Elton Anderson » weddings. lifestyle. fashion.

Art Basel is one of my favorite times of the year in Miami. Traditionally held the first weekend of December, this international art show attracts artists, musicians and designers from all over the globe. The first Art Basel show was started in Switzerland, but for the last 39 years Art Basel Miami has been the host to a great weekend of parties, music and art!

My friend Raina aka “Magic City Kitty“, hosted a great cocktail party at the Gibson Guitar Studio last night – this place was hot! Swarovski Crystal Guitars, Adidas Booth and free liquor… the perfect recipe for any party. Next, I met a friend of mine at the Kill Your Dolls concert — I’d never heard of them either — the crowd was amazing though, especially their fashion. I’ll post more pics on my weekend recap.

I ran across this site the other day and I thought it was a great idea for up-and-coming artists. Basically, REDBUBBLE is like an online art fair for artists of all kinds. Whether you’re a painter, graphic designer or photographer this is a great place to display your work and even sell it.  Not only does Redbubble create an online merchant account to help sell your work but they can also turn your art into t-shirts, calenders, canvas prints and anything else you can think of.

Registration is free, so if you have some art you’ve been wanting to sell here’s your perfect place.

Wes is an up-and-coming actor in South Florida. Basketball is his first love – this dude has a mean jumpshot. Look out for him on the silver screen and basketball courts.

Van is one of the coolest guys I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with when I was a pharmaceutical sales rep [my former life]. Although we worked for different companies he was always a great mentor, friend and fellow jokester. His beautiful sister Vandria was in town for the Thanksgiving Holiday and they both wanted some updated pics for family, friends and especially Grandma. I am really close with my little sister so I couldn’t get enough of this brother/sister love!

Outside of my own failed experiments, I have learned nearly everything that I currently know about lighting, strobes and flash from The Strobist Blog. David Hobby’s blog is so simple, yet it provides a step by step guide for beginners like myself and even the far more experienced on everything there is to know about lighting. I have always been partial to natural light photography — for me, nothing is better then the sun’s ambient lighting — but I have to remember that every wedding has a reception and flash is a must! 

Since I spent the majority of this Thanksgiving holiday indoors, I decided to play around with flash and see what type of shots I could produce.

A pic of my brother-in-law gearing up for Wii Tennis. Since their was already lighting within the room (ceiling fan) I decided to bounce the flash off of the white wall to my right.

This is a pic of my cousin (the back of his head at least). For this shot I used the flash as a fill by bouncing it off the ceiling.

Here’s grandma and her great-grandkids. I pointed the flash almost directly at them but stepped back a few feet to lessen the shadows. This shot actually came out fairly bright.

Playing with my flash was fun but the food was definitely better! Happy Holidays…