Aviation Submission Roundup

My friend Alyson  and I LOVE Portland, Oregon,  and we also LOVE cocktails, so entering the Aviation Gin photo contest seemed like a no brainer!!  We were hoping so bad to win a trip to "The city of roses",  and to tour the Aviation Gin facility, but sadly we were not the ones randomly selected in the drawing.  We were however, given a couple of  honorable mentions on the Aviation blog! Anyhow, we ended up with some pretty interesting photos for their contest, and here they are all in one place.

(Thank you Brian R. for being present at every one of these shoots, and offering your equipment, skill, and advice!)

Some things about the photos-

Photo 1:  I shot the bottle against a pink background and thought it needed something else, so I added a gradient and some circles in Photoshop.  I also got this thing called a "fry cup" at a restaurant supply store and added those colorful circles to it on Photoshop.  Its pretty much impossible to find snow cone cups anywhere, especially on short notice.  There was a lot of color tweaking in this photo.  I enhanced the snow cone color, and the color of my my hand.  I really did make a snow cone for this competition. This particular snow cone was cantaloupe, habanero and orange syrup.  The original idea for this photo was to have three hands and three snow cones of different colors, and I really did make the syrup for all three flavors, but I ran out of time, so I had to improvise with using only one flavor.

Photo 2:  I love the way this one turned out.  We pretty much stuck with the original idea of this photo,  "50s slumber party"-the only real change we made was that we used color instead of making it in black & white.  This photo kind of came together miraculously.  All of these pretty girls just happened to be free that day, and on a whim, I asked Hannah if she had a vintage hand held mirror and brush, and alas, she did!  I think it really enhanced the picture.  The only thing I would change is that I would take Dorian's watch off.  I totally missed that one!!

Photo 3: I felt kinda lost on this photo, but had fun hanging with my girl Hazel.  I bought clothes from Forever 21 (word to the wise, they do not do returns for a refund! ouch!) I made the best looking Spicy Red Snapper EVER (equivalent of a Bloody Mary).  It had a whole frekin' breakfast as a garnish: (veggie) Sausage, silver dollar pancakes, TATER TOTS, a hard boiled egg, celery, jalapeño, and habanero.  It looked like a million bucks.  I should have gotten a closer shot.  The scene is supposed to be a club or bar scene, with two people who are opposites, but are united by their gin drinks.  The drinks they have chosen define their personality, as opposed to how they are dressed.

Photo 4:  This was the first photo that we took for the competition.  I already have it somewhere on this blog.  I had to eat SO MANY (veggie) HOT DOGS for this damn photo shoot.  I will never eat another hot dog again, ever.  The burger was also vegetarian, and I think Alyson was sick of them by the end of it too.  It was really fun to have her and her roommate Scott over to do this shoot though, even if we did get sick of BBQ foods.

Photo 5:  I had a lot of fun hanging out at the park at night doing this shoot.  Aly jumped off of this ledge so many times!  It must have gotten really hot in that leather jacket and that hat.  We were at this park in Mid-City Los Angeles at around 10pm at night and there were still children playing in it!  We left around 11:30, and I remember seeing this couple pushing a kid on a swing that must have been no older than 2.  I guess there is a whole night park culture that I knew nothing about.  I had to Photoshop some of the water back in, because it got cut off!!

Anyway, hope you like these pics.

Workin' It

I've been so busy taking photographs!  Here is a recent project I did where I collaborated with the beautiful and talented Alyson, her roommate Scott, and my super awesome boyfriend Brian.  This is for a contest.  I wanted it to have a magazine booze ad vibe.  I hope you like it :)

Art Direction:  Danielle
Theme Concept: Alyson
Photo Assistant:  Scott
Photographer:  Brian

Side note:  As it turns out, it is really hard to make two people look good in a photo at the same time.  You just can't control it.  One person may be blinking while the other person looks fabulous, or one person may be doing something weird with their mouth while another person can be having a wardrobe malfunction...Really, anything can happen. This was the case for this photo shoot.  This is actually two different photos 'shopped together.  Aly looked great, but I just didn't have the right look, so I sifted through the other photos in hopes that I could find one of myself giving off the same vibe that Aly was, and at the same time not looking too shabby.  Lo and behold I found it!  

Another problem with the photo was that the hot dog that I was holding in the "good" picture of myself wasn't hot-doggie enough.  You could only see part of the sad small bun, so I found another photo where I was holding the dog with all of it's mustard and ketchupy goodness, and I used a layer mask to throw it into the photo.  Hopefully you can't tell that any of this was actually photoshopped ;)

Before photos (pre Photoshop)- Notice the sad sad hotdog in my hand

Old Film!

I just scanned some of my film photography on my website.  Check it out!

http://cargocollective.com/dkphotography/Film-35mm

Here are some pics that were posted.  (Remember Lucky's supermarkets! Blast from the past:))

Friday Favorites #1

Here are some links that I thought were notable this week.  What did you love this week?

I think this is a great idea.  It enables people to reach out to others in a creative way. You might make a friend that you never would have made otherwise :) http://selflessportraits.com/

Here is a plethora of cocktail recipes from all 50 states!
Cocktails from Every State

I was clicking on this website for 30 minutes straight (and laughing)
http://dubgif.com/

I thought this idea was beautiful
http://weburbanist.com/2013/03/10/hunt-peck-paint-chromatic-typewriter-prints-landscapes/

This was a neat "Time Lapse" Gotta love Google

Any fan of The Simpsons can appreciate this real life intro

Designers and beer drinkers alike can appreciate this :) "Beertone"

Brian and I are going to do  THIS in our bathroom.  Living art!

Here is an interesting art concept- Reverse Graffiti

And here is an adorable Panda!  HAPPY FRIDAY!

Moving :)

I'm moving!  Don't worry, it isn't far, just downstairs from where I live now.  Many of the people in this complex end up living here for years and years, but strangely in the past couple of months I have noticed about 6 units move.  I have lived in the complex for about three now years going on four.

The cool and exciting thing about this move is that the handyman crew hadn't started to work on my new unit yet, so Brian and I asked the complex manager if we could put some of our own finishing touches into the unit before we moved in.

 All of the units are carpeted, but we asked them leave the bare subfloor.  We were told it would be cement, but to our surprise, it happened to be plywood!

We kind of freaked out a little when we discovered it was plywood because we had our hearts set on staining and polishing cement. But after researching You Tube and the internet, we found out that refinishing plywood wasn't an uncommon endeavor, and it can even look downright awesome if done properly.


Here is a time lapse video of Brian and I polishing and staining our new apartment!  It took over two hours to sand, clean, puddy, tape off, and stain everything, but here is a portion of the work in
12 seconds!!!