Photo Shootin'

I have never been much a take-my-photo kinda gal, however, I am in love with photography, graphic design, fashion and magazine photo shoots. A couple of friends and I came up with the idea to do a Nylon (aka the essential to life magazine) inspired photo shoot of our own. We didn't really know how it would pan out but we ended up having a great time and learning a lot too. I've had a handful of people ask me how to create their own on-the-cheap photo session, so here are the things I learned, found helpful, and hopefully will inspire you to create your own!

1) Pull pictures for inspiration. Decide what look you are going for; choose a theme, a specific location or specific costume piece. This will help streamline the process and keep you focused. We chose dirty punk rock ballerina. Here is one of our inspirational photos below!


2) Ask your friends to help out. I had a friend bring men's dress shirts and help photograph and another friend was in charge of hair and make-up. This allowed us a lot of time to concentrate on other things like clothing choices and props.

3) Pull out your dress up box! My apartment looked like an explosion of tutu's, converse sneakers and sparkly dresses!

4) Do not spend a lot of money. Here was our bill for the day:

- 5 Large Ice Soy Vanilla Lattes ($19.00)
- 2 Bottles of Andre Champagne ($9.00)
- 1 bag of dark chocolate m&m's ($2.99)
- 2 medium pizza's ($16.00)

Share clothes, props, everything! We didn't spend a penny on new clothing or fancy make-up. Using what you already have will take less pressure of getting the perfect picture and you will probably have more fun anyway.

5) Listen to music to set the mood! Our staple soundtrack was a mix of the WHIP IT soundtrack, Metric and the Yeah Yeah Yeah's.

6) Use (or borrow) a trusted friend's GOOD camera. In our case we used a Nikon D70s. We ended up taking about 1,000 pictures. After you're done taking them use iphoto or photoshop to play with colors and texture. Here are some of our finished ones below!







Many thanks to Colin & Taylor for all their help and to the people at Nicky D's for making our mid-afternoon pizza snack!