Portraits of Emi with Colored Light | Baseline

I love natural light photography— but sometimes, to think outside the creative box I use unusual setups or materials for portrait photography. To give these portraits a creepy, dark edge, I used several of Home Depot’s selection of basic colored light bulbs screwed into my softbox lights or as overhead bulbs in an unfinished basement. Emi was kind enough to model for my experiment, and together we created these spooky, Blade Runner-esque portraits.

“A blood black nothingness began to spin.
Began to spin.
Let’s move on to system. System.
Feel that in your body. The system.
What does it feel like to be part of the system. System.
Is there anything in your body that wants to resist the system? System.”

— Blade Runner: 2049

“A blood black nothingness.
A system of cells.
Within cells interlinked.
Within one stem.
And dreadfully distinct.
Against the dark.
A tall white fountain played.”

— Blade Runner: 2049

Paintings | Gifts and Commissions of 2017

I've been lucky to get several painting commissions this year-- not all of which I was able to get a good photo of before they were given or sent off-- and I decided to get creative this holiday season with my gift giving and did a few paintings as gifts as well! I definitely painted more dogs this year than any other!

Hand Painted Holidays | Christmas in Anchorage Holiday Boutique

Now that Christmas is over, I have some time to blog about what I've been up to! As my friends and family can attest, I have been quite the busy painter these past few months... Not with portraits (though I have done some and will touch on them in another blog post), but with holiday signs. Let me explain.

I grew up in Anchorage, Kentucky (as in... not Alaska), and attended Anchorage School for K-8th grades. Each year, they host a holiday craft boutique, bakery, breakfast with Santa event before Christmas. Since this was my first full year living back in Louisville, I decided to throw my hat in the ring and reserve a booth for the holiday boutique. At first, I thought I might show paintings or photography, but... not a lot of people want to buy those things around the holidays. I decided to make hand painted holiday signs on wood slices-- my mom had one she'd bought a previous year that read "The Weary World Rejoices" and she kept it up all year, for the uplifting words.

Logo for the "shop" bags

I got to work preparing and painting these wood slice signs... and ornaments... and coasters. A regular Elf in Santa's workshop! Additionally, with my marketing background I wanted everything to be branded and professional... so I designed a logo for the project, printed stickers, ordered boutique bags, tissue paper, and raffia...  I even made a website for them, click here!

I started marketing the signs a bit on social media, but then worried about not having enough inventory for the show and stopped-- which was a mistake. I have had the best luck selling the holiday signs to people I know, family, friends of my parents, etc! The holiday boutique came and went (as did my anxiety), and I was lucky to have a few people who purchased my signs at Christmas in Anchorage contact me for more after the event. By Christmas, I had sold most of the signs (I think I have 8 left?), most of the ornaments, and some of the coasters.

The booths weren't guaranteed to have walls, so I built my own out of recycled pallets! I had an even grander scheme for a pallet booth early on, but scrapped it as it would be too hard to transport and build on site. Really proud of my rudimentary engineering for the pallet booth, though. It worked perfectly and fit the aesthetic I wanted for my holiday signs! I even snuck in a selection of my photo prints, mounted and matted and packaged in cellophane bags for purchase. 

Would I do it again next year? Not the booth, necessarily. I think I could paint the signs and sell them online, maaaaaybe participate in a different local holiday fair. Definitely a learning experience!

Thanks for reading this long and rambling blog, and Happy New Year!

Ornament size wood slice as gift tag