colored breakfast nook.

The un-birthday party went exactly as planned, well, except for lumpy icing, a grumpy young party go-er (not pictured here), and minor technical mishaps with camera settings… but all in all it was a successful first shoot

However, there was one other minor important point to mention. During the shoot, it took me a little while to get used to the artificial element that comes from staging everything, but I realize now that is because I am coming from a hands-off documentary photography approach, so it makes perfect sense.

But because of that feeling, and because the whole scene was Jude’s creation anyway, I let Jude do most of the photographing on Sunday. I did manage to capture some candid moments and I played with my beloved Rollei a little, but I look forward to jumping in more actively on the next shoot. I think learning how to produce and direct photo shoots is going to be a well-needed challenge for me. I also look forward to setting up some scenes that I have been imagining, but would probably never make into a reality my own. And most importantly, I look forward to just having fun with photography with another photographer…. so let the adventures begin! And maybe it was a real birthday afterall.