Alt Summer Fiesta Frida!

This was my third opportunity to teach at Alt Summit and, as usual, it was so much fun and we were so happy to be a part of it! We’ve had so many opportunities from attending ALT; we highly recommend it if you are a blogger.

This time, I taught a class called Photoshoot: from Start to Finish.  In the 1.5 hour course, we went over how to create a concept for a photo shoot or blog post: sourcing, styling, lighting, shooting and editing all live! We thought it would be fun to share some of the images and the behind-the-scenes ideas for the class.

To start, we needed to come up with a concept for the shoot that we worked with in the class. We wanted to do a party theme with a DIY.  My sister, Stephanie, came with me to ALT to help assist and she was full of amazing ideas, but when she showed me the Frida Kahlo cookies Elsie created from A Beautiful Mess, I couldn’t resist.  So we started to call the party “Fiesta Frida” and I had my good friend Kauti create these fabulous sugar cookies based on ABM’s tutorial (the only difference in ours is royal icing).  Frida is one of my favorite artists and, coming from San Antonio with a full week of Fiesta celebrations each year, it seemed the perfect fit for us.

For the DIY we talked about creating a a flower crown since Frida wears them so often in photographs and in her own self portrait paintings.  But they are so popular right now we wanted to come up with something original.  So we used mini-party fans from My Mind’s Eye and giant pom poms in bright fiesta colors we pulled from Frida’s paintings.  They were a big hit and would be fun to create in different colors for all sorts of parties.

Next, we needed an idea for a photo backdrop because it’s a party and I highly believe every party needs a photo booth!  I really wanted to use the card stock from My Mind’s Eye. There are some great colors and textures and I thought it would be fun to play with that.  Stephanie had a 4×6 piece of walnut left from her last party so we knew we were going to use that as a base (recycle and reuse! It’s a good thing as Martha would say) but we still didn’t have an idea until I came across this skirt from Anthropology.  Sometimes the best ideas come in the most surprising ways. Like when you are last minute shopping for ALT because your closet is sadly lacking in the fashion department!

I love this skirt and I thought it would be great as a backdrop. So we got to cutting lots of triangles from the MME cardstock and gluing it down.  There will be a tutorial in the future on the My Mind’s Eye’s blog. I think I really need to own this skirt now as a reminder of how fun this class was.

But really, the very best part of any party are the guests, only this time, instead of guests, we had students and attendees of ALT!  They were so much fun! We spent the end of class shooting lots of head shots in front of our wall.  (Not everyone in class is pictured and if you attended and want your photo, send us an email!)

As you can see, it was a super fun class to teach and I hope everyone who attended got a lot out of it and practical tips to take with them on their next photoshoot!

Are you interested in learning more about photography? Should we do more post about our process? Let us know!