Naked on the Back Roads of Vegas

creating vulnerable fine art

How Jena Malone and Brooke Shaden taught me to strip my life down and be free.

   A few months ago I picked up the oversized As If magazine with Jena Malone on the cover. The photograph was extremely intriguing. That was the only reason why I really cared. Sure… Jena's character on the Hunger Games was kinda interesting, but not enough for me to really want to learn about her as a person.
   And then I read her interview.
   And then I was wrong.
   In it she talked about how horrible Hollywood can be and sometimes you just need to take your top off.
   I thought to myself… isn’t that kind of a typical Hollywood answer though? Let’s all just get naked!
   Then I kept reading.
   She herself was interested in photography, nature, exploring… actually being a very intriguing character herself. And then it got me thinking.
   What would it be like to roll around in the dirt naked? Or take a walk outside, naked.
   Because you’re presently all living in 2016 and the world is totally corrupt and overly sexualizes everything, I can see how you might think, as I did, that this is a bit much. Then I thought about it more as an instinctual thing, more caveman like, more natural, and then I realized. I got her point. Sometimes you just have to strip it all away away and be simple.

   Fast forward a few months after that when I attended WPPI in Las Vegas. Sin City. Ironic? I think not.
   I took a class with the amazing and inspirational Brooke Shaden. The class was on making vulnerable art.
   Now, we learned a lot in the class, but the main point was- what is it in your life or at that moment that makes you feel vulnerable? Embrace that, show that, share that, and you may just get someone in return opening up and living vulnerably.

   Vulnerable is defined as: susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm.

   How many times do we open our selves up for attack?
   I’ve always been a pretty honest and open person, especially with my art, so I feel like I may actually do it more than most. Not because I want to be attacked but because I have a NEED to express myself. And because my mom always taught me to be proud of who I am and take nothing from anyone, vulnerability wasn’t always a bad thing.
   But… I did realize there’s one thing that makes me vulnerable both emotionally and physically and that’s nudity.
   Clothes physically protect us from harm. Clothes emotionally protect us from harm. Yet I find myself, when wanting to make RAW art , that clothes get in the way. They cover us up and give us a completely different view of people.
   Think about it- don’t we judge people on their clothes and hair right away? Not in a bad way, it’s just a way that allows us to communicate to the world who we are. Imagine if clothes were gone and all I had to judge YOU on was… you. ONLY who you are in your own skin. Pure emotion and truth.
   Feeling vulnerable yet? Yeah… I am.

   So… My husband and I rented a car, drove miles and miles in to the deserted mountains of Nevada, and I became vulnerable and free.
 

   Envisioned and Edited by me. Shot and perfected by my husband.

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View all my Self Portraits

If you like this one check out my self Portrait Shedding Layers & The Revolution

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Check out this short video of us behind the scenes on our adventure!

Pink Lipstick and Green Duct Tape- a lesson on inner beauty

Day 346
"Pink Lipstick"

(A flash back to my 365 project done in 2010/2011)

   That's where this whole thing started- with pink lipstick. As I was getting ready I grabbed the tube full of waxy beautification and thought once I applied it, "Does this make me look cheap?" Which lead me to my next thought of what my mom always use to tell me, "It's all in how you present yourself."
   As I grew up I understood this and really tried to live by it. I tried to present myself as what I really was. I didn't act like a stupid blonde girl, bc I wasn't stupid. I didn't drink to fit in, because maybe I didn't want to fit in there. Then as I got older that phrase started to slightly bother me, bc I started to look at it a different way.
   If I tried to act classy, did that automatically make me a 'better' person? Or what if one day I decided to take everything completely unserious? Would that make people think I was immature and unfocused? Bc if that's what they thought- it wasn't true. So if they thought that, too bad for them, which, in my moms defense, was another thing she also lived by, "It doesn't matter what people think." 
   Some days I think, who cares how I present myself!? I am who I am inside. I know who I am! "It's all in how I present myself." What- am I like a package? A Christmas gift? Do you pick the one with the beautiful flowing ribbon, or do you settle for the one shoved in the plastic grocery bag? You have no idea what's inside!
   Yet- other days, I do realize, my packaging does count. At quick glance people get a sense of me, who I am, and where I fit into in this life. I express myself through my clothes, my hair, the music I listen to, and the art I create. 
   I think there's a fine line between caring what people think of you and caring what people assume of you- and that's probably what my mom meant all along. 
   So, at the end of the day, if they assume I'm cheap bc of my pink lipstick, let them, bc they are of no use to me then. And if they think I'm weird for packaging myself up in green tape to prove a point, then even better, bc I would never want to be labeled as normal anyways!

Port Huron, Michigan Artistic Body Photographer

2015 recap

Two Thousand Fifteen. 
Where do I begin?

All these beautiful, unique, life changing squares before me. 

My gosh. Every single one holds a face that has made me in to the artist, photographer, and person I am at this very moment, after another full long year of connecting with people through squares and rectangles that define who they are in just 1 moment of time.

   The beginning of 2015 started out with snow, love, pin ups, and models. I got to photograph people in the first few months of this year that would become friends of mine, have babies, get married, go on to be successful in their careers, win awards… Every person in those first squares are so much more than faces to me when I look back.

   At the very beginning of March my husband, Jake, and I went to Las Vegas for the biggest Photo Expo in, possibly, the world, WPPI. On the plain ride home I exploded a small notebook with ideas, inspiration, things I wanted to change, and ideas I wanted to create. That’s when The Revolution was born.

   Around May I took about 1 1/2 months off of work. I go through phases with my art, like we all do in life, but at that point I had realized that, if I didn’t make a change NOW I wasn’t going to be able to make that HUGE jump in to the art that I've always been drawn to, that really makes me happy and keeps me feeling alive. I had to make a cut in the timeline, so I disappeared for a bit. 

   You will see a lot of little squares that are of me this year. It’s not because I love myself that much but I find that inverting inwards helps me understand situations better. Sometimes I find messages to myself in my work before I’m even fully aware there’s a message to be found. Through my self-portraits I pushed past what I was comfortable with, what I thought I knew, and started over. I let go of what was holding me back and pushed towards what made me happy. I found myself outside more, exploring more, and having a better understand of what actually made me happy when it came to creating for others. 

   From that time The Pillow and The Pond and Floating through the Veil was born, as was another piece I am still waiting to release. 

   After that the squares starts to shift back to everyone else. The people who keep my art alive- you.
We did so many gorgeous seniors, hot bridal boudoir, families, even a few babes! We got to experience being with hundreds of people for weddings, big commercial shoots, I even climbed 100 feet up in to a giant Michigan Sequoia to get some shots of climbers. You rolled around in leaves, climbed up and down hills with us, got sassy with an old retro truck, sun gazed, and threw around flour. You laid in ponds, jumped on trampolines in sweaty haunted buildings, and stuck antlers in your hair.

   You made 2015 beautiful, truly, unremarkably beautiful. And I thank you for that. Over and over and over again.

   Here’s to another years of beauty, stories, and fairytales brought to life.

Double Exposure In Camera Art with Port Huron, MI Photographer - AJBC Photography

As humans I feel as though we have a really important role to play in Nature.

We shouldn't fight it, or be above it, we should be one with it. 

See, alone, we are still a part of the Earth, it's hidden inside us, it makes up who we are; we are strong individuals who hold unique traits, shapes, stories, and souls. Just like Nature, we grow, we root ourselves, we look up to the sky, and one day we all exhale with both feet on the ground, forever planted. 

But when we seek to live and indulge ourselves in nature, we no longer stand alone, and that is a very beautiful thing. Beauty in a way we may never fully understand, for the vastness of it goes beyond just ourselves. 

It's raw at every level. 

And it lets us know we can become a part of something bigger, with no judgements, just simplicity at it's purest and most beautiful form. 

This series demonstrates that coming together through Double Exposure of Human and Nature. 

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All Double Exposure images were done IN camera, no editing or photoshop work has been done to achieve these looks. 

(This print above available for purchase in my Fine Art Store!)

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Meet Raquelle. 

My main purpose of the shoot was to get beautiful Double Exposure images that told the story of Human Exposure and Nature. But once I saw how gorgeous she was all on her own, I knew we had to at least get a few shots showing that. Nothing distracting, not even professional hair and makeup, or a specific wardrobe. Just her and the camera. Natural Beauty.

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I can never help myself from going outside though. And as of late, I really know where my heart belongs when it comes to who I am when I create, and Nature plays a very large part in that. I don't know what I would do if clients confined me to a studio for the rest of my days. 
Who wants to miss out on natural, literally, all the way around, natural beauty like this? 

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Want to see some more cool stuff?

Check out this other Double Exposure Piece we did WITH the help of photoshop
And feel free to hop on over to Pinterest to check out all of our recent sessions, outdoors AND in studio!