I have this thing with graphic tees

 Lately, I've been having this love affair with shirts with words on them. And for an introvert who avoids talking to strangers in public at all costs but still wants to express herself in witty ways, graphic tees are the perfect solution. Here's a few of my favorites!

From the fine folks over at Stay Home Club. I am their Vice President, and we have bi-monthly meetings at.....hahahhaaa, we don't ever meet up, silly.

I love this one by Little Adi + Co. Because that's the great thing about having twins: instant tribe!

Another one from Stay Home Club, because I'm their VP, remember? I like to wear this one on days I feel particularly down and mopey. Also, cats.

Caffeine and Leslie Knope are more of my spirit animals these days, and whiskey less so, but still. A fun shirt to wear. I wore this recently to a kid's birthday party, and got approving nods from a few of the dads there. Or they just knew I have twins and thought, "Yeah I'd drink whiskey if I had twins too." Disclaimer: I do not drink whiskey because I have twins. I drink whiskey because it's delicious. Shirt is by Look Human.

Dear Sleeping In, I took you for granted in my 20's and early 30's. I never realized how sacred you were, and that you wouldn't last forever. I'm sorry for that. Now it's a luxury if I get to sleep in til 8 while my husband feeds the kids in the mornings on the weekends. But that's okay. This is the Era of Having Kids now. I'll pour out a bit of my 40 later on tonight in memory of you. Shirt is by Pebby Forevee.

photoshoot flashback // specimen

Photography: Lisa Kimberly // Fashion design: Annalynn Luu // Jewelry: Sweet1985 // Hair: Badri Kermani // Makeup: Danielle Henry // Model: Mio White // Assistance: Kristina Yamamoto

Once upon a time, before the twins came along, I collaborated on a really fun photo shoot with some talented women. And then I never got around to blogging it, until now. So here goes! 

I worked with two very different designers and a sculptor, not to mention a fantastic creative team. It still blows my mind what can happen when all sorts of creative types input their skills and talents for a shoot, and how lucky I feel that I get to photograph the magic. Looking at this image humbles me, because I know that I am just a slice of this image; it takes more than one person to make a great shoot happen, and this is proof of that.

This dress was designed by Annalynn Luu, and it's made out of....wait for it....trash bags. Unfreakingbelievable. Our mood board for this shoot was a little bit Victorian, a little dark, with some insect imagery thrown in....so while editing this, I decided to add the moth, and it seemed to fit pretty well. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also partly inspired by Miss Aniela and her ongoing surreal fashion series. She often incorporates animals or objects into her fashion images, so this is a bit of a homage to that.

Those beautiful elk sculpture were made by the uber-talented Zynada, and they fit in so perfectly with this shoot. Not too long after this shoot, I photographed more of her sculpture work individually, which you can see on her website. Sweet 1985 also provided some of her rad jewelry for these looks, which was another bonus.

Photography: Lisa Kimberly // Fashion design: Jaqueline Hazel // Hair: Badri Kermani // Makeup: Danielle Henry // Model: Mio White // Assistance: Kristina Yamamoto

This amazing cardboard dress was made by the second designer I worked with on the shoot, Jaqueline Hazel. Another creative soul who makes her garments out of unconventional materials. She was inspired by sort of an underwater vibe, and to me, Mio looked like this beautiful, ethereal mermaid.

I wanted to play around with some in-camera motion blur for this garment, which is harder than it looks to capture. But out of dozens of images, this one spoke to me the most.

This was probably my favorite look/shot of the day! Another amazing cardboard dress design by Jaqeuline.

And here's some behind-the-scenes from that day!

Badri Kermani did her hair magic for the shoot, and I've worked with her before, so it was great to see her and collaborate with her again.

My good friend Danielle graciously lent her makeup skills, and she really nailed it with all the different looks. So many creative women working together under one roof = my heaven :)

From left to right: Zynada, Annalynn, and Jaqueline.

This was seriously such a fun shoot, and I'm glad that I was a part of it. Hopefully I'll be doing more artsy fartsy things in the near future :)

photoshoot // wet hot electric summer

Oh man, this blog post is waaay overdue. I shot this over the summer, and even though I've already shared the final images on my flickr and facebook pages, I wanted to write up a little something to share how this shoot came about, some behind-the-scenes, and even some unedited raw images because there were so many great ones. So here we go!

This was my second time shooting garments made by my fashion designer friend/favorite Serbian lady Tea Ninkovic (You may remember my forest shoot with her last year). I'd been itching to try some kind of swimsuit shoot, and I knew she already had these unique swimsuits on hand, so it seemed a natural collaboration. In fact, Tea had already had some of her suits photographed before by a different photographer, but we wanted to make it a real summer-y shoot, complete with a swimming pool.

A friend of mine who lives nearby has a pool at her place, but I'd never seen it before, so I went over one day to scout it out.

(from my Instagram)

Um, yes please? Not only is it a great-looking pool, but there's tons of greenery and plants and fruit trees surrounding the backyard, so I knew we could make it work. I was inspired immediately. I kindly asked my friend if we could take over her backyard for a day, and she said yes. So far so good!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I asked my friend Debbie Chialtas if she wanted to come on board and help style the shoot. She has a background in fashion design and loves to collaborate on freelance projects, so she was totally game. We decided that Tea's suits would lend themselves really well to a sort of 80's-but-more-modern vibe. Edgy, but not too gothic, and using bright colors. And this is where the blessed Pinterest comes so in handy for mood boards. We started pinning our little hearts out. Here's a couple screenshots!

We were basically pinning ideas and inspiration for the hair/makeup looks, accessories, posing, mood, and even post-processing/editing. It's also a really good idea to have these mood boards handy on the day of shooting, and of course, to show them to your model and hair/makeup artist well in advance. It keeps everyone on the same page. But on the flipside, I also like to keep things flexible when I shoot, and not feel restricted to doing only certain looks. Sometimes happy accidents or impromptu ideas make the best shots!

So the day of our shoot arrives, and we set to work!

Kalia White did the hair and makeup, and I worked with her last year on another shoot, so it was great to have her on board. And the lovely Salina Rene was our model, who I met through Debbie. She's done pin-up type modeling before, so I knew she'd be comfortable in front of the camera. Not to mention the swimsuits fit her like a glove.

Accessories! Better to have too much than not enough, amirite ladies? Also worthy of note: those rad yellow pumps that Debbie helped me find at a thrift shop for 8 bucks!

Me, on a crate. This photo makes me laugh because it kind of looks like I'm 12 weeks pregnant or something, but I assure you, I was not. Just a food baby, I swear.

Here's one of the resulting images from me standing on a crate. I love this photo so much. It makes me wanna go to Palm Springs for a week, and do absolutely nothing by a pool.

This shot really epitomizes the whole mood I was aiming for....just this sun-drenched, scorching-hot, almost...hyperreal quality. With all that expanse of aqua blue water. I love it. And I have to note that Tea also made the rad umbrella hat that Salina's wearing. So quirky and fun.

So by this point in the day, the sun was high overhead, with practically zero clouds. I really wanted Salina in the shade for this shot on the diving board, so we had to improvise. There were a couple really tall standalone umbrellas next to the pool, so Tea helped me drag one over, which was not easy due to the extremely heavy metal base. But it worked!

Another one of my favorite shots. I really should show you the original photo sometime, because man, there was a LOT of clone-stamping/cleaning up I had to do in this image. There was a pool-cleaning hose/pump thingy inside the pool, so whenever I shot her in/next to the water, we'd have to move the hose around as best we could to get it out of the way. But inevitably, it would end up in the shot, because the hose would start moving around like a snake as soon as you let go of it. Such was the case here, but I loved Salina's pose and the composition so much that I refused to let a silly hose ruin the photo.

And now I present to you some of the raw unedited images from that day that I really like.

I briefly messed around with the idea of Salina posing with a beach ball I brought, but not all ideas work. She still looks great though. And the yellow pumps make an appearance!

Pretty close-up makeup shots. And the zipper-tie necklace is made by Tea as well.

I really like the rainbow bokeh flare going on in the left photo.

So behind the backyard is even more backyard, and it's all wonderfully overgrown, so I wanted to try some shots there. I had brought my flash kit and wanted to use it back here, but lo and behold, my flash trigger battery was dead, and I didn't have a spare. Bummer. But I shot some natural-light images anyway. Also, more umbrella hats!

So we were basically at the end of our shoot, and feeling great, so we told Salina, "This is a bathing suit shoot, and we have a pool, so like, get wet or something!" It didn't matter if her hair and makeup got messed up, this was just for fun. And I started snapping away. She floated around, and I learned that it's really hard to make a still photo of someone floating on her back with her eyes closed NOT look like....lying dead in a pool? (no offense to you Salina, you looked amazing, it was all me). I must work on that :)

So long story short, it was a successful shoot, and I'm so grateful to everyone who participated and helped make it happen. One last final gif group shot!

it's a gif party!

Oh hey, it's me and the creative team I recently worked with on a rad fashion shoot! In gif form, because gif's are fun :)

From left to right: Zynada Aurelio, Badri Kermani, Mio White, yours truly, Jaqeuline Banting, and Annalynn Luu. Danielle Henry and Kristina Moto were also part of the team, but they had to leave before I could take these photos.

I'm about to post some behind-the-scenes on my facebook page, so take a gander if you'd like :)

Haute As Ever at Del Mar

For the first time in what seems like eons (but in actuality was only a couple weeks), the outside temperature has dropped below 90 degrees, and I am starting to feel like a normal, non-rageful human being. Living in a house without air conditioning of any kind has evidently brought out the Not-Fun-Lisa side of me, where going to my local Target to buy an electric floor fan and finding out they're completely sold out induced a mini panic attack (luckily, Wal-Mart next door had plenty). Even my poor husband, who is currently thousands of miles away from me, had to endure my bouts of grumpiness and listen to me complain about my layers of sweat via Skype dates. Sorry, husband. I'm much better now.

So besides cooler temps, fun things are happening this week! I have two shoots this weekend, and the first one is sort of a shoot mixed in with a event at the Del Mar Race Track.

I was invited to this event by Kylie that I met at last month's Creative Connection, and I was all "heck yes!" I had planned to bring my camera of course to photograph all the swanky, dressed-up people that were sure to be there, so when she later emailed me to ask if I could shoot some fashion portraits at the event for Urban Style, I of course said yes again. It was like she was in my head. So I'm super psyched. Also, if any San Diego friends are reading this and you have some time to kill this Saturday, come to this event and say hi! All you have to do is RSVP and it's free! I've never been to a horse race before either, so I'll probably be asking silly questions like, "How do I know which horse to bet on?" and "What's up with all the fancy hats? Am I at a Spanish wedding?"

My second shoot this weekend is literally the day after the Del Mar thing, and all I can say for now about it is that it's a fashion shoot with a model I've worked with before, and I'm going to be up suuuper early. And hopefully the weather cooperates. And there's animals involved. I just hope we're not in over our heads :)

fashion shoot // birds and lions and spiders, oh my!

So last month I organized a shoot with fellow photografriend Kristina and I couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Considering it was my first time trying to put together something like this, I don't think I did too shabby. I really just wanted to collaborate with a great team and shoot some unusual-looking clothes.

the bird of juno

All the clothing designs were made by Tea Ninkovic, a recent fashion design graduate that I got in touch with via facebook. I really wish she had a website so I could link to her work, but I think she's still working on that. I love that she doesn't make just simple skirts and sweaters; they're more like costumes. They're colorful, loud and definitely not boring.

the young lioness

As far as a concept or artistic vision, I really didn't have one, at least not while I was shooting. I kind of just let the clothes and the surroundings inspire the shoot, and it wasn't until I started editing my images that I began to make this connection of an animal or creature in the woods. Hence the photo titles such as the bird of juno, which refers to a peacock, or Kapara's web, which refers to a species of spider.

Kapara's web

My model was Taryn, and she was awesome to work with. Super sweet and professional. That shot above is probably my favorite from the day. There were all these twisted dead branches on the ground, and when I asked her to hold one of them and I started shooting, something just clicked. It totally fit the mood of her outfit. And then later while editing, I took a chance and added some spiderweb texture, and bam. this happened.

Badri killed it again with the hair and makeup. I love working with that woman.

This shot was one of many that I fired off while Kristina was shooting, and I kept coming back to it while reviewing my photos. I think that I love it so much because it's also one of those "in between" shots....those times when Taryn stopped posing in between actual posing. There's just something so human and fragile about this one.

I think I'll save the behind-the-scenes photos for tomorrow! Stay tuned :)

the sleepiest fashion editorial ever.

{all images via}

This editorial spread that I came across on Jezebel today is both amazing and kind of confusing. What were they trying to say with this? That being a woman and doing mundane tasks is incredibly tiresome? Were they trying to bring awareness to narcolepsy? And what the heck is going on with that eyeball soup? I NEED TO KNOW MORE.

Storyline aside, I love all of it. The styling, the lighting, the good ole fashioned weirdness. I would totally wear the shirt with the eyes all over it. Maybe even the puffy pink bear sleeved dress too.