anna elliott photography

dan the man

kristin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:37:55 +0000

my little brother (he hates it when i call him that; he’s 34) has been staying with us for the past month. he’s making his way to maine tomorrow to work on an organic farm and i can’t believe how much i’m going to miss him. we weren’t close growing up and though we’ve come to like each other over the years it wasn’t until he was living with us that i came to know him and appreciate him and find out that he’s a really good guy and that we’re alike in so many more ways than either of us knew.

i made him sit in front of my backdrop this afternoon so i could get some photos of him. i don’t have any of him from the past few years and i want to remember every long-haired, hippy detail of him. he’s gone through a lot of changes over the past few years and i feel a little bit like a proud parent watching him learn who he is. i hate that maine is so far away and that i won’t be able to walk downstairs in the morning and see him at the counter with a cup of coffee hunched over his computer. he’s been an enormous help to me and has done everything from build a corner bench in our basement to babysit the kids to cook homemade pies. he’s also sat on the couch with me and shot the shit and talked about everything and nothing. i hate that it took me/us this long to figure out that not only do we love each other but that we really like each other, too.

she finally lost it…

kristin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:35:22 +0000

…her first tooth, that is. at the ripe old age of 7 years, 5 months and 11 days, kate lost her first tooth. she’s been moping over losing her teeth ever since her friends started losing them in kindergarten. some of you may know that kate has a growth disorder – meaning she doesn’t. her body doesn’t produce enough growth hormone for her to grow so she has been on human growth hormone injections daily since she was 2 1/2. because she is delayed in her growth, it took longer for her to lose her teeth and she has been absolutely, positively convinced that she was never. ever. ever. going to lose her teeth. no amount of reassurance could convince her otherwise and i think she was sure that until the tooth actually fell out into her hand that it was never going to happen.

thankfully it did and now she is already moping about the fact that her new tooth isn’t in yet.

does it ever end?

custom iphone covers

kristin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:24:06 +0000

i just ordered a custom iphone cover using a photo of kate and jack; check it out:

i’m excited to get it not just so i can show everyone how stupidly cute my kids are but because if the quality is good and the company is good to work with, i might start offering it to clients as a product they can buy when they book a regular session. seriously – how cool would it be to be able to have a photo of your kids or family on your phone? the thing i like best about this company is that it’s not just a sticker but a hard plastic case. very curious to see what it looks like in person.

i want, i want, i want this lens

kristin — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:52:56 +0000

hello loooooovah…….

it’s the nikon 50/1.4 lens which photogs affectionaly refer to, simply, as the G. i have the the D version of this lens but i can’t use it because i now shoot with a D700 which has a full frame sensor. the thing is, this lens – at around $500 – is really not expensive in the world of camera lenses (check out the cost of my 28-70/2.8mm for comparison) but i just can’t swing it right now. i have a few jobs coming up in the next few months and am hoping to make this little fella mine.

until then i am reduced to pining over it on the B&H website.

lighting setup

kristin — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 14:17:40 +0000

i saw this photo of roger ebert on cnn.com this morning (from an article in esquire magazine) and i adore the lighting. i would love to be able to create portraits like this but am having the damndest time trying to figure out the lighting setup. i’ve been looking through my lighting books and have been scouring my favorite lighting website – the strobist - to no avail. it seems like it would simply be a large softbox placed directly in front of the subject with maybe some black reflectors on either side of the subject to bounce back any stray light. i dunno.

anyone out there have any ideas? any book recommendations or website that might describe this type lighting?

kate

kristin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:18:22 +0000

playing model in the basement while the blizzard rages around us:

morning light

kristin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:48:24 +0000

i took these photos this morning around 7am when i got up and saw how gorgeous the light was. i also figured the plows would come today and this would be the last of the untouched snow.

ha ha ha. not.

kristin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:32:39 +0000

my friend emailed me this a few days ago when we got all the snow. now, with another round of snow bearing down on us (really? REALLY?), i had to share it. we are still snowed in at my house; they are supposed to have all the residential streets in our county plowed by tonight…

blizzard ‘10

kristin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:19:16 +0000

i had every intention of bundling up, strapping on my new gaiters and heading out to take some photos of the epic snowfall this morning.

until i did it and realized the snow was past my knees.

so plan b is to sit inside, work on a puzzle and polish off every bottle of liquor in the house.

(did mention that jeff is currently in balmy miami to do “work” for the superbowl? thank god my little brother happened to be in town visiting or i would be seriously up a creek.)

Young Adult Cancer Survivor Series

kristin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:21:38 +0000

i’m so excited to be able to finally post about this project. i was contacted by The Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults to do a series of photos of people involved with the fund who were either cancer survivors themselves or had lost loved ones to cancer. i jumped at the chance and the photos were revealed at an event on saturday night which marked the fund’s 12th anniversary.

these are the ones the folks at the fund chose to display:

and these are some others that i particularly liked: