Cindy Santini
Love her music :)
And recently we had a chance to do a photoshoot with her. Such a warm beautiful person in every way!
“When I Wakeup” sneak peek / behind the scenes
We recently did a photoshoot with Mandy Michelle Martin for the photography for her soon to be released EP. Below are a few still photos captured from the shoot. Enjoy. She is amazing.
Mandy Michelle Martin
Makeup and Hair by Eugene Conde
Photography/Videography by Russell Elloway
Tayler Rose in Old Navy Commercial
Recently we did a photoshoot with Tayler Rose from VisionLA modeling agency, congratulations Tayler!
Old Navy Presents: Pop Kick Day in the Park
Here are a few images from our shoot. (Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal)
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Look past the mirror.
“You look fine”.
Confidence is a tricky thing … most of us will glance in the mirror as a quick check of our appearance. I saw this posted on facebook. The first comment was from her boyfriend who said “stick with the mirror”. The next comment was “I hate that phrase”. But knowing the person … I couldn’t help but stop and think about how much I love her humor, which has a beauty of it’s own.
Look past the mirror
Thinking this through, I couldn’t help but think about the deeper meaning and how it communicated the inner beauty of the person. Next time I look in the mirror, I hope I’ll occasionally remember this and do an inner check on my inner beauty and how it looks also. Can I find humor more often?
Glass Slipper Beauty
What’s “Glass Slipper Beauty” you will say? We recently did a photoshoot with Allie, a 16 year old who used her personality and interest in fashion and beauty to create a youtube video blog. But not just any video blog. Allie describes her blog as “just a fun place to get the scoop on my beauty tips and secrets. This channel is not meant to be anything more than a fun place to share beauty related ideas.”
But it’s a blog that sometimes has 100,000 views for a single video. She has 82,000 subscribers and over 6 million views of her channel. She recently joined a modeling agency … Here are a few images from our shoot. (Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal)
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Makeup and Hair by Kayla Mareshal
Recent work with Pratik Naik of Solstice Retouching
RECENT WORK: Retouching by Pratik Naik of Solstice Retouching
I recently worked with Pratik from Solstice Retouching and was so happy to get back this beautiful polished finished result. Meghan has been seen recently on the show ReMODELed … here is a clip of her at a casting for Elle magazine.
The power to inspire
A Garden of Happiness and Love
For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen this little plaque on the back porch of my aunt and uncles home. With two children of their own (my cousins), I have warm memories of family times when we were young. Family vacations, weddings, birthdays … many reunions that I’ll never forget.
Yet in the past few years, my uncle has struggled through the consequences of a number of spinal injuries with complications that resulted in his passing just a short time ago. It seemed far too soon in my mind, with so many years to come from my perspective … a part of me has spent the past few months somewhat in denial of what had now happened.
So when the news came, my thoughts went inward, searching for something good, something happy to anchor upon, but it just didn’t seem to be there. All I felt was the usual mix of inevitable sadness that I’ve grown more and more used to as I’ve age. Yet my memories of this uncle and aunt were filled memories of the warmth, care and kindness that he seemed to always have for everyone he met. He was the uncle with a passion for water and snow skiing, deep sea fishing stories in exotic places that were always entertaining, a golfer … in short the healthy happy active person you would expect to live into at least his 90’s, and yet now he was gone.
Over the past couple of years, I’d heard stories of his daughter, with two children of her own, adopting first one, then another from Ethiopia …. and just recently another child from Ghana. Since we hadn’t spoken about it, I wondered why? Why would a happily married and very busy mother with two beautiful children of her own choose to bring three adopted children into her home. Why would she complicate her and her husbands life with the responsibility of three new children.
It wasn’t until the funeral that I first saw them. These were children who had been through so much already in their lives. Children who need love, attention and family.
The most recent came into her home a short 3 1/2 weeks ago. Born in Ghana, and soon orphaned, this most recent adopted daughter is 3 1/2 years old. She spent most of that time neglected in her crib. When she first arrived, she was very quiet, never crying, her speech still just a kind of babble. You can see the questions in her eyes.
With five children now in the family, the older two daughters take turns in watching after their three adopted siblings.
The earlier adopted daughter below is actually younger, just three and responding well to the warmth and happiness of family.
The son, adopted from Somalia, speaks good English, and was so fun to spend time with. He is a normal curious kid, looking for encouragement (and of course the entertainment) the every child wants. He was fascinated with the digital camera, especially the video.
I could say so much more. But happily this is only the beginning of the story. My uncle has planted a beautiful and very interesting garden. A garden filled with people that are looking for more than simple comfort and success.
It was exciting for me to think about the parallels this world has to a garden. A healthy garden needs more than just food and water. The best gardens are those found in a neighborhood where the owner realizes that health is affected by the world that surrounds us. That sometimes the best ingredients for happiness are change, sacrifice … but most of all love.
In the layers of memories I now have of my uncle, I find some level of peace from seeing the beautiful garden that he has so carefully nurtured. A garden of happiness and love.
Meghan Wiggins from the show “REMODELED” on the CW Network
Recently, I found it interesting to do a photoshoot with Meghan Wiggins, from the show “REMODELED” on the CW network.
Meghan was in Los Angeles, where she joined LA Models. More of this story still to come, but we found Meghan to be a fascinating beautiful girl. I’m looking forward to sharing more of the images in coming days.
Makeup and Hair by Grissel Esparza http://www.hairbygrissel.com/
Makeup and Hair by Grissel Esparza http://www.hairbygrissel.com/
Makeup and Hair by Grissel Esparza http://www.hairbygrissel.com/
Makeup and Hair by Grissel Esparza http://www.hairbygrissel.com/
Makeup and Hair by Grissel Esparza http://www.hairbygrissel.com/
Earlier work with Elle Magazine …
Tatiane De Souza
A few images from our photoshoot with model Tatiane de Souza with LA Models.
Makeup and Hair by Brooke Hill http://Brooke-hill.com
Kayleigh Hendricks in the Chevrolet “opportunity” ad
A model I’ve worked with, Kayleigh Hendricks, recently played the part of a bride in a Chevrolet ad about opportunity. The premise of the ad was interesting with it’s look of Indiana Jones warehouse holding the lost opportunities of all …
(look for the bride)
Kayleigh Hendricks
Stephanie Fantauzzi
Recently had the pleasure of spending a day with an upcoming castmember from the Showtime show “Shameless” along with makeup and hair artist Brooke Hill.
The night before our photoshoot, I took the opportunity to watch the first show from season two. That alone made the conversation fun and interesting during our shoot. So many facets to each of the characters gave me so much to think about. Fascinating show and so fun to laugh about some of the things I’d seen, especially with Stephanie who was actually able to watch some of it being filmed.
As for our photoshoot, here are just a few preview images from the shoot. It’s always a pleasure to capture the creativity of an actor. I love the drama, the emotion, the story that actors seem to so easily create while being captured.
Makeup and Hair by Brooke Hill http://Brooke-hill.com
Monique Blanchard in the Peoples Choice Award
It was fun to see a model that I’ve worked with, Monique Blanchard, a genuinely happy person with a smile to match, walking the red carpet in the People’s Choice Awards at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles Wednesday nite.
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Fotoshop
I’ve noticed the “Fotoshop” video (above) that has been circulating around. “FS” … Fotoshop by Adobe is a satirical takeoff on the use of a graphics tool as another cosmetic product. Given the pressures of the marketing world, I view it as reasonable for another perspective to be presented to those who may not realize the level of cosmetic change can be made graphically. The video in a humorous way, shows much of the technology currently available to the industry to create perfect skin, tone, color, and shape in a person’s photographic image.
The belief by many is that by presenting an unrealistically perfect image of everything and everyone in the various forms of advertising (magazine, TV, etc), that both the physical and mental health of the population is being negatively affected.
However, I believe there is yet another perspective that also deserves some attention. Before anyone makes the assumption that photoshop or other retouching tools are only (or primarily used) to create a “better version/better image) than the real person, here is another perspective of the current technology.
As good as today’s technology currently is, much of the time a person is MORE beautiful than what can be captured by the camera.
Cameras don’t have the dynamic range to pick up the subtle details in the shadows or in the bright sunlit areas all at once. There are ways to work around it … including using a better camera … but even the best cameras still miss much. Hence … what is beautiful to the eye is missed most of the time by a camera. As a result of that many times photoshop is used to RESTORE the photograph TO the natural beauty that was already there. I don’t hear many people saying that. Many people look for what is wrong, not what’s right about technology … many are focused on how our greed keeps honing the lie of beauty to degree that many seem to question beauty itself. But true beauty isn’t a “lie”.
Is photoshop and other technologies abused? … of course. If more time was spent focused on how it can bring a feeling of health and happiness back to a persons self-esteem when you capture “the real” person … and honored that … maybe more people would focus on the thing that was held in high regard.
Is that too much to hope for these days? I don’t think so. Beauty seems like truth to me … it’s an obvious undeniable thing … beauty and truth in the end do win. The haters can pick at it and distort it and make fun of it … they can confuse us by saying beauty is shallow … and defining beauty in ways that are truly ugly.
But beauty doesn’t have one definition … beauty just is. If you try too hard to explain it, you can destroy it in some sense. Obviously I’m talking about a lot more than photoshop and certainly much more than the beauty of just “models” … at the end of the day … we are blessed to have photoshop, and technology in general. It is how it is used that determines what is created.
