family portrait session // August 15

Recently I had the privilege of doing a portrait session with these adorable kids. About two years ago I got to take their pictures, and then again last year, and it's so cool to see how much older they're getting (also how much better I've gotten at taking photos). Can't wait to send out prints of these to the family!

eye of the camera // 2

A long time ago I uploaded a post of various photos of me behind the camera. That was over a year ago, and more people have caught me in this state. I thought it would be fun to continue the series and post some more interesting (if not embarrassing) photos of myself being ridiculous behind the camera.



These two are probably the most ridiculous of them all. My friend Aly and I like to do this thing where we go to random stores and act like idiots and take pictures of everything. We haven't been able to do it this summer because we've both been working, so it was fun to look back on some of our shenanigans. I think me posing with an iron man mask, while holding a pair of shoes with a fan in the background describes my life perfectly, haha. The second photo my friend Megan took when she visited me here in Alaska. I took her to the zoo and was pretending to be part of the wildlife for this photo. I succeeded.



This photo my friend Jenna took, way back in September of last year. It was the beginning of school and none of my friends really knew each other that well, so going to the beach was the perfect way to get to know each other. As you can see, we were all very sleepy.



Also in September, I got the chance to hang out with some really awesome photographers at Cannon beach. Shane Black took this one of me toting all my props across the water and being generally starstruck.



Both of these my friend Jenna took, once when we went exploring in an abandoned train station, and another time when we visited a cemetery for a photoshoot. Love exploring Oregon with her! We certainly found ourselves in a lot of adventures.



This photo doesn't show my camera specifically, but I was holding it and this was a good day. I got to meet two photographers, Sarah and Grace (Grace took this photo), and it was so much fun learning from them!



These two photos my mom took of me. This was over spring break, when I drove about two hours out from my area to shoot some film landscape photos for a big art project for school (which I just realized I never actually posted the results from ... whoops! here is a digital photo I shot though.) It was so cold this day and my fingers were completely numb by the end from having to change to different colored filters while shooting, but it was more than worth it (random fact, I got an 85% on the project ... because he thought I could do better and have more extreme horizons ... big major sigh).



My boyfriend Matt took this photo about a month ago, while I was shooting a panorama of the clouds. It was one of the coolest sites I've ever seen.



This last photo my mom took while we were on our fishing trip. I think the waterfall photo was the one I was shooting at that moment. I love just being able to shoot photos of my beautiful state. It's a pretty fantastic place.

I hope you all have a great day! What's one of the craziest places/situations you've shot in?

it's all about the light // lighting tips

Today I'm guest blogging over at the etailPR blog, giving you guys some tips on how to shoot outfit photos in any kind of light! Be sure to check it out and leave the people of etailPR some love for letting me guest blog.

Have a marvelous day!

july photos

"cloudmaker"


"as the fog rolls in"


"I cry for the earth"


"crazy cat lady"


"Laurynne"


"mourning shall come"


"all that power"


"the benders of light"


"it's up in the air"


"severed tie dyes"

This month my photography has been all over the place, and I don't like it. It's not that I'm not proud of any of these pieces, it's just that they aren't my best and had I not been doing a 30 day challengeI would have never made some of these, much less uploaded them. But it's a learning process. I guess it just goes to show that there are some times in your life when you shouldn't do a "# day challenge" and I discovered that (at least for now) I am beyond that point (or sick of it, whichever way). But August has at least two photos that I am incredibly excited about, and if it all works out the way I envision, they will be some great portfolio pieces. So here's to August, I hope you hold some fantastic photographic adventures!

january/february // march // april // may // june

severed tie dyes

I'm mostly uploading this to say that I'm quitting my 30 day self portrait challenge. My internet got shut off (it took great efforts for me to upload this at work) and it won't be turned on for about two weeks. I hate not posting every day when I'm doing an every day project, so I'm calling it quits. Also I wasn't really having fun with it. At this point in my life, I want to focus on quality and not quantity, and that will be better done if I don't force shoots and allow myself to shoot other people.

On the upside, I'm going on a three day backpacking trip into the wilds of Alaska and will be visiting a ton of cool places. You can expect a couple photos from that.

It's time for me to quit making mediocre photographs.

That being said, I still want to work on the list I made for myself at the beginning of the challenge, so you'll still see a lot of fun behind the scenes stuff and before and afters and whatnot. In fact, I have two processing videos in the works!

As far as the internet thing goes, you don't have to worry about that either. I thankfully had a few outfits all ready to go (still have to write the posts though), so I can do all those internet type things at work (the only thing that's an issue is uploading from my laptop). So you'll still get your fun daily dose of Introvert's Introduction!

I hope you all have a fantastic day. :)

it's up in the air

8/30

I had this song stuck in my head while I was shooting this photo, which is weird because I have never heard any Lana Del Rey songs other than this one, and the only words I know are the chorus, but anyways, that what was playing over and over again. The background is the reflection of clouds on the back window of a car, and the foreground is an umbrella. I didn't really know what I was going to do for today's photo, but once I saw the clouds in the reflection, I thought it would make a nice backdrop!

This is also the second photo in the collaboration I'm doing with Heather and Kristi! Today's color is blue. I inadvertently was rocking the flickr colors of pink and blue, but I'm fine with that.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend! I for one am very glad it's Saturday, and I shall be the biggest couch potato in the world today (but hopefully I'll get some things on my to-do list.)

film friday: "gold" behind the scenes

+ behind the scenes photos

"Gold" behind the scenes video from Lauren Parker on Vimeo.

For this installment of film friday, I'm showing not only a behind the scenes video for one of my recent photos, but I also have some behind the scenes, before and afters and other fun photos from this shoot to share with you!




For "Gold" I shot in my bathroom, which is really quite nifty when I'm trying to get paint on and off my face (I took a shower immediately after the photo to get the paint off, which is why my hair is wet in that picture). You don't have to have a fancy studio or fancy lighting equipment to produce great images. I've been tempted recently to purchase lighting to practice with, but until I save up money and convince myself the purchase is justified, I'll continue improvise with what I have.



Here was the setup. I had my tripod standing right outside the bathtub facing me (as I was standing in front of the wall). I actually held a reflector in one hand and my remote which triggered the shutter button in the other. The available lighting was my ceiling light, so I used the reflector to bring some brightness into my face.



You can see the difference between using and not using a reflector really well here. For the longest time I didn't own one because I didn't see the point (that is, until I saw with my own eyes what a difference it made when I had to hold one for photos), but manipulating light to your advantage will greatly add to the quality of your photos.

Another thing I do for all of my creative or client photos is that I shoot in RAW. I didn't understand the importance of this until I did a lot of research and messed around with it a lot. Long story short, when you shoot a photo in RAW, you're saving all the information. So when I go to process it, I can change the white balance, color saturation, sharpness, practically anything, and I don't lose any of the photo information. If I shoot in only JPEG, it doesn't save all the information that was there at the time of shooting, only the information I had my settings on. In RAW, it saves all the settings (in a nutshell). This is a good, quick overview of the difference, and this shows you side-by-side photo comparisons.

Here is the example of an outtake between unprocessed RAW, and processed RAW:



Like I said before, for my creative and client shots (or even if I'm going on a trip), I always shoot in RAW because those photos have the potential to be printed or bought by stock agencies, so I need them to have the highest quality as possible. For any photo I put on Introvert's Introduction or the rest of the internet, I shoot in JPEG (or save a copy of a RAW file as a JPEG) because 1. I don't want high resolution images to be floating around for people to steal, and 2. There's really no need to create a photo that requires a lot of flexibility (or takes up a lot of space). When I'm out taking outfit photos, I have the time to make sure everything looks perfect, so I don't need to have the option to change white balance in a RAW format when I go back later to process the photos. I've already taken the time to do it with JPEG. If you have any questions or comments or further insight about this or anything else, please don't hesitate to leave a comment or contact me via email. I'd love to help you in any way I can!

And here is the final image!



I hope you have a great weekend!

the benders of light

7/30

My friends Heather and Kristi are starting a photo series surrounding different colors. I had the pleasure of meeting Heather as she lives in the same state as me during college, and Kristi was one of my first flickr friends, so I am so excited we are finally doing this! Today is is yellow and I love seeing how we each interpret the color differently. We each have a unique style, so I'm excited to see what we come up with in the images that follow!

You can see Heather's photo here and Kristi's photo here!

all that power

6/30

day 5 is here!

Hope you're having a good day!

mourning shall come

4/30

Time was fading with the sun. Weeks and months passed without a stirring. Grass twitched between stone fingers that still pointed towards the sky, only now it was in desperation, as with a last dying breath they hoped to reach the sun.

Detail (which is actually only at 33% and a lot sharper on the high res version of this photo):



Thank you to my boyfriend Matt for giving me some critique on this. Considering this was my first miniature composite ever, I'd say I did pretty good.

Here's a behind the scenes instagram photo from the endeavor:



(The bench was what I sat on, the shovel was for digging a hole in the grass to put my hand in)

I think the hardest part with pulling this off was getting the angle of myself to match the height of my fingers, which I don't think I did 100% accurately. (Perhaps I shouldn't have tried something so hard as fingers to experiment with this type of photograph, hah.) But all in all, I'm pretty pleased with the result! It was a lot of fun to come up with, and I'm actually thinking of using other body parts as giant stone figures. We shall see.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Laurynne

3/30

The elves were grand in their time, building empires amongst trees in the riverlands of Rael, their palaces interwoven with stone and flowers so grandeur, there was no match. The throne room itself was a vast chamber with a blazing waterfall as a backdrop to the high queen's chair. From the shorelines of the Agail Sea to the Western side of Coppern Mountain their empire stretched. Yes, the elves were grand in their time. But there is a time for everything.


I probably could have done a better job of this, in regards to the textures and whatnot, but I left my tablet and pen at work, so I had to use my computer's trackpad. Don't know how I ever managed to use that thing before. But anyways, this is the start of a new photo series! I'm so excited about it too, and am trying to come up with ideas for this world. Also, I can't believe it's already Friday. This week has gone by way too fast!

crazy cat lady

2/30

(Mouse over for before and after!)

So I decided to do my one insane crazy weird photo at the beginning of this project so that I can get down to business for the rest of it. For such a ridiculous photo (which, by the way, I completely imitated from this photo, so I don't get any credit for the idea!), this actually took a lot of time and effort. First of all, there's not a black wall in my house, nor are there any black sheets. The closest I had was this green one, which I hung from the railing in my loft. Then I had to get the lighting right. I don't own any strobes or lightboxes, so I had to get kind of creative.



First I looked at just the natural lighting coming from my window. I closed my white curtains to act as a diffuser, which gave a nice light on my left side. But my right side was pretty dark, and since I wanted to mimic the studio feel of the original photo, this just wouldn't do.



To fill in the shadows, I tried my easiest option, my overhead light, but it made some pretty weird shadows on my backdrop. So then after getting my brothers' lamp (which was incredibly difficult to do because it was very heavy and surrounded by junk), I turned it on, adjusted the direction of the light to bounce off my wall, and viola! Studio lights.



Then I corrected the white balance, donned a crazy sweater, bribed my cat with some cheese, and magic was created.



This was the lighting setup. I'm super high tech over here.



If this hasn't convinced you of how absolutely insane I am, then I don't think anything will. But now I have a new, odd respect for horrible Christmas card photos, because I really had to pay attention to lighting and compositing ... even if I was compositing a disembodied cat head into the blackness of space.

I cry for the earth

1/30

Well I am doing Elsie and Emma's thirty day self portrait challenge because I'm insane.

I'm not going to stress about this project at all. If I miss a day, it's whatever. But I'm hoping to complete it fully and since it's only thirty days long, the number itself should push me to suck it up and make some art every day.

Some things I want to accomplish/focus on:

• lighting; because light is the most important thing and I want to really focus on using it to my advantage.
• concepts with depth; I'm kind of tired of the random hair flip or looking longingly into the distance photos (not that those are bad, it's just that everyone including me has overdone them). I want to make some images that make people look at them for more than a couple of seconds.
• full body shots; when I won my photography award, I received a letter with all the critiques from the judges, and one judge suggested I work on full body shots. And while I do full body shots for outfit posts, I rarely do them for creative shots, so I want to push myself in that way.
• behind-the-scenes/before and afters/more writing for each photo; because who doesn't love that? I love reading what photographers have to say about the inspiration for their pieces or how they created a photo, so I want to provide as much information as possible for each photo. I don't really have anything for this picture, but hopefully I will for the following days.

Here's a detail shot though:



I wasn't sure what I was going to photograph for today, but once I sat down under the tree and started putting leaves in my hair (my dad was practicing his fly fishing outside and thought I was insane ... and I didn't even end up using the photo with the leaves), I was reminded of this photo that I made back in 2012. I wanted to combine the two photos into a "mother nature" feel, and I believe I accomplished that. Also, my hair isn't quite this long in real life yet.

Hope you have a great day!

adventures with Matt // to the mountaintop

A couple weekends ago while I was driving home, I saw fog rolling over the mountains. For some reason, I got an incredible urge to drive to the top and make some photos, so Matt kindly agreed to come along with me. Our results were nothing short of fantastic. We felt like we had been transported to another world while looking at the fog and clouds completely engulfing the city. We could have been miles above everything, the clouds were so thick. It was slightly chilly and we were the only ones there, and I felt like we were the only humans left on the planet. I'm truly at a loss for words in trying to describe it.




And the photos I took don't do it justice either. We produced two images that day, the first being this one:



with Matt being my handsome model, and the second being this one:



which you really have to view here in full screen.



Look at that handsome guy! I'm really lucky to have someone so supportive of what I do, someone who is willing to drive me through dense fog and model in the cold, who actually enjoys going on adventures like this with me!




Have a great day!