Hannah, the Model

Some weeks ago a friend of mine had asked me to take some photos of her for a profile picture she needed for work. Hannah and I met up yesterday early in the morning and had breakfast at this cute place in Costa Mesa called The Side Street Cafe.

What I love about this place is it's super homey feel. The menu is hand written and photo copied and the water is served in a glass canning jar.

We sat outside in the gorgeous weather which we were fortunate to have considering it had just started raining the night before. I had the B.A.S.C Omelet (bacon, avocado, and sour cream) and Hannah had the eggs benedict.

How did it taste, you ask?

What do you think??


So after a delightful breakfast and catching up on drama in our lives we headed to Newport Beach for our photo shoot.

Now... let me remind you that I am NOT a professional photographer. Yes, I can take some good photos of food but people are a whole different ball game. I had actually asked a photographer friend and found a wonderful website that had A LOT of information about portrait photo taking and let me tell ya... just because you read stuff doesn't necessarily mean you know it. There were all these tips and notes I had in mind but it just fell out of my head as soon as I picked up the camera.

One of the things I realized is that you have to make your subject feel comfortable. You can't just start snapping away hoping they'll know what to do.

After a while I think we were just laughing at each other because it was so awkward! I'm not the best at multi-tasking especially when I'm out of my element and I wish I could have had the skill set to engage her so she didn't have to think about the camera.

I took over 600 photos (many of them back to back to maximize the amount of clear shots in the midst of all the shakey ones) and I got maybe a dozen that were good in terms of composition and lighting.

All in all it was a fun day. The photos turned out great and I had a lot of fun.

Thanks for being patient with me, Hannah! Hope you had fun too despite the awkwardness!!