It’s funny how things work out isn’t it?  One day last week I woke up and for some reason said “I want to do a podcast”.  A lot of people have been asking me about doing workshops, or online tutorials etc, and I thought..ooo a podcast would be a great resource!  By the end of that same day I had a name, the website bought, and my friend Alex had the intro music.  By the next day I had a publisher and a couple of sponsors…..WOW.  Amazing how fast things can come to fruition.  So now we are working out the details, working on the site, and the first podcast!  I am going to take listeners along on some shoots with me, do online tutorials and have special guest speakers.  It will be so much more than just photography to!!  I can’t wait for you all to check it out, so when everything is ready to launch I will let you know!  Stay tuned………

Have you ever met a true friend who you knew you were destined to meet?  That is what Diane is to me.  She had seen a lot of my bellydance photos on the internet and wanted to hire me and we had been chatting over the internet for quite some time now.  Every time we talked we discovered more and more about eachother and how alike we were so we knew we were going to have a great shoot!  She is also a photographer so for her to ask me to take her pictures was a real honor.  She told me about a park that she frequents called Kraft Azalea Park in Winter Park.  When I got there I had no idea what to expect and it was spectacular!  The architecture in this quaint little park was nothing short of amazing!  There were Greek columns and benches and wooden docks pearing out over the water.  It was perfect for portraits, I could not have asked for anything better.  There was bright green moss all over the ground and Spanish moss in every tree for great ambiance.  We got some great shots and talked the whole time about how we never met eachother sooner.  I can tell her and I are going to be great friends! 

Shamsi of Bayou Shimmy has become such a good friend.  It is funny we actually met on Facebook through our mutual friend Mychele and the rest is history.  We talked about me coming there to do a photo-shoot for her and the girls and it finally came to fruition after months of planning!  We all decided on Audobon Park as the location for the shoot and it was quite the place indeed!  My great friends Lacey and Alex of Florida Tribal Dance came with me because they had never been there before.  Lacey also performed in “Gothla” out in California and had a great new gothic themed costume that we wanted to photograph in the French Quarter and another of her “regular” costumes to shoot at the park.  It was the perfect place for her!  We had such a great time with Shamsi and her girls at the park on Saturday, even with an ant infestation on the feet of one girl and Lacey getting her toe stepped on by a small horse!  It was quite an interesting day to say the least.  The backdrop of this park was incredible, the architecture, the greenery, everything…even the wind was loving us that day!  All of the girls brought some kind of silk, either a veil, fabric, veil fans, or wings…so the weather was perfect for it.  Shamsi was worried about the rain forcast and I told her not to stress, we would make it work…and it did…no rain, it even was a little cooler than usual, but it rained in other parts of the city so the Gods were smiling down on us for sure!  After a long day of shooting and a great lunch with Shamsi and Shelly, we headed back to the hotel, freshened up, took naps and then went out again for a night on the town.  We just walked around the city for a while so Lacey and Alex could get aquainted and take it all in.  It can be overwhelming for someone who has never been there before.  Street performers, great smelling food on every corner, Bourbon street…need I say more?

Sunday we got up and Lacey got ready in her goth costume so we could go walk in the quarter.  Since they had never been to NOLA before I had to take them to Café Du Monde for some hot fresh beignets for breakfast and then we went on a tour of the cemetery.  Because if you have never been to NOLA before there are two definite musts….and that is beignets and cemetaries.  After we were done scouting out the cemetery, we ventured off into the quarter for pictures.  We found some great backdrops for her costume and it could not have been more perfect….well…it could have been cooler, it was sweltering HOT!  But Lacey pulled through and we got some out of this world shots out of it!  She loves texture, as do I, and what more perfect place than the land of chipped paint, old rusty gates, and cobblestone streets?  We had scouted out a few places the day before and one was this incredible looking house on St. Peters Street that was covered in vines and plants, obviously very old, with wrought iron gates in front.  I know, if you have been to NOLA, what house doesn’t look like that…but this one definitely stood out as you can see from the pictures. 

After we couldn’t stand the heat any longer and felt like we had a ton of images, we headed back to the hotel.  But we had forgotten one thing…there was this great piece of architecture right across the street from our hotel, The Ambassador!  Apparently it was left over from the 1984 World’s Fair and it was just too great to pass up.  I talked Lacey into doing a few more shots, and I am so glad that we did!  It was just incredible!  You could not see all of the water features from our room so it was a pleasant surprise when we turned around the archway at the entrance.

We had a great time over this short-lived weekend and I hope that we can do it again soon!  If you are ever in New Orleans or the Baton Rouge area please stop by Shamsi’s studio at Bayou Shimmy and tell her hello!!!

www.bayoushimmy.com

www.ambassadorneworleans.com

www.floridatribaldance.com

The 2009 Orlando Fringe Festival was quite the experience!  I went for 6 days photographing different stage performances, shows, candids, and everything else!  I worked with another photographer who was really great, Dixie Lee.  We worked so well together and that is really hard to find in the photography community, so I think we have a great friendship started! 

I volunteered for the event and it was well worth the while and the gas money, the people I met, the shows I experienced, everything was just awesome! 

We even took our dog Dizzi one afternoon and she wore a t-shirt with all of the Fringe buttons on it and everyone just loved her and wanted their pictures with her.  She is definately the new mascot and is thinking of starting her own blog for the Fringe next year!  LOL.

One of my favorite shows was “7(x1) Samurai” with David Gaines.  I got to photograph and experience the show and it was nothing short of incredible.  After posting some of the images on Facebook I received an email from David Gaines, the star of the show and this is a copy of the post that I made there:

Why I do what I do…

As I woke up this morning exhausted from another night of shooting at Fringe and amazed at all of the great shows I had seen thus far, but wondering if all of my volunteer work would one day pay off...I opened up my email to find the following from the performer of "7 (x1) Samurai", an incredible show I saw the night before. I posted a few of his pictures and this is the response he sent....reminds me why I do what I do.......

"Kristen –

I just saw your shots from my “7 (x1) Samurai” show, and I must say they are excellent! You have a great eye for composition, and you caught some of the best shots I’ve seen of the show!

You are certainly welcome back to my show anytime. It’s funny. In the shower this morning I was just wondering if it would be possible to capture a sense of the movement and the mask in one shot. I was thinking of some complex multiple-exposure with sequential flashes - to achieve that kind of thing you often see with dance photography of multiple images connected by a blur of movement flowing into a final pose…

But many of your photos captured the sense of movement just by your skillful choice of the right moment to click the shutter. Bravo. You have a gift and a talent for what you do.

Thank you for bringing it to bear on my show as its subject.

Sincerely,
David "

Another of my favorite shows that we were waiting for after seeing the “preview” was “The Karate Guy”.  Michael Marinaccio played the part of Daniel, 25 years after winning the karate tournament.  I got some awesome shots of this performance as well. You just have to see the show!

Another absolute favorite was “Elegies: for Angels, Punks, and Raging Queens”.  My great friend Marcie was in the show so I had to see it.  I didn’t know anything about it really until I went to photograph it.  John DiDonna, the director, did the most incredible job with this performance!  If it is any consolation, they sold out every single show but one!  The night that I was there to photograph they were supposed to be on an outside stage and it was pouring down rain so it was moved into an interior room with no professional lighting or anything, and still the cast did an amazing job!

And another great favorite was “Department of Angels”.  The two performers in this were just INCREDIBLE!  I would describe it as a very Charlie Chaplin style of performance, lots of loud movements and facial expressions….and no dialogue.  You can get a lot by the photographs, see for yourself!

And yet another favorite was “Wanderlust”.  Martin Dockery interpreted his 5 month journey through Africa on stage and it was just hilarious.  He was such a great performer and had so much stage presence…..and I believe he earned the “Fringe Crush” award……yes ladies I think he is taken!

Other shows that I saw and photographed but could not always stay for the entire show were "Burlesque Unzipped", "The Mayor of Orange Avenue", "PuppetSlam", and "The Lighter Side of Suicide". The lLighter Side of Suicide was put on by my good friends Don and Pam Canavan.  Their son was in the play as well.  I could only stay for about 15 minutes so I was a little dissappointed I was in a hurry but heard it was a great show!

Everyone was so awesome and I can't wait to do it again next year!

www.orlandofringe.org

www.dixieleephotography.com

www.davidgainesperformance.com

http://karateguytheplay.com

www.myspace.com/checkerboardpro

www.schaveandreilly.com

www.martindockery.com