Pink Hair and Purple Fabric Photoshoot

all photos by ryan burke

Photoshoot: "Justine (The Gender Bender)"
Date: September 12, 2006



In the middle of class the other day, I noticed Justine's amazing new hair color. I said across the room "hey, what are you doing tonight, wanna do pictures?" Right after class we went to wal-mart to pick up some supplies (props) for the shoot and then we had some fun for a couple hours. These photos are the result of this spontaneous photoshoot. I will probably end up using Justine as one of the characters in my Young Americans portrait project. As a temporary title, I am calling her the Gender Bender.

Hope you like this montage of the photoshoot. The "official" pictures are/will be posted in my deviant art gallery which you can find linked to at the top of this page.

Photoshoot: The Free Spirit

all photos by ryan burke.

Photoshoot: "Shannon in a Bed of Petals (The Free Spirit)"
Date: September 6th, 2006

My latest photoshoot was of Shannon Nester, a music major and a very nice friend of mine. Ever since I've known her, she has been happy and positive to be around. She's also very chill and fun; therefore, her character in my senior project was the "Free Spirit."

For this shoot, we decided to use the fields of Yorktown near the beach we used for Laura's photoshoot in my previous post. Laura came along on this shoot to help out. The photo I was aiming for has been posted in my deviant art and depicts Shannon playing the flute in an open field with flower petals floating in the air. I hope you enjoy all of the other photos here which were taken in the process of getting the main shot.

Photoshoot: Laura as the Optimist

all photos by ryan burke

Photoshoot: "The Optimist"
Date: September 2nd, 2006

Laura Errington is a good friend of mine and one of the most positive people I know. As such, for her portrait (another part of my senior sem portrait series) I wanted to capture her bright positive attitude. We decided that a beach would be the best place to go and wearing all white would contrast well against the water and sky. As a prop, we used Chinese yo-yos which she threw around as she danced on the beach. With all the color and movement, as well as Laura's wonderful smile, I think I was able to get a good photographic interpretation of her optimistic demeanor.

So...I hope you enjoy them!

Another thing we tried to do as a spur of the moment side project was to wrap Laura up in aluminum foil and have her as a statue on the beach. Peter Adams, my roommate helped come up with this idea and also helped put it together. The end result was a little ridiculous but pretty awesome as well.

Ouka Lele and Creative Portraiture

"The Hairdresser's" Serious. From top right: "Electric Shavers," "Lemons," "Squid," and "Turtles" (1979)

Ouka Lele is quite inspiring as a portrait photographer because her art is so unique and creative. She found her niche by combining her two favorite mediums, photography and painting. Lele would take these outrageous photos and then paint them to look vibrant and surreal.

Lele was born in Madrid, Spain in 1957. She has become one of the best known spanish artists in photography and printmaking; however, i have had trouble finding much more information about her so this post will primarily be just a showcase of her work.

"Escuela De Romanos" (1980), "The Kiss" (1980)


"Nude With Newspapers" (1981)


"The Sound of Someone You Love Who is Going Away and it Doesn't Matter" (1990), "Untitled (Maria with Shoes)" (1992)

all photos by ryan burke

Photoshoot: "The New Bohemian"
Date: July 24th, 2006

Probably the most exciting portrait photoshoot to date, this one with Mark Pangilinan involved a chaiselounge, a cello, an umbrella, and multiple marks in the same picture. I set up a tri-pod in an empty house next to my parents' house. They had bought the run-down house so that they could tear it down because it is such an eyesore. The one blue room in the house made for an awesome photo session. Mark had the idea of putting the chaselounge so we would have one piece of furniture. He used a laptop, book, and cello as his props and also changed clothes several times.





We moved outside to the field for the next part of the photoshoot. We had the idea that it'd be cool to put the chaiselounge in the middle of a field. We did the multiple Marks again but also played with making the scene look as strange/surreal as possible. We added an umbrella which matched his sandals and shirt.

To see some of the finished photos from this shoot please visit my deviant art gallery linked at the top of this page. Hope you like em!

Lauren Kosteski Photoshoot

-photos by ryan burke

Photoshoot: The Infamous Kosteski
Date: July 1st, 2006



Lauren was a friend of a friend (Amber, who I recently did a photoshoot with and posted photos from on May 25th) and she has now moved to New York. This photoshoot was a bit spur of the moment as I was down in Newport News for only one day to take care of some things. Lauren had been wanting a photoshoot since Amber's and I had been wanting to do photos of her for awhile because I thought she was so dynamic. The quickly scrapped together photoshoot was one of my best so far. Lauren was such a perfect person to photograph because she was so lively, and crazy, and drama-major-y. It's too bad we couldn't get more time than we did. It's also too bad that I didn't have enough room on my camera to hold all of Lauren's crazy self. But...I got what I got and I love the photos that came out of this. Hope you enjoy them.





Lauren Kosteski is the second in a serious of portraits I'm working on. Amber was the first. There will be a post about each shoot as they progress. I'm working on two new ones right now and then should be done and up in a week or so (i hope!).

Please visit the deviant.art gallery (link's at the top of this page with some sample photos from it) to see more of Lauren as well as everyone else I've had the pleasure of photographing.

Symmetry

-photos by ryan burke.

These are some more recent photos.
I like them because of their symmetrical balance and because of the life in them - especially the first one.

I just did a new photoshoot! Bigger post coming soon.