DSC_7070 2014 04 13 Azia Coleman BWAzia Coleman

DSC_6063 2014 04 08 Tye StarrTye Starr
by Ron Brewer Images

I love to show the contrast between a rough and rugged location and a beautiful woman in an image. It makes her beauty even more striking. Arizona provides the most exotic landscapes and structures for that rugged look. 

The saguaro cactus (as pictured in the top photo here) is only found in the Sonoran Desert, which covers southern Arizona and western Sonora, Mexico. So Phoenix is the perfect place to find a saguaro forest for a one-of-a-kind photo shoot. In fact, such a forest is only 10 minutes from my studio. And rugged, old west structures are also within a short drive. Only in Arizona!

When most people think about the desert, they think of hot, sand, cactus and maybe a little brush.

Barren is probably the word. Unless you have lived in the desert, you are probably not aware that many of the desert plants have floral blooms that are very pretty in the spring. Such as this ironwood tree in the photo above of Tye. The entire tree blooms in these small yellow flowers. They make a great background for a photo shoot in the desert. And during most of the year, the Phoenix desert has fantastic temperatures for doing a photo shoot. The summer, well, that's another story. We're back to hot, sand, cactus and maybe a little brush...

Photography Workshop: Beginning Portrait Lighting with Studio Strobes

Here is your chance to learn how to create great lighting for your portraits with studio strobes. 

If you've never used studio strobes before but want to learn how to master them for portraits, this workshop will introduce you to studio lighting. Learn how to set up and operate studio strobes to achieve beautiful and dramatic portraits. And you don't have to own a professional studio to do this - use a spare bedroom or your garage!

This is a hands-on workshop so bring your camera as you actually create portraits in the studio during this workshop. You will use the instructors studio strobes, triggers, and light meter, so do not bring your own strobes if you already own some.

This workshop is for DSLR cameras (not point and shoot cameras). Participants must already know how to use Manual exposure.

Date: May 3
Time: 9am to 1pm
Location: Surprise, AZ

It's easy to register online at http://www.eventbrite.com/o/ron-brewer-images-3023171092

DSC_5565 2014 01 24 Cindy Adomeit v2Cindy Adomeit
Make Up & Hair: Jame Leydecker
Photographer: Ron Brewer Images
www.RonBrewerImages.com

You don't have to be a professional model to have amazing boudoir pictures. You don't even have to look like a model. With the right photographer, YOU can look beautiful, classy and sensual in your boudoir images!  

And I would NOT recommend waiting until you take off that extra five pounds before you do your boudoir photography session. You've heard that the camera can add ten pounds, so you think that you need to drop a lot of weight in order to look good? With the right photographer, it's just not true. You won't have to worry about the extra weight. 

Now is the time to do your boudoir session.

DSC_2832 2013 12 19 Clarissa GilbertClarissa Gilbert
by Ron Brewer Images

Dr. Regina Barreca has said "You are your face. And when you hate your face, it's a pretty short step to hating yourself."

I'm always amazed at how many women don't like something about their face. And some even hate their face. Almost always, the part of their face that they don't like is something that no one else would ever notice. It's not bad or ugly. But they have decided that it is bad or ugly. And so that is how they end up seeing themselves: bad or ugly. What we believe about ourselves affects everything about our life.  Everything. It affects how we treat ourselves and how we treat others.  And it snowballs because it affects what we teach our children about beauty and about accepting themselves in a healthy way. We are not usually aware of it, but it does.

Don't overlook your beauty. Sometimes it takes a good photograph for people to realize that they are beautiful. 

DSC_0374 2014 03 07 Felicia Ewing crop ame memeFelicia Ewing
by Ron Brewer Images

I have been surprised recently with how many women have been telling me that they want their daughters to see images of them that make them look beautiful. Women often create tasteful boudoir, glamour and beauty images as a gift to their significant other or just as a gift to themselves. Sometimes they want to record how they look at that particular point in life. But now I am hearing this new reason: to display their beauty with their daughters. 

I am so pleased to be hearing this! What an opportunity for further bonding between mother and daughter, especially as the daughter is maturing. And I can't think of a better way to educate your daughter about what physical beauty is really all about. It's not all about the commercial image we have today in the media - an ideal that most women cannot possibly obtain. Why, even top models say it takes hours of makeup work for them to look like their commercial image! And many are photoshopped far beyond what they look like in real life. It's important to teach our daughters that every woman can be beautiful. To teach them that beauty in the media is altered to something that is basically impossible in real life (it's pretty, but it's not real). To teach them that there is beauty in the normal and average women we see everyday. To teach them that their mother is beautiful. To teach them that they are beautiful. What a beautiful gift to give to your daughter!

Felicia Ewing 
Hair and Makeup: Jame Leydecker 
Poet: Jean Robey 
Photographer: Ron Brewer Images 
 

DSC_2828 2013 03 28 Andrea Lasley adAndrea Lasley
by Ron Brewer Images
www.RonBrewerImages.com
623-698-2228

I collaborate regularly with Dr. Jean Robey for artistic purposes.  She made a comment to me this week that got me to thinking.

She said that she had an elderly patient that had overlooked himself his entire life. That statement moved me. It seemed rather tragic. She went on to talk about how people can overlook themselves in so many different ways. Women, for instance, can easily overlook their beauty. They can go through life not realizing that they are beautiful. They can even reject their beauty and believe themselves ugly. How often I see this in my photographing women. My specialty is to make women look beautiful in images. Most women cry when they see the images because they are seeing a beauty in themselves that they had not recognized before. They usually think that it will require heavy photoshop retouching to make them look beautiful, but I use as little photoshop as possible. I want the image to still look like them. I want them, and others, to be able to recognize them. If I change them so much that they no longer look like themselves, then I've actually failed because I really then saying that they are not beautiful; I am saying that I had to make them look like someone else in order to make them beautiful. I would then be confirming their fear that that are not beautiful. My goal is to find the beauty that already exists within them and display it. Proving how beautiful they really are, just by being themselves.

Don't overlook your beauty.

_POR0351 2012 09 06 Andrea LasleyAdnrea Lasley
by Ron Brewer Images
www.RonBrewerImages.com
623-698-2228

Serious dancers are a different breed of person.

I been privileged to photograph some dancers that are serious about their art form. And some have become very good friends. They are different from the rest of us. They are passionate about their dance. They are patient, tenacious, incredibly self-disciplined, focused, and physically work like olympic athletes. It seems they get little validation from others, but continue on like professionals (even when they are amateurs). They often seem to be injured, but continue on. They go on stage while in pain, but have to do it with a smile that is true to the art form. The industry joke is that if ballet were any easier, they would call it football. I have no idea if that is true or not, but I get the point. 

by Ron Brewer Images 
www.RonBrewerImages.com