Amanda is my friend Adam's wife, and I had the incredible pleasure and honor of photographing their wedding. Lately I've been wanting to stretch my creative muscles and venture into a new medium. For some reason, I've never done much at all with pastels. I absolutely adore oil pastels. But regular soft pastels have just never really interested me. I remember doing several excercises with them in school, but as soon as the assignment was over I was ready to put them back in the drawer. So, in an effort to get outside my box, I opened the drawer back up and decided to go for it. After a few minutes my hands started to remember what to do and I actually began enjoying the pastels. I loved the soft, diffused look that the pigments made and how they glided smoothly over the bumpy paper. I actually really dug it. This portrait is what came out of my little experiment and I'm pretty happy with it (although the original looks alot better than the scan I have here... haven't quite perfected how to acurately capture original artwork on my scanner yet). It's got a completely different look and appeal than what I'm used to, but variety is the spice of life. I think I might just keep them out of the drawer and move them onto the studio table to play with some more. Just goes to show it always pays to get outside our comfort zones and try something new.
