Taylor

   

This is my friend Taylor.  She's an absolutely beautiful young woman with a beautiful smile and a fantastic laugh.  It didn't take me long to convince her to let me shoot some pictures of her so I tried my best to make them a little unusual but without losing anything significant in the process.

The day I shot the right and left photos, I was using a new camera body that I hadn't had very long and accidentally set the ISO to AUTO.  That means whenever I was trying to take a photo with the flash, the camera would adjust the ISO settings to shoot in the natural light and THEN when the flash went off, it was entirely too white and too blown out to use the work.  So I turned the flash off and shot using the natural light.

What I didn't know at the time was that my lens was also BROKEN and that's why everything has a slightly soft edge to it.  The lens wasn't able to focus correctly and so the shots came out just a tad bit soft and blurry.  But I don't mind.  In the picture on the far right I think it works with the colors and the background and such.  I'll toss a few more photographs of Taylor up here a few more posts from now.

This beautiful young woman is named Nicole and I have yet to meet a person who didn't adore her within ten minutes of meeting her.  She's beautiful, that much is obvious.  But when I met her she was working at three different jobs and was part owner of one of my favorite night spots in St. Louis.  I met her and instantly saw her charisma and personality would come through in photographs.  It took me about three minutes of her smiling and serving drinks and then I was hooked.

I approached her about shooting with me and we took an evening and wandered around one of my favorite buildings, taking photo after gorgeous photo.  We had a great time, even shot some product photography of our favorite beer.  All in all it was a wonderful evening of shooting.  Afterwards, we parted and I went to visit with a friend and I had no idea where she was going.  It was the first time we'd ever really hung out (although we took some photos previously at her bar).

So I meet up with my friend and she says let's go grab a drink at the Jade Room, a bar in the South Grand area of St. Louis.  We head on over there, I sidle up to the bar and there is some beautiful brunette standing there who turns and says "Long time no see!"  It was my friend Nikki!  She introduced me to her boyfriend (who kinda looks like Dave Grohl) and we have a GREAT time hanging out.  I pull out the camera and we go through some of the photos with him and we sat and drank and chatted and talked art and music and all kinds of stuff.  Had a fantastic night hanging out with them.

Unfortunately, fast forward a few years and the couple has a baby with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, the same disease Samuel L Jackson's character has in the movie Unbreakable.  It's a terrible affliction and has a high mortality rate among infants. They recently had a fundraiser to take care of the medical expenses and their bills but when I asked if I could link to their page in the blog, I was told that they would prefer I steer you to the OI website and any donations to go there.  So please, go inform yourself about this terrible affliction and if you can afford it, help a different family deal with this disease.

http://www.oif.org/