michigan

ASAD 2024

2024 brought me lots of good times with my friends (old and new), family, and my favorite animals (old and new). This year also gave me time to explore through good food and travel. 2024 also started me down a path of figuring out who I want to be, and what I want out of life.

This year’s traveling was off to a slower start than usual. I didn’t go out of town until May. In May, I went to Nashville for a wedding. We stayed at Opryland, went to the museums, and I knocked out another state from my list of riding a horse in every state. My next vacation was to my home, Ohio. I came in to help my best friend Sam, prep for her baby shower. It’s so fun for me to watch my people succeed and I love standing by them as they grow. I am now a very proud auntie to a baby Enzo. While I was in Ohio, I reconnected with some other friends I hadn’t seen a long time, and I am so grateful for my time spent in Ohio this year. In September, I went to Chicago, and while in Chicago I saw a broadway play, completely fan girled in museums, and of course, hung out at the bean. The last place I went this year, was to West Virginia for Chris’s grandfathers Funeral. Under the circumstances, it was nice to spend the with his family, and meet some new faces.

I also gained an orange cat, named Coyote. Chris was out on a run, and had a little kitten follow him. Coyote had a collar on, so he brought him home. A few days later, we took him to the vet to check for a chip. The good news is he had one, the bad news was that it was connected to our local animal shelter. Coyote was supposed to be in foster care. We were asked to bring him in the shelter for a neuter appointment the next day. So, I asked about him when we dropped him off and they called me back after his surgery to tell me the foster parents surrendered him, and I went to pick him up the next day! He is a very sweet, playful, crazy boy and I am lucky to have him. I also have been feeding a few stray cats in the neighborhood, trying to get them acclimated to people, So that I can re-home or send them to our local shelter to be adopted.

I’d like to give a special shoutout to my horse family and trainers at the Equestrian Center. They help me everyday to be a better rider, and a better, stronger version of myself. My buddy Brigand is getting older and more injury prone. This summer while riding, he became lame and unfortunately hasn’t fully recovered. He has lots of good days, and a few days that hurt my heart. Im grateful to be riding with him on all of the days he is feeling well enough. However, I am now riding multiple horses more often, and learning to like different things about each of them, which is pretty cool. I still make sure Brigand gets the attention he deserves, and a big bucket of banana mash when I am done.

I hope you enjoy watching a glimpse of my year. If you want to see more, below you can watch this years video. The links to my other ASAD videos and the blogs to go along with it. Be on the look out next year for 2025!

If you cannot see the video this blog, click here.

Links to other blogs in yearly order are here!

2023
2022
2021
2020
2019

Watch Product

I have been trying to add more images to my product side of my portfolio lately, These images of the watch were really fun to do. When I was in school, I made a watch image that I like a lot and put a lot of effort into, but this one trumps it, therefore this one stays, and the other must go.

These images were really fun to make, because I do not work with male models as much, so it becomes more challenging for me in the sense of posing, and things that look natural.

Let me know what you think!

10.12.21: A Wedding to Remember

“TWO ARE BETTER THAN ONE, BECAUSE THEY HAVE A GOOD REWARD FOR THEIR TOIL. FOR IF THEY FALL, ONE WILL LIFT UP HIS FELLOW.”

ECCLESIASTES 49-12

I had a great time photographing this sweet family. on their special day! This was a unique experience for me because it was such a small and intimate ceremony of only about 12, including my bride and groom, The hardest part about shooting a wedding on the beach is always the sun, but I think I did the newlyweds justice.

2020 ASAD Final Video

     The hardest part of posting new content for me, whether it’s my photography or my videos is writing about them. Although a close second is showing anything I create at all. One of my college professors once told me, that if I liked my work, and saw no need for improvements, than I was not a real artist. I haven’t even posted my work or my life on social media sites lately because I do not think I have anything of importance to share. With that being said, I am sorry for the silence from the last year.

     This year has been a lot for everybody. Myself included. The pandemic has been hard in many different ways, some I cannot even imagine. For me, it brought my household down to me, as the only earning member for 3 months, halted all future traveling plans, and added to my anxiety as a whole. The last time I left my beautiful beach city was in February to go to Atlanta right before everything started to lock down.

    In addition to the world events, one of my roommates moved out, and with that, he took his cat, which after two years of living with, I was quite fond of. Although, this lead to the addition of my boyfriend’s sister, who I have called my sister for years. She later left again, due to a fight with her brother; however, while she was living here, I was able to help her through a really hard time, which brought us even closer than we were before. I have gained her back as a roommate recently in this current year. 

     Not all things this year have been hard times though. When my roommate left, I lost a little buddy, but it also gave me the opportunity to gain my cat. I got him from the shelter when he was 3 and half months old. His shelter name was Tutti Frutti, but I call him Lemon, among other names. A great thing that has happened this year amongst the pandemic and life hardships is simply being able to spend time with my family and friends. This just became trickier to make sure everyone was safe of course. I also turned 26, and witnessed my second hurricane.

     Also this year, my grandpa became ill, more mentally than physically. My family and I had to spend all year only hoping for the best possible outcomes for him and the rest of us involved. My dad also became ill this year, but is expected to make a full recovery. However, my family did lose my Great Aunt Phyllis. Who will truly be missed. The last time I talked to her on the phone she told me I was spoiled for living at the beach, and to take advantage of it.

    Now that I have given a little background for my video, let’s get to the technical skills. There were many great aspects that made my life easier while creating the final, like creating monthly bins to keep all my clips organized instead of the mess I had the first time around, where all 365 videos were all in the same folder.

      When there are good parts to a project, there are always ways to improve. Some of the things that I will change for this current year’s video are taking all the videos on one device, instead of having them spread across three. This is helpful when ordering the videos because it’s much easier to keep track of the dates. Rather than scrolling through three devices at a time trying to sort through the order. I would recommend not waiting until near the end of the year to put the videos together because it becomes very overwhelming. Lastly, I need to remind myself to make all my videos horizontal, and with better lighting all the time.

     This is incredibly long, maybe one of my longest blogs ever. With that being said, please enjoy my A Second A Day video for 2020, and be on the lookout for new images, and next year’s video. If you liked the sneak peaks I did last year, let me know and I will bring them back.

This link below, will send you to last years blog post to my ASAD 2019 video.

ASAD 2019 video here

One Year in Florida!

Hey everyone! As the title of this blog post says, on this day last year, I moved to Florida. Wow! Time goes by way too quickly. As I was thinking about this, I realized I never posted a blog to tell everyone that didn't already know I moved, that I moved! Let mr explain why we left Michigan, and chose Florida in the first place.

I have a lot to catch you up on! First things first, I moved out of Michigan almost a year ago. I ended up in the Florida panhandle in a city called Destin Florida, right along the gulf coast in that small part of Florida that has the different time zone. In the last year, i’ve been settling in and getting to know the area. I also bought my first car, celebrated Chris and I's 3 year anniversary, celebrated my 24th birthday, Chris’s 26th birthday, survived my very first hurricane, traveled to many cities, (Atlanta, New Orleans, Pensacola, Pittsburgh, Ripley, Van Wert, etc.) but I have also been shooting lots of new work, networking, and brainstorming. As some of you may know, I even started to better my video skills. (link to my video project blog below)

One of the most common questions we got while fulfilling our moving process, was simply why did we decide to move. Well the truth is we had many reasons why we wanted to move. Firstly, we wanted to explore a new area. The town we were living in was called Midland, Michigan. Midland is a nice area, but it was really small. I think the main reason we stayed for so long was because Chris’s college was based out of Midland, and because I was so sick the previous year. (Check out the blog post an overdue life update for more information. blog link at the bottom.). Secondly, we decided to leave to help me branch out in a new area and find an area with more fashion photography opportunities. As you can imagine, living in a small town only consisting of family run retail portrait studios was not the best job environment for me. Although I was still abled to make some pretty great connections, we felt it was time to move on. So as soon as Chris was abled to get into all online classes, we started talking about what we wanted in the next place we lived. So we made a list and as part of our criteria, we wanted warmth, fun, and job opportunities. We first decided on Tampa. So Chris moved down first in January to apartment hunt for us starting in Tampa, but we didn’t see anything we could see ourselves in. Luckily we have a friend who was looking for a new roommate in the Destin area so Chris went up to visit , and I came down in March.

I can’t wait to show you all my new work that will be coming up on the website soon. but for now, im going to show you some of my candids, personal milestones, and a few trip images that I have taken this past year to show you around my new area the only way I know how to. I hope you enjoy them!



Blog links:

http://www.elisebakerphotography.com/blog/2019/1/17/exciting-projects-in-the-work

http://www.elisebakerphotography.com/blog/2017/11/18/an-overdue-life-update

Exciting Projects in the Work / ASAD January Sneak Peak

I have quite a few new and exciting things planned for you this year!

The project I want to tell you about today is called A Second A Day. It’s a video project which is pretty self explanatory, but I am filming a second (or two) a day of my life. I decided to do this to help me get motivated to think differently on a daily basis, and not just while on set doing a photoshoot. Another reason I chose to do this project is so I can better my video editing skills. Many photographers this day and age shoot video and still photographs, as most of you know I have done a few videos here and there, but this I hope will help me really learn a lot more techniques and also to better myself in the job market.

Every few weeks (probably once a month I’ll show little sneak peaks of my project so far. These sneak peaks will be about 8-10 second videos of my favorite moments captured per month! i’m really excited to show you all and see how it turns out at the end of the year!

Don’t worry i’m still shooting and working hard to show you my next photo project, so be on the lookout for those too! without further ado, here is my some of my favorite January moments!

First Michigan Fashion Shoot

      Back in October, I had my first chance to do a fashion shoot in Michigan. This very inspirational woman has become a friend of mine these last few years and it was an honor to work with her while she has so many other projects going on as well. We are currently in the process of rebranding her, so there will be many planned shoots to come that im very excited about! Even though some of you might have already seen them on my updated website, they have yet to be blogged.

      I would also like to send out a special thank you to my boyfriend, Chris for learning how to be an assistant to the photographer by moving around the lights and equipment, and even learning how to use and set up all the equpitment to be the best help he could.     
 
     So without further ado, here are some images from our first shoot. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them!

An Overdue Life Update

      As many of you know, I moved to Michigan after I graduated from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh to be closer to my family to save up some money to travel, and move to a big city. (I always thought I would move to LA first, but lately I've been liking the idea of NYC.)  

     Anyway, I kept this pretty quiet last year, the ones closest to me knew about it but that's about it. Last year I got pretty sick a lot of chain reaction things that left me ill and un-able to function in a productive manner for about a year. In fact the entire reason I am making this post is because I saw one of those Facebook memories from last year when I was a walking EKG and one of the only images that I publicly shared from that year in which you could actually see the heart monitor attached to me. Those constant set of issues set me back on my plans for moving on with my life quite a bit. I'd like to say a special thank you to my boyfriend, family and friends who stood by me and helped me by keeping all my nerves away. They all helped me by listening to my complaints and spent their entire year putting my health and well-being before their own. 

     I am FINALLY starting to photograph again which is an amazing feeling. I have also gone through and re-edited my entire portfolio and website just to give me that fresh "new start" feeling. Over the next few months I plan on getting my blog schedule especially back on an every other week basis. I'd also like to extend another thank you to my boyfriend, as well as all my friends and family that helped me get back on my feet. They really help push me back to work even when I'm scared of failure and full of self-doubt. This thank you also includes my great uncle Fred who passed this week, because without you I would not have seen my cousins this weekend who have given me that extra boost of confidence to continue on with my dreams. So, thank you for everything you all have done for me. 

     I would also like to extend a large thank you to the people that regularly follow this blog and didn't give up on me even though I took such a long time off from blogging. I was touched to see how many people missed reading what I shared.  Your loyalty means so much to me! 

    Also, because this is a photography blog, and I did mention one image in particular, I will share some of the moments from last year that either I or my boyfriend captured of me (on the good days) while I was ill. The first image with the little kitten from last Thanksgiving at my grandparents is the one that was previously mentioned.  

 

Celebrating National Photo Day

     As some of you may have known, this past Friday was National Photography Day. In honor of this, I have decided to go in depth on an image that I never really talked about from my previous blog titled "Fashion Accessories". With the help of my best friend, who went to see the Horst P. Horst exhibit in the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg Florida on her vacation, I have decided to give you a short bio of his life and fame as a photographer. Ill then show you how he inspired this image of mine. (Citations Below!)

     Horst P. Horst was born in 1906 in Germany.  At a young age, he discovered his love for art and in 1920 started studying at Hamburg, only to move to Paris in 1930 to study under the architect Le Corbusier. While in Paris, Horst met many people in the art industry including Baron George Hoyningen-Huene who was the Chief of Photography for French Vogue. In 1931, Horst became his photographic assistant as well as his lover and favorite model. In December of that year, he published his first of many images in French Vogue. In 1932, Horst had his first big exhibition in La Plume D'or in Paris. After this exhibit, he became famous almost overnight thanks to a review in The New Yorker. 

     In 1937, Horst moved to New York where he met Coco Channel and photographed for her for thirty years. While his career was going strong in the United States, it seems his love life was also in 1938. Horst met a British diplomat named Valentine Lawford, who lived with Horst until Lawford's death in 1991. They even adopted and raised a son together named Richard J. Horst.

     In 1941 he applied for United States citizenship and joined the Army in 1943. In the Army, Horst had many of his images in the Army’s magazine called “Belvoir Castle.” In 1945, he became friends with and photographed President Harry S. Truman which lead him to photograph every first lady until the 1960s. Also in the 1960s, the new Vogue Editor Diana Vreeland convinced Horst to make a series of images illustrating the lifestyle of international high society members. Eventually he moved down to Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, and on November 18, 1999 at the age of 93 he died in his home.

     Horst P. Horst’s images are still very prominent to the fashion industry today. Horst is best known for his fashion and portraits, but is also recognized for his still life’s and architecture images. His work often shows his interest in surrealism as well as glamour and beauty

Like these images here of Horst P. Horst.
 



This image of mine that I used in a series of different fashion accessories that I was inspired by Horst P. Horst to create. My style is very glamorous and elegant, Just like Horst P. Horst, and as he uses black and white film, I used monochromatic colors. Horst always has very strong visual lines, and I think the hat and my model Hannah's body language gives me those strong lines.

 
Have a good day everyone and happy Belated National Photography Day!


"Horst P Horst | Classic Photography." Horst P Horst | Classic Photography. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Aug. 2016.

"Horst P. Horst." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 20 Aug. 2016.

"Horst P Horst News, Photos and Videos - Vogue." Horst P Horst News Photos and Videos Vogue. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Aug. 2016.

 

July Fourth Weekend

Over the July fourth weekend I experimented with slow motion video. Since I don’t usually shoot slow motion, I thought it might be a good exercise for me. I used my iPhone, as well as my DSLR (Nikon D810) to capture video, and slow motion videos. I experimented with colored smoke bombs among other fireworks to study the patterns of smoke for a future project in the works! I took the videos into a few apps and sped the videos up and down until I thought they were perfect for looking at patterns. Below are some of my favorite images, and videos from the night. Hope you enjoy! 

Memorial Day Weekend

     This Memorial Day weekend I got a chance to visit my grandparents in the middle of nowhere. Also known as Van Wert Ohio. I used this opportunity to photograph the area around me. Coming from living in downtown Pittsburgh, to the suburbs of Michigan has been a little bit of adjustment scenery wise, but with my head still used to downtown living, the country was a huge change. These are few photos that I took on my phone while taking walks along the cornfields, with my boyfriend and family, as well as a few personal usage images from my weekend.  Hope you enjoy!