New Year, New Photos from Grip the Mat's Bendy Brunch at Union Kitchen Ivy City

Happy New Year, internet world! I hope over the last few weeks you had some time to enjoy the wonderful winter holiday season and catch up with family and friends.

Mr. Man and I worked until the later December calendar days before heading off to the Caribbean for a cruise with his family. It was totally magical! But more on that in another post once I get around to editing the photos :)

Before I set sail for my holiday vacation this December, I had the wonderful opportunity to donate my time and talents to shoot another event for the wonderful DC-based yoga event start-up, Grip the Mat. I've shot many of their events before and was delighted to be asked back to shoot for them again!

One of Grip the Mat's hallmark's is it's "pop-up" event style, which gives attendees the chance to practice their flow in some of DC's funkiest locations. This Bendy Brunch took place at Union Kitchen, Ivy City, which is a food incubator in the DC-area.

Tell you what, I've never shot a yoga event in a kitchen before -- and it was totally fabulous, as was the food!

Shooting these events is always so fun :)

The Art of the Headshot

Growing up, I always thought photographers were people who spent all day shooting beautiful, glamor-shot like headshots of people in big, airy photography studios.

The way TV represented the industry, photographers looked like they had the coolest, easiest funnest job in the world (oh, and every single one of them knew how to make any person look amazing) and I loved everything about that.

Fast forward to today, and I'll be the first person to tell you that my warped view of the photography industry and the ease of taking a basic, good headshot was 100% completely and totally warped.

See, as an event-journalism style photographer, I find posed photography challenging. Taking headshots, shooting family photos, etc. isn't exactly hard -- but it requires a different type of thinking and approach than event-based shooting.

That being said, I'm currently trying to amp up my portraiture and posed photography skills, and have recently had a couple headshot shoots to kick off my campaign to improve my portraiture skills.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of shooting a mini headshot session with the lovely Susan Gasper who lives and works in Washington, D.C. We headed to the Rosedale Conservancy in Cleveland Park for her photoshoot and captured a few really nice shots on a bright and sunny April morning.

Later that same week, I did an evening mini headshot session for a dear friend of mine, Moira Dhaliwal, at the gardens near the Smithsonian Castle. She really wanted to capture the blooming magnolias in her headshots, as well as some of the interesting surroundings.

All and all, I'm happy with the work of these two shoots, although I'm constantly trying to improve.

Photographer friends out there, what tips do you have to make my natural light posed photography even better?