While most of you were watching the Superbowl I was spending the afternoon shooting with Kassandra. Some of you may recognize her from our shoot on the K&N 2011 Calendar (view it here if you need a refresher, she’s November).
Well, it had been a year since we last shot, and even though we’ve talked about putting something together again for a while, life always gets in the way. We finally found time this past weekend to catch up on life, and make some great images.

Kassandra, for those of you who haven’t met her, is stunning. Tall, long black hair, and amazing figure. How are you not going to create awesome images?
The original ideas we started playing with were similar to the portrait style images of Mike Bell that I shot a week ago (check the last blog post). Kassandra loved the darker grittier feel to those. We ended up spending a few hours together and doing about seven different style shots. The image above was created in the middle of our afternoon together. I love the contrast difference between the white and black. And it puts nearly all the focus right on her eyes.

I like the uncropped version, too. But I’m sure most of you noticed that I’m a big fan of landscape/wide shots with my images.

Here’s what we were originally going for… a darker image. In this case we have a black/black/black/black shot. What I mean is that she has black hair, a black boa, black shirt, on a black background. Unfortunately for most of you guys reading this, you aren’t on calibrated monitors. But, for those of you that are, you will see that there is actually differentiation between all four elements in this image. This is one of those photo-nerd moments where I’m going to point out that there is a level of light/exposure control to create this shot. So for those of you new-to-photo readers that I have, practice with this idea ; )

Portrait style shot.
Really dig the attitude mixed with her style on the red-drape background. The border was added effect.

Kassandra showed me some simple images like this that she wanted to create. Again, very clean, but with contrast between the black clothes and empty surroundings.

Also a casual version, with a sweater and shoes.
But check out her Converse that she made!

We went out to the roof to see what we could shoot out there. Neither of us were completely feelin this location with the chess board. But, I figured I’d throw some layers and textures in to make it more interesting. Did it work? I don’t know.

But I do like this version more. Maybe I’ll go in and remove the background completely…

Edit! I removed the background tonight. Looks much better I feel like.

I <3 LA

Last shot of the evening was on this awesome couch. The only tricky part was Kassandra’s incredibly long legs on what was actually a very short couch. I still think it came out great though.

Between all the different style shots, catching up on life, and laughing at what’s new, it was great to see an old friend and shoot again. I have a few more shoots this week that are in the works including portraits of Sean Logan (the BMXer) and two more model shoots. I think I’m going to be continuing the portrait series with various people I know down here in LA in different industries. Should be fun.

Check back in a few days for more shots. I’ll try and post another blog this weekend.