2nd Anniversary Celebration - How Far We've Come... Photography

As we celebrate OptimisticPenguin.com's 2nd anniversary, I decided to get nostalgic and take a look at how far we've come since those early days. I will begin this with a look at how my figure photography has grown and changed.

In the early days it was pretty basic, just me and my camera some coloured card and some figure fun, playing around with body swapping and funny poses. 

 

Then I started to get a bit more adventurous and played with lighting and props, with the help of PhotoScape I was able to do more and more interesting photos.  

However even now I still love taking simple photo's with nothing much in them accept the figures and some quirky angle. I like to evoke some emotion or feeling from my photo's if I can, so that each photo perhaps tells a little story. However some are just done for the sake of my amusement. 

As I got used to my camera and used to playing with figures I branched out and braved the wider world. Although I must admit when I do location shooting I always go some place where there aren't many people around, I find it disconcerting to have people stop and watch you and ask what you are doing all the time, it's like hey can't a girl take photo's of her toys in private, hahahaha. 

Anyway the majority of my outdoor photo's are taken at Cornwall Park, a local park and farm which I grew up running around in. I always spend a lot of my time searching for locations, finding one which catches my eye and makes me think I can see something happening here, there is a story to be told.

Once I have found my location it will take me a long time to set up, especially if there is more than one character in the shot. I don't like figure stands showing if I can help it, so if that means digging my figures feet into the mud I will.  

Also recently I have been gaining inspiration from Deviant Art, there are a lot of talented artists out there who do wonderful landscapes and cityscapes. A few of these have inspired photo's and so I will use their art as a backdrop and then pose my figure in front of it, usually standing on a pile of books which I place on my keyboard so that the figure is in frame with my computer screen.

I always remember to give tribute to the artists, because it is their work which inspired me. I like to believe or at least I hope that as I grow and change as a figure photographer I will inspire others and that my photos do convey to others the emotions and stories which evoked their creation.