Ladies Rock Camp

I had the great pleasure of photographing the bands of Boston's Ladies Rock Camp in Jamaica Plain on May 20th. The camp provides an opportunity for women who are 19 and older to let loose and learn to play rock together with similarly strong and awesome women. Ladies learn and/or practice bass, guitar, drums, vocals, or keyboard, form a band, and at the end of the experience, play live at TT the Bears in Central Square, Cambridge. The participants also take a variety of workshops relating to being a lady rocker - I happened to observe an inspiring workshop by Model Mugging Self-Defense right after I photographed the bands. Super cool! It was amazing walking into the building in which the camp was housed - you could feel the vibration of the drums throbbing up through your feet, and the excited "Yows!" and cheers of the participants charged everyone with a wonderfully contagious energy! I want to join next year (and I grew up playing classical piano and viola) - what an incredible group of women, what a great experience.

Here are a few of the bands I photographed.

Steampunk: Take two

Lots of requests for more Steampunk photographs from the Watch City Festival aka Steampunk Festival in Waltham, MA! Here they are. Steampunkers, please keep in touch via my blog and via www.facebook.com/sharonajacobsphotography. I had so many amazing people who were photographed - thank you all for being so wonderfully interesting to photograph.

Steampunk Festival, Waltham, MA: corsets, goggles, and gorgeousness

I was recently asked how I wanted to spend my Mother's Day - my answer: photograph portraits of amazingly costumed people at Waltham's Steampunk Festival. Assisted by the author Jon Papernick and my family (it was Mother's Day, after all), I had the most amazing time photographing some incredible faces and outfits. Enjoy the gallery, and thank you to everyone who participated!

Documenting the shoot: The boots meant for walkin'

I'm going to start a theme that I'll return to every now and then called Documenting The Shoot, where I'll show you what went into a shoot, what didn't work, and then what did with the final image. A before/after, if you will. My model was kind enough to give me her time to work on a personal project (thank you!), my 52 week project on Flickr, where each week I explore a different topic resulting in a weekly image. This particular week's topic was "Getting from Point A to Point B" and I decided to set up a fashion-type shoot featuring an amazing pair of boots and some fun cross-lighting techniques. We shot in my, shall we say, petite/cozy/tiny home studio which has low ceilings but works great for headshots. Full-body stuff is more challenging - I have to shoot from the very corners of the room, practically Spiderman-style, to avoid distortion. And you do not want distortion when photographing a person's legs.

Here are a few "before" images - you can see a few test shoots against a crappy dark background that shows off lint beautifully. I was trying to get some angles that showed off  the boots awesomeness, my models great legs, and a sense of movement as well. I had Audrey walk around a bit, but what worked best was to have her stand still, point her feet exactly as directed, and hang on to my ceiling for dear life (man, in hindsight, I really wished I shot that - next time!). The angle that looked the most "natural" was highly unnatural, but man, she was a trouper. I had a softbox behind her on the ground highlighting her shape and the laces, and an LED panel in front of her - really close - less than a foot, for detail.

I knew it when I got the final image in camera the moment I hit the button. So all I had to do was go into Lightroom, get rid of lint, and burn out the light walls of my studio in the background. And here's that final image:

Let me know what you think of this series and if you want more!

Portraits of a dancer

Audrey is a dream to work with as a photographer. As a modern dancer and a dance therapist, she is lovely, inside and out. We worked together both outdoors and in the studio, playing with lights and modifiers, moods and movement.