the Glorious Agonies of Editing Photos of Women — Seattle Nude Portraits by Chamonix Thurston-Rattue

So I just spent the last 2 hours hunched over my keyboard in the dark, furiously smoothing skin with my Intuos tablet (love that thing!) and feeling the world's heaviest dilemma bearing down on my shoulders..... which preset should I use? Dun Dun Duuuuuunnnnnn!!!! When it comes to editing pictures of families, I've got one set preset that is pretty much always my go-to and I always love it. But when it comes to editing photos of women it's different every single darn time! What's with that? The mood of the shoot, the woman's personality, the lighting, the backdrop and clothing yadda yadda — it all has a bigger impact on the editing style. So tonight, I'm sitting down to edit my first women's portrait session in like 4 or 5 months and I'm shocked at how challenging it is — I'd totally forgotten. My memory had wiped away all those hours of toiling over wrinkles, blemishes and fat rolls. Plus, in the last 6 months, I've finally started coming to terms with "who I am as an artist" (gracious I hate that expression) and really embracing / getting excited about pushing myself to try new things and accept what I like (and not what I think I should do or what other people want me to do). So finally, I'm back here behind my computer, staying up late (I haven't even eaten dinner yet - grumble grumble) and after hours spent on one flippin' picture, I'm proud to announce — I love it! (See photo below!) Hallelujah. Now on to the other 50 images from that shoot. haha Good thing I'm photographing women as a hobby at the moment or there would be a very horrific editing bill coming someone's way! Massive thank you to Taylor, our beautiful model, for waiting for me while I edit her beautiful photos. I loved working with her and it's so fun working on her images and seeing her laughing and having fun in front of the camera. I love it! Have a wonderful day of editing, my dear photography friends - you are not alone! 

~ xoxo Chamonix

the Glorious Agonies of Editing Photos of Women — Seattle Nude Portraits by Chamonix Thurston-Rattue

So I just spent the last 2 hours hunched over my keyboard in the dark, furiously smoothing skin with my Intuos tablet (love that thing!) and feeling the world's heaviest dilemma bearing down on my shoulders..... which preset should I use? Dun Dun Duuuuuunnnnnn!!!! When it comes to editing pictures of families, I've got one set preset that is pretty much always my go-to and I always love it. But when it comes to editing photos of women it's different every single darn time! What's with that? The mood of the shoot, the woman's personality, the lighting, the backdrop and clothing yadda yadda — it all has a bigger impact on the editing style. So tonight, I'm sitting down to edit my first women's portrait session in like 4 or 5 months and I'm shocked at how challenging it is — I'd totally forgotten. My memory had wiped away all those hours of toiling over wrinkles, blemishes and fat rolls. Plus, in the last 6 months, I've finally started coming to terms with "who I am as an artist" (gracious I hate that expression) and really embracing / getting excited about pushing myself to try new things and accept what I like (and not what I think I should do or what other people want me to do). So finally, I'm back here behind my computer, staying up late (I haven't even eaten dinner yet - grumble grumble) and after hours spent on one flippin' picture, I'm proud to announce — I love it! (See photo below!) Hallelujah. Now on to the other 50 images from that shoot. haha Good thing I'm photographing women as a hobby at the moment or there would be a very horrific editing bill coming someone's way! Massive thank you to Taylor, our beautiful model, for waiting for me while I edit her beautiful photos. I loved working with her and it's so fun working on her images and seeing her laughing and having fun in front of the camera. I love it! Have a wonderful day of editing, my dear photography friends - you are not alone! 

~ xoxo Chamonix

Behind the Scenes of Cheryl Ford's Bridal Veil Shoot — Featuring Hanna Mazur, Seattle Make Up Artist

I am so excited to be reunited with my photography friends Cheryl Ford Photography & Hanna Mazur, Seattle Make Up Artist! This weekend, the girls were working together on a photo shoot with Princess Bride Couture Bridal Salon at Country Village, Bothell — they were showing off bridal veils and matching them with wedding dresses. Cheryl invited me along and we surprised Hanna who had no idea I would be there (and since I just got back from Maui, we were all pretty excited to see each other!) Of course, I brought along my camera to capture some behind the scenes for both these lovely girls. Cheryl is always silly and I love the funny faces she makes when her face is smushed against her camera! ha! I LOVE photographing Hanna while she does makeup. She's so gentle and tranquil. I'm really excited that I had this opportunity to capture lots of pretty pictures of Hanna at work. It's so hard to not take 1,000 photos of her make up bag, brushes & palettes. So pretty! Thank you ladies for a fun afternoon together. I'm excited for all the new adventures we have ahead of us this year!

Cheryl Ford Photography

Hanna Mazur, Make Up Artist

Princess Bride Couture Bridal Salon

Model: Ivy

Check out my last blog post: Grateful on Sunday: Last Week in Maui 

Jenny's Black and White Beauty Portraits in the Trees

I'm so excited to share this third series of Jenny's beauty portraits at Waipuilani Park in Maui. We photographed her beauty portraits and then we took more beauty portraits. As we were walking through the park, Jenny asked if she could climb into the trees. Of course!! She climbed up into a tree that had a V shape for standing in. That series of portraits is in color and I'll share those next week - it's like the never ending photo shoot with 10 parts haha. But first, I want to share this black and white series (which is my favorite) where she climbed up onto a giant tree branch. So beautiful. Thank you again Jenny for being so fun to photograph!

Check out my last post: Jenny's Beauty Portraits in the Field of Long Grass!

Click here to book your photo shoot with Chamonix Thurston-Rattue.

More Beauty Portraits of Jenny in a Field of Long Grass

A few weeks ago, I photographed Jenny at Waipuilani Park. We explored all over the park doing lots of mini photo shoots in different locations. Check out our first series of her Beauty Portraits in the Buganvilla Bushes. For the second series of photos, we found a cozy spot in the middle of a field of long grass and I delighted in the gorgeous backlight that you can only find when you're closer to the equator. I flippin' love the light in Maui sometimes. It's so beautiful. Jenny and I had so much fun laughing in the grass, avoiding sitting on Kiewe torns, and trying not to flash each other and she posed and I rolled around with my camera looking for 'that perfect angle." haha Check back soon for her next series of photos that we took up in a tree! Woopdewoo! So fun. haha Have a wonderful day :)

Check out my last blog post about Dove's Beauty Is Campaign!

Beauty Photography - Selfies Dove Campaign: Beauty Is #beautyis

I love how portrait photography has the power to help women feel more confident and realize how beautiful they are. These days, DOVE is coming up with awesome Beauty Self Esteem Campaigns. This is one of their most recent videos that I stumbled upon the other day. I take selfies all the time and more often than not, I end up taking 20 pictures just to get that one that I really like. How picky we are!! I'm a big fan of the selfie in the mirror haha because I can actually see what I'm taking a picture of. Today, at lunchtime I went into the bathroom mirror and snapped away on my iPhone until I created an excessive collection of beautiful me-photos. I've added a fun filter but I didn't do any retouching - not that I need it ;) You can check out my selfie photo shoot below. Geeze we're a strange generation haha. Check out the video and go snap your own selfie my friends!

And of course, I can never resist a good retouching session so I let my crazy retouching skills loose on my own selfie. I'll admit it is very fun to see all the changes I can make in Photoshop - totally transforming my appearance into something totally different. In the retouched photo, I just did the stereotypical magazine types of retouching — smoothing skin, enlarging eyes, slimming face, lengthening limbs, slimming waist, etc.... I was totally happy with the way I looked in the originally and although I admit it would be nice to shed a few pounds, even after seeing the overly-retouched me, I'm still feeling very content with the original version...thankfully.

Strange though... at first, the retouched one looked so unnatural to me - maybe that's just because I'm not used to seeing myself so "lean"! But then.... the more I stared at it, something in my mind started to change. After writing this blog post, I thought the retouched picture definitely looked better. It was an adjustment - like how we've all adjusted to seeing supermodels in magazines as a "normal" body. At first I thought I looked too skinny in the retouched photo but only 5 minutes later and I'd adjusting to thinking that version looked more normal and better!

Of course, there is a part of me that wants to look like the retouched image because it reminds me of what I'd see in magazines / TV. But that's just the insecure part of me that wants to look different and lose weight and be admired by all. I have to keep reminding myself that at first glance, the first time I saw the retouched photo, my first thought was "I look like I'm sucking it all in." LOL :P What a joke! Media imagery is so messed up!

Share your selfie and hashtag #beautyis!

Maui Beauty Portraits in the Buganvilla Bushes

Jenny found me for her beauty portraits through a Craigslist ad that I put out to the island of Maui asking for women to volunteer for photo shoots. I have all these ideas for fun places to photograph women on the island and my #1 goal since the day I arrived in Hawaii was to get the buganvilla bushes involved. These gorgeous colorful flower bushes grow alongside all the roads all over the island. They come in pink and cream and orange but the vision brewing in my mind was alllll about the purple! Around the corner from our house is an entire wall of purple buganvilla bushes so when Jenny met me at the beach last Sunday, I had it all planned out. We curled her hair, drew on the eyeliner, pulled on a pretty white sweater (trying to not to mess up her hair) and slid on some golden bangles. All ready to go! (Eventually, the sweater came off and we wrapped her up in a white lace scarf.) We crossed the road and got out pose on in the bushes! We had a sweet old man walk by and offer to take our photo together. haha At the time I explained that it was a photo shoot so I didn't really feel the need to jump in front of the camera but in retrospect I totally wish I had just said yes because that would be a fun photo to have. That's definitely a life lesson I've been learning a lot recently - 99% of the time it's worth saying yes, even when you feel like saying no. Anywho, I'm super stoked about Jenny's portraits. She's such a beautiful woman (I loved her curly strawberry hair) and I finally get to check 'Buganvilla Bushes' off of my to-do list - woohoo!! :D

The fun didn't stop with the Buganvilla bushes — Jenny and I had more adventures together in the forest across the road. She was climbing up trees and posing inside palm trees. Check back later this week for the rest of her photos!

Want more? Check out my last blog post which was all about my wonderful daily commute in Maui that makes me smile :D hehe

Beautiful Portraits of My Mom Up in the Branches of a Cherry Blossom Tree

Tomorrow morning I am hopping on a flight to the Big Island of Hawaii to spend a long weekend with my mom and a couple close family friends. I haven't seen family or friends in person for 1.5 months and I am so excited! I've had some wonderful chats with my mom over the phone this week and I'm counting down the hours until I get to throw my arms around her and give her a big hug and welcome her to tropical weather (she's escaping Seattle's November). This afternoon, while daydreaming about this mini-vacation, I remembered that I still have some pretty images of my mom that I haven't blogged yet! How do we fall so far behind?! I photographed my mom back in April for her birthday. She wanted to be photographed up in the pink cherry blossom tree outside our house. She was a gymnast and she adores being outside in nature so a photo shoot in a tree was a dream come true for her. She was more relaxed than she might have been if we'd been in the studio and it really pushed me out of my comfort zone — I was taking pictures while lying on my back inside the raised bucket of a tractor (so I could be up in the branches with her!) Thanks mom for giving me this creative challenge, for trusting me to create portraits for you and for flying me over to Hawaii to spend time with you! I'm so excited to see you!

 

 

Anybody else ever been to the Big Island of Hawaii or taken portraits in a cherry tree? :)