Cookies and Milk.

This was definitely the most difficult Christmas card I’ve shot in the last four years.
Milk splash is something I’ve been wanting to do for over two years since I first saw the guys at Aurum Light Studios in the UK posting their splash photography work with models online and it making the rounds in the photo community. I’ve owned all the same lighting equipment for several years. And, honestly, it’s something I thought would not be very difficult with a bit of practice.

Finding models. That was the tricky part.
You’d be amazed at the flakiness of models. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that a test shoot where you’re getting splashed may not sound all too fun. But the results are far better than the same’ol “go to the beach and test in a bikini” type photos.

So the original plan for this card involved four models – even if it was a lofty goal, I thought “fourth card. four models.” sounded like a great plan. But it didn’t work out that way.
Amber and Elizabeth returned to my card this year again after posing for last year’s Christmas card, which some of you will remember.
And lucky for me both Amber and Liz are incredibly attractive AND keep themselves in shape year ’round. So, mixing two gorgeous women was a fun contrast to my planned Ugly-sweater-vest idea as the Tacky Christmas Party Host.

Hair was done Tammy Nguyen and Make Up by Tina Luong. We shot at our apartment which was converted a bit to be able to handle the mess that milk splash would make.
I probably spent about 30-45 minutes with each model for the splash portion. Post work took me a while because I didn’t want to rush anything and I knew I had plenty of time. The plan of adding two more girls was dropped because as I started to hit up models and ask if they were interested, no one was in bikini-ready shape because it’s winter and they all said they’d been eating too much. Haha! Oh well.

The funniest part of this entire experience this year wasn’t even with the girls and the milk, though. It had to do with the cookies…

I used three bags of Chips Ahoy! cookies for this project, to create the cookie tower you see me holding. So, I posted on twitter apologizing to Chips Ahoy! for wasting three bags for my project. They promptly responded and it was all laughs from there. You can read below:

Not only were they great sports about the whole thing, but they contacted me and said they’d love to see a copy of this card when it’s done! So, I sent one out to their offices in New York! haha! Can’t wait to see if hear anything back from them about it! LOL

Unfortunately just yesterday my phone had some sort of file error and I lost all the data on my memory card – I’m pretty annoyed. I lost several months of photos from my camera phone that I hadn’t yet backed up. Funny part is that the day before I told myself “Oh, I need to back up my phone this week… it’s been a while…”
The reason I mention this is that I use my phone for Behind the Scenes photos when I’m working on projects, and this means that I’ve lost those images that I was planning on sharing here. Bummer.

We did take this photo right at the end purely to have one fun Behind the Scenes shot. This doesn’t exactly represent how the shot was created, but you get a bit of the idea. haha!

Silly shot with Amber when she was done. And no, the irony wasn’t lost on her. She looked down, laughed, and just said “…haa…. jugs.”

And of course a shot with Liz when she was done, too.

Love her, she’s always down for any crazy idea I want to try with photos.

After picking up my massive order of cards when I was in the Bay Area, Stephanie came out over to help me stuff envelopes and fill out addresses.

The following day TJ came over to help me apply nearly 100 more stamps to the pile and seal nearly 200 envelopes

Once at the post office I took my usual “here’s the stack of cards THIS year” photo… damnnnnn!!!

So, again, we’ll see if I hear anything from Chips Ahoy! about what they thought.. but so far everyone else seems to like the card.

This year I sent out 225… That’s a 50 card increase over last year’s total. That’s nuts. Next year will be the fifth year of my annual card, and I’m looking forward to coming up with something awesome. I’ve also been keeping tabs on who signed up for which years so I might try and do something special for those who have all four. And this year’s milk splash is going to be very difficult to top.

But I already have one girl who has said she’ll shoot with me again for next year’s card… my other friend friend Amber, who you guys will likely remember:

So, keep your fingers crossed that it works out that I’ll be shooting with Amber for next year, because she’s ridiculously gorgeous as well.

I have at least one more blog I’ll put together before the year is over next week. So stay tuned for that post if you’re interested. But above all, I hope you guys enjoyed my card for 2013 for those of you who signed up for it. And those who didn’t, there’s always 2014 just around the corner