The Moon

My sister called home and told my mom to go out and "look at the moon". I followed her out, went right back in, and came out with my camera.

Since facebook's albums seriously degrade the quality of the photos you post, I thought I'd toss them up here for their full splendor!

25 (Asics)

I recently turned 25. **Pauses for cheers** Thank you, thank you, haha. I have been hitting the gym a lot, losing weight, and toning up. For my birthday, my girlfriend (who is a Masters student in Exercise Science and Personal Trainer, among her other amazing qualities), gave me the perfect “from her to me” gift: my first pair of real running shoes! So, of course, one of my first thoughts was: “I should do a product shoot for these shoes!”  Below is the rest of what happened at my shoot at 1:30am on the 13th, haha.

Miho

Miho is definitely one of my all time favorite models that I’ve ever had the privilege to work with. She was around for my last shoot  with International Princess Project and I asked her if she would like to stick around and do another shoot after. Being the awesome person that she is, and the kind of model with the drive she has, she happily said “yes”, even though she had to study for her aerospace engineering test in the next few days :p

A "sort of outtake" that we loved

International Princess Project – Part 2 (and 3)

It’s been a while, but I have a few more posts coming in the next few days!

A few weeks ago, I did the second part of a two-part shoot with International Princess Project for PUNJAMIES. Well, we thought that, but it ended up being Part 2 of 3. Part 3 of 3, which included a couple new items, happened on Sunday. (It was a small shoot almost exactly the same as the first two, so I won’t be blogging separately about it.)
  

The Studio

International Princess Project

A few weeks ago, I shot the largest catalog shoot I’ve done to date.  It was for InternationalPrincess Project (IPP), which is devoted to rescuing oppressed women around the world.  Their mission statement is “Establish self-sustaining enterprises in partnership with indigenous organizations that provide for physical, emotional and spiritual needs of women formerly enslaved in prostitution; AND advocate for women enslaved in prostitution around the world.”  Making and selling of their product called PUNJAMMIES™ is crucial to part of this goal and I was excited to join with this worthwhile effort. IPP will be overhauling the PUNJAMMIES™ website shortly and using all of our photos from this shoot – including a second one coming up this weekend.

Part 1 - Farmers Market

For the first part of the shoot, they wanted to capture “wearing PUNJAMMIES™ in everyday places” so we headed off to a farmers’ market in Huntington Beach. We got the models in their outfits and really just wandered around having fun as I took photos in a more candid manner. There’s nothing special with the setup, it was about everything being natural and everyday so the “setup” mimicked just that. Here’s my favorite shot from this location.

At the Huntington Beach Farmer's Market
Models: Becky, Georgia, and Stephanie

A Few Updates

Update 1:
The Elston Photography Android app version 1.3 is up!

Update 2:
There is now a "HD View"option on the bottom of the portfolio section for those with monitors with 1080 lines of resolution or higher. (Would like some feed back on this feature! )

Update 3:
Blog post about the shoot with International Princess Project coming up tomorrow!

USC Repertory Dance Company!

I can’t think of a better shoot to be the first blog post than this weekend’s shoot with USC Repertory Dance Company (RDC). It was actually this shoot this that finally made me push myself to finally start this blog!  USC RDC is the USC School of Theater’s official dance company, is student-managed, and uses student choreographers (source: their facebook page). 

Unpublished test shot

Introduction!

Welcome to the first blog entry from Elston Photography! 

The point of this blog will be to talk about photos, photo shoots, behind the scenes details, photography as a business, ask and/or answer questions, and anything else photography related.  I will have my first Behind the Scenes post up tomorrow!

Since this is my first post, I thought I should say a little about myself and give a small history of me and my involvement with photography.  (If you’re interested, keep reading.  If not, come back tomorrow!)