North American Hairstyling Awards: NOMINATION!!!!!!!!

Ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmygosh, ohmyGOD! Last night, while hosting a BBQ for some awesome photographers, I received a call from the OH-so-fabulous Faatemah. I knew when I saw her calling that this was going to be good news, but I had NO idea how good!

Big Risk = ENORMOUS Awards!!

This past year, I really, REALLY, wanted to do a high-fashion shoot for Minneapolis and finally convinced the crew at Metro Magazine that I could pull this off. They believed in my and my mad skillz, which was awesome, but I also felt like I had a lot to prove with this opportunity. When I sat down with the editors and art directors, we made it clear that we only wanted to work with the best of the best. Faatemah was our first and only option for hair, but this girl was BLOWING UP, so we didn't quite know if she had time for our shoot. I was prepared to make it worth her time and she came to us and said she would love to collaborate on this shoot, but it must be good enough to enter and win the North American Hair Styling Awards (NAHA).

What is NAHA?

The North American Hairstyling Awards (NAHA) is the most prestigious photographic beauty competition in North America, celebrating the artistry and skill of the professional salon industry. Each year, individuals are recognized in 13 categories of excellence during a star-studded awards ceremony. NAHA is part of PBA Beauty Week, North America's largest, most inclusive beauty event, offering unlimited networking, education, and professional growth opportunities to all sectors of the beauty industry. PBA Beauty Week is produced by the Professional Beauty Association and is held in cooperation with Cosmoprof North America.

The judges take into consideration the following:

Concept or overall creative approach

Art direction and composition

Demonstration of skill in the execution of style, make-up and appropriate wardrobe

Harmony between photographer's execution and stylist's creativity

Appropriateness of image for concept

Technical ability corresponding to category entered

Continuity of all images within the entry

Appropriate use of lighting highlighting details

It's the Grammy's of Hair.

AND WE JUST GOT NOMINATED...THE TOP 5 IN THE WORLD!!!!

This is SO cool, for so many reasons, but I think the coolest of them all is that it is a true testament to the level of professionalism and talent from both the hair stylist and photographer. The hair has to be rockin', and the photography has to rock even more to effectively show the full potential of the hair. It's a unique marriage between artists that has to be dead on to win...and we did it!!

I can't even tell you guys how HUGH and AWESOME this is! Out of HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of entry's, we are at the TOP and that is one, amazing, feeling!!!

You can check out all of the Nominees in 13 different categories here and NAHA will announce an official winner of each category in July!

Special Thank-You to Faatemah - for being so awesome and pushing us to enter this! and the Staff at Metro for letting me live out this crazy dream that has CLEARLY been a great success on so many levels!

You can see Behind The Scene images from The Fine Lines shoot HERE!

The Final Layout: Fine Lines

In the words of Faatemah, "Get ready girl, your world is about to change..."

Behind the Scenes: The Nautical Shoot!

Things are coming along! I'm currently in the process of pumping up my portfolio for the launch of the new commercial site this late spring/early fall! We are in the middle of an awesome re-brand, where we will be separating out the commercial & editorial work from Photogen Inc. weddings.

I am super excited about this entire process and it's been incredible to continue the momentum with the business to make it bigger, better and stronger. I have been pushing my limits as an artist as well, trying to figure out and perfect, exactly what I want the new brand to be!

Along the way, I am doing test shoots about every 1-2 months. These are full on production shoots and I must say, I absolutely LOVE to collaboration process. The energy and vibe that goes on during a shoot is amazing and I honestly crave it. There is absolutely nothing better than working with people who are as passionate about their craft as I am about photography...and nothing but hands down, amazing work is created!

Yesterday, we photographed The Nautical shoot. This is a vision I've been dreaming up for some time now and I am SO excited about these images! I've decided, with each of these shoots, to share some behind-the-scenes images, along with a couple teasers. However, I'm going to try my hardest to not show the finished product until the new brand launches! Yes, It's going to be hella-hard for me to do this, but I want to stun you all with a kick ass new brand, new website and new work...trust me, it will be worth the wait!

A HUGE THANK YOU to my amazing crew:

Model: Caroline with Ignite Models, Inc. Hair: Micah of Moxie Salon Makeup: Margo Gordon Styling: Faith Brue Props: Stun Creativ Production: Liz Hardt Assisting: Jeffrey and Jacob

SO much more to come from this!

Our life through an Instax!

There has been SO much happening lately! My team has been on the road a lot and all along the way, we've shot TONS of film! I'll share more of that with you when the film rolls come in, but for now, here are a bunch of fun images from our Instax camera!

The instax camera is like crack for me! It's been a really awesome tool for me to document my life this past year.....I have a bit of a personal project going on with it, which will simply need some time to shape.

In this post, some awesome people make appearances:

Tara LaTour's amazing dresses The OH-SO-AWESOME Sara Montour Mr. Daniel Chin Insta-Friend Dan Miles, who inspires me now on a daily basis B-Funk Melissa O! The Cornjadi's and their epic wedding - congratulations you two! The Traveling Photo Booth's awesome booth

Yeah for living the dream!

Tara LaTour + Eliesa Johnson = The Shit!!!

I am soooooo excited to share these images with you! Like, little kid-jumping-up-and-down excited! A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from a girl named Tara. In that letter, she asked me to photograph her final Collection for her graduate program at Parsons (yes, like project runway Parsons...only real students are even more bad-ass!) The hitch was that she was in NYC, I was in MPLS and her deadline was in a week and a half. She sent me a link with some cell-phone-shots of her dresses and my jaw dropped. I knew that I needed to do absolutely everything I could to photograph this amazing pieces of art! The universe came together for us and it just so happened I was going to be in NYC that coming weekend, so we started planning our last-minute shoot!

The best part about my job is this sense of collaboration I get from working with other artists. It's amazing to just create with other amazing people who also have a vision. Tara really gave me free reign at the shoot and everything just simply fell into place! Before the day was done, I knew I wanted these images to be shared with the world and be published . 1) I wanted people to find/know/experience Tara and her beautiful collection. 2) I think these images are fucking amazing and I am way too excited about the whole project to NOT share this with you!

Through our conversations, I really began to respect Tara even more. She is on a mission to 'Revolutionize' the wedding industry and I absolutely believe she will do this!

A special THANK YOU to the Wedding Chicks for publishing this spread on their blog and sharing this with the world! Check out their review + Post HERE! (And we would love to hear your comments on the spread + designs overall!)

Here's a look at all of our original spreads! Please head over to the Wedding Chicks blog to see more photos + behind-the-scenes sketches from Ms. LaTour!

Here's to being remarkable!

Almost Taymous!!

I would LOVE to introduce you all to a fabulous new blog - Almost Taymous! I met Tamara (pronounced Tay-mar) about a year ago while photographing her brother's wedding with Brandon and we were instant friends! This. girl. is. hilarious!

Right after her brother's wedding, she lost her 'dream job' and was a bit conflicted as to what she should do next. She knew what she loved and she knew what she was good at...and all of a sudden it came to her, a blog. She channeled all of her energy into putting it together and I must say, I think it is going to be a hit!

Tamara loves everything celebrity, fashion, and trends. She is also always hot-on-the-gossip and never holds back her honest opinion about whatever is the latest hot-topic.

For her blog, she wanted to do a 'spoof' of celebrities', which she asked me to shoot. Our goal was to make them super sarcastic and cheezy, which I think we achieved! ;0)

I highly encourage you all to check out Almost Taymous and in her own words:

"After closely following the ups and downs of the lives of celebrities, it is clear that being famous has its price. So I will move in a slightly different direction, since anyone can be famous these days, only one can be Almost Taymous."

Here's to following your dreams!

LOVEe

Award Winning!!! Hell Yeah!

As I briefly stated in my previous blog post, I was super excited to find out that one of my prints had won in the 16x20 Print Competition in Las Vegas! I was incredibly excited, but then today I got the official results of all of my prints that were entered - and SURPRISE!!! Not one, but TWO of my prints were big winners! The two famous images are below and come from the fabulous Fine Lines shoot and the lovely Siegfried Wedding! Entering images in competitions is so much fun - and I also believe it is essential. It is most definitely a way to put yourself out there, and continually hold yourself accountable to creating solid, mind-blowing work. It's also very interesting to go out of your comfort zone and have judges critique your work, which is again, an essential part of growth for any artists!

Competitions can be a pretty penny to enter, and in the end, there is no guarantee that you will win. But I also think it is an investment in yourself as an artist. Not just in the cost of printing and actually entering, but an investment to your creative health. It feels so good to win...and without taking risks....I would never be AWARD winning! (For the 2nd year in a row...don't worry, I'm brushing my shoulder off right now! ;0)

LOVEe

Self Styled: The March Issue!

The March issue of Metro Magazine is on stands now! Here's a peek of this month's Self Styled Article...I'm loving it!

Remember to support the magazine industry buy picking one up!

LOVEe

Photogen Inc Featured: To Each Their Own Blog!

"We would  just love to feature you, your work in the MPLS fashionindustry, hear more about your style and inspirations..and just feature the talent that is Eliesa!!!!"

These are the words that came along in an e-mail a few months ago and of course I was more than happy to meet the lovely Kate and Molly of To Each Their Own.  This is a lovely fashion blog, focusing on fashion in the Midwest! Apparently these two sisters fell in LOVE with the November issue of Metro and they flew in from Chicago and Arizona to meet with me!

I'm very honored and humbled to be featured on not only photography, but my outlook on the Minneapolis fashion scene as well! What a treat!

I'm super happy with how the article turned out - CHECK IT OUT HERE!

 

Special THANKS to Kate and Molly for a fabulous afternoon and great conversation!

Here's to Fashion!

 LOVEe

The Keepers Issue!

The 2nd annual Keepers Awards are out in the January issue of Metro Magazine! The essence of this award is to honor 8 amazing artist (actors, musicians, dancers, etc) who are doing big things and that Minneapolis also wants to 'keep' in the city! When I got the assignment, I really wanted to focus on straight up portraits of these people. No bullshit, just a striking portrait. Take a peek at a preview of the article below + unpublished portraits of all the winners!

The Keepers are:

Brock Davis: Ad Man Taja Will: Dancer Monica Haller: Photographer / Writer Toki Wright: MC Randy Reyes: Actor Ethan Rutherford: Writer Max Lohrbach: Fashion Designer Mo Perry: Actor

Check out the full issue on news stands now!!

LOVEe

The [Film] Book!!

WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!

I am SUPER excited to share with you all the launch of my first book!!

It's been on my goal list for a while now to create a coffee table book and it really started out as a personal project for myself. I am a huge believer in creating something with your images. When we live in an age of computers and iphones, every image seems to stay on a machine. I love prints, canvas, albums and - alas - books!  As I started talking about this project, I started noticing an interesting response...people actually wanted to see it!

The [Film] Book features images from my film cameras over the last year. You all know how passionate I am about film, so this is very special to me! I also wanted to share my thoughts in the book so I chose to do so through quotes. I'm a big quote-girl, if you couldn't tell, and I thought there was no better way to inspire than to use references that you can take with you on a daily basis!

So, without further adieu...

I present to you...

The [Film] Book

If you are interested in purchasing a copy of The [Film] Book, click here to go to the Photogen Inc Store!

LOVEe