Interview with Cocoa L.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Hi there! My name is Cocoa, I'm from Huntsville, AL, and I'm a 17-year-old photographer. I read a lot of books, doodle, and sometimes do theatre, but mostly I just take pictures of stuff.

How did you first get interested in art and photography? 

To tell the truth, I honestly just fell into photography. However, I've been doing "artsy" stuff all my life as I'm very right-brained. When I was very little I drew a lot, and I also have a bunch of community theatre experience (which I still do in high school), and that's great because it helps me entertain the young kids and keep them focused. As for photography, though, I started off playing around with my mom's point-and-shoot and taking photos of my backyard and pets and whatnot. I remember I used to take her old Kodak around the Target shopping center and take photos of everything just for the heck of it, but eventually I realized that I wanted to learn more about photography and get more serious about it. I think things just kind of went from there.

Most people would consider you very young to be so skilled and talented, is there something you did or something that happened that you think helped this process?  

Practice, practice, and more practice! I carry my camera just about everywhere and try to take photos, whether it be for clients or just for me, at least once a week. I also spend a lot of time reading photography books, magazines, and online things. For the most part I'm self-taught.

How did you decide to start a business?

There was never really a conscious decision, to be completely honest. People started asking me to photos and so I eventually I made a website, got business cards, and before I knew it I was getting tons of job offers. It's kind of funny how that stuff works- I never really meant to become this involved, but I love it more than anything and I want portrait photography to be my career.

What would you say to other artists who are trying to get a start?

Again, the most important thing is to practice lots! Also make sure to listen to constructive criticism, but don't let rude people discourage you. I was told on a forum when I was just starting out that my work was garbage, which upset me a lot, but I eventually learned not to let that kind of negativity get to me. If you love it, keep doing it. It's as simple as that.

What is your favorite thing in the entire world? 

I have lots of favorite things- my camera, my hedgehog Finnegan, wintertime, good books, stormy days... I could go on and on. I think it's safe to say that I really enjoy life in general.

Do you have a favorite photograph (your's or someone else's)? What is it and why?

For some reason I always get this question, but I can never really think up a decent answer. I tend to favor the recent stuff when it comes to my own photography. Normally I'm particularly fond of whatever's on the front page of my website, and that changes a lot. As for other people's work, well, I don't know! I look at so much photography that I really don't have an all-time favorite image. Tough question!

Last but not least, where can we find you and your art?

My website is http://photosbycocoa.com/, and if you live in the Huntsville area, you should definitely check it out! I shoot everything- children, families, seniors, engagements, weddings, you name it. I also have a blog, which you can find at http://photosbycocoa.wordpress.com/. I should also mention that I'm working on getting a studio at Lowe Mill alongside the fabulous Kayla Byrge of Fig Tree Jewelry (http://www.etsy.com/shop/figtreejewelry), which should be exciting. Lastly, if you want to become a fan, I have a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/photosbycocoa. Voila!

 

(Almost) wordless (almost) wednesday

Behind the scenes: Photography

There's a lot that goes into running a jewelry business, and today we wanted to give you a little behind the scenes look at one of the things we enjoy the most, other than jewelry making. We love the process of photographing jewelry because, like making jewelry, it requires creativity and ingenuity, and, like jewelry, it has its challenges and triumphs.
When we first started our website, we were taking photos with a fujifilm finepix (this was several years ago) in standard indoor lighting on a counter, or a counter covered with a t-shirt. The photos were very plain and utilitarian. In the pictures below, you can see the jewelry fairly clearly, but not in great detail, and it doesn't "jump out and grab you" like the jewelry would in person.





The next change in our photo setup was to take pictures with a newer camera (a canon powershot a-510) in a completely dark room with the flash on. The resulting photos were better, but, like the one below, looked washed out and tended to have noticeable "hot spots".




About this time, we found a great forum of fellow jewelry artists who suggested creating a studio or lightbox. We thought this would probably be more money and more trouble than it was worth but a few of the artists said that the $5 jewelry studio setup actually worked quite well.

As a result, we decided to take on the challenge of creating a light box. It's simple enough--it's just a clear rummbermaid/sterilite/tupperware style box that you take outside in the sunlight. We often weren't able to take pictures during the day, and room lighting wasn't doing enough, so on someone's suggestion, we got clip on aluminum lamps (available at any hardware store), and 100 watt "natural light" bulbs.






At first we had problems with this setup because the light would flow in over the top of the box and we ended up with a lot of pictures like this:




Thanks again to our forum friends, we found this information filled video on photographing jewelry. Unfortunately, the tutorial suggested things involving power tools that we did not have. So, Hillary went to a local wal-mart to see if we could somehow adapt the ideas in the tutorial to our situation. As luck would have it, Sterlite was, at the time, making a container with a hole in the lid. The whole point of the power tools in the tutorial was to make a container with a hole in the top, so the lid was perfect for our purposes.




Once we used the box above, we started getting photos like this:





You'll notice these are much clearer, detailed and brighter, but you might also notice some unevenness in the lighting, especially in the first picture. This was because clipping the lights to the table only lit the pictures from the bottom and sides. It took us a long time to figure out this issue but last month we added one more thing to the set up: A wine rack. Hillary only ever uses a wine rack for about 3 months out of the year during the winter holidays, so she thought we could put it to better use during the rest of the year.







Here are some photos we recently took with this setup (note that the background fabric is different in these than in the others on this page). In case you were wondering, we now have a canon powershot a-590.







Clipping one light on the the top of the wine rack and one on the table makes the appearance of these photos much more even and much less shadowy. We're pretty happy with the setup now. The only foreseeable change would involve the Easter Bunny bringing us a camera or two.



P.S.: look for the last piece to be listed on our etsy this weekend.