Happy Holidays from Mandi

Happy Holidays everyone...Had a lovely Christmas with my kids, Craig, and of course Amandine.  I was stupidly busy right up until Christmas eve so I was appauld that I hadn't set anything up for the holidays.   Will's is allergic to real Christmas trees so on Christmas Eve.  I took one of those willow garden thingies...you know the kind that you can grow peas up and I put it in the lounge and decorated it with Pahutakawa flowers....My mum and I when I was still at home in Atlanta, used to go completely bonkers for Christmas and would have a tree decorated perfectly, all of the presents meticulously wrapped with designer paper and real ribbons (of course we had bought it all in the sales the year before).  It never snowed but last year I went back home for Christmas and we got snowed in...in Georgia if you can believe it.

Now I have lived in New Zealand for 10 years and I had always heard about Christmas's at the hot summery beach but thought they were a bit of a myth because the temperature in Wellington has been blustery and cold or rainy for the last 9 years but certainly not this one.  What a blessing and our silly little Christmas tree with the jellyfish tree topper (a two dollarshop hair piece), looked right at home.   Those flowers were part of a shoot I was doing for the Gaya Aotearoa collection.  This one involved getting Emma (Craig's beautiful daughter) painted up like a Pahutakawa tree....beautiful.
I hope you have had a Christmas filled with moments that touched your heart and made you happy.
That you found time to think about all of the things that you were grateful for.   I hope your next year is amazing, beautiful, soul inspiring, juicy, and succulent.
Be amazing.
Love,
Mandi Lynn

Haylee Burgess | Free Range Kids

Slowly getting through the images I took for the free range kids book....her is a look at the beautiful Halee.  What a nature lover this wee girl was...she was fascinated by the grass on the farm and was weaving the most lovely things from it. An old soul she is.

A La Mode Legwear

Nic the momepreneur from Lucy Lou was gifted by her best friend a ticket to one of my photography classes.... She seemed to like what she was learning and after seeing some of my work decided she would hire me to shoot her legwear range...yeah!  I have LOVED them from the moment I saw their inspired designs.  I told her I would only work for her if she promised to bring out a plus size range and if she would make some A La Mode tights.   Nic is a woman of her word and look at this!  Lucy Lou has been A La Moded.   And her designers are working on a plus size range using my gorgeously ample legs as a model....because as we all know there is nothing worse than trying to fit into a pair of stockings that are too small and that keep walking down your thighs...the stocking hike up is not the most attractive look in public...and if I am wearing tights and I am shooting, I certainly don't have time to go find a bathroom to hike the crotch up off my knees... So Nic has promised to create a beautiful range of leggings for us girls that "pack more back" and have thunderific thighs....Waiting with baited breath because legwear envy is not a pretty thing. 

If you would like a  pair of Lucy Lou tights you can go to her sparkly new website and order yourself a pair of A La Mode's of course!

Larissa, Ian, Max, and Ethan | Wellington Family Photography

This is the part I love....becoming a photographer for life.   I was incredibly lucky to photograph Larissa and Ian at their beautiful wedding and reception. Max featured there but he was significantly shorter at that time.  What a little character he has turned into!  I had heard that Ethan had come on the scene but I did not know how gorgeous he was.  My favourite shot is definitely the top one where he was walking the "catwalk" for me.  He thought it was hysterical....so did I!

Lucy Lou Legwear

Had a lovely shoot yesterday with Lauren, Emma, and Jepha all celebrating LucyLou Legwear.  The coolest thing about Lucy Lou Legwear is that she has a way for you to design your own......so of course we had  A La Mode tights made...they are available on her website.  I love them!!!!  She has promised to get some made in Plus sizes for me later....very happy about this. 

Renee and Amandine did the makeup and hair, Jepha and Lauren's top was from Goodness, Emma's Top photographers own. 

Angelic Arianna | Wellington Teen Photographer

This gorgeous creature is Arianna.  Her mum works for our framers and after seeing our work come through she decided that a photoshoot with us would be the perfect thing for her daughter.  What a cool mum.  Arianna came in with her mother and for the life of me I couldn't make eye contact with her.  I thought "oh boy, this might be a wee challenge."  Nah....her mum left to go back to work and we stuck her in the hair and make up chair.  As the makeup went on the girl started blossoming...by the time we started on the braids we had a down right chatty little thing...then we fed her pineapple lumps and that was it...she was off and ready to pose....and not just posing politely...she was twirling and leaping in the air.  We had a complete and utter blast.  It was fantastic!  I love tweens they are one moment a playful young girl and the next minute you see the woman they will become pulling to the surface.  And oh my goddess is it a beautiful thing to behold!

The Why of A La Mode

The Why of A La Mode:

A La Mode is a playground for Artists and Muses
With the soul purpose of capturing a persons inner crackle, fizz, and whistle and turn it into a piece of art.
We are soul and spirit chasers and diviners.
We want to get into our muses heads and find out what makes them tick, get excited, and happy...then we create art that celebrates them and their passions.
We remind women that they are feminine creatures...adorable, loveable, and powerful.
We remind men that they are masculine, loving, and amazing.
We get down and roll around and really play with the kids we are gifted playtime with.
We explore and push boundaries, we see how far we can go and what new horizon we can cross.
We are always learning, reaching, growing, and pushing our crafts to the next level.
We really just love people...in all of their shapes and sizes, ages and stages.
We are curious creatures and we fall in love easily...with the babies who come to play...with the kids...with the parents..  We want to be part of the lives of these gorgeous creatures and so we push ourselves to dazzle with our visual story telling..because we plan on always becoming the family photographer for life.
Every muse that comes to visit us is a treasure...a gift from the wonderful and we are blessed to be able to celebrate that.


Most of all we just love to play...who wants to come and join us?

Body Painting at A La Mode Photographic Boutique

Just thought I would show you a bit of the mischief we have been getting up to over the last few weeks. We have bought a slew of body paints for Amandine to show off her mad skills....look at some of the things she has come up with.

Free Range Kids Book

It has been a long time in coming with the move from the studio but I am slowly but surely getting through the images that I took at the beginning of the year for our Free Range Kids book.  Here is a sampling of some of those shoots with the gorgeous Howsen girls.  Aren't  they just delicious.

Fishhead Magazine | December Jan 2012

LeeAnne wrote the nicest article about me...what a sweetheart...If you get a chance have a thumb through Fishhead and tell me what you think.   :)

The week of Nudes | Wellington Nude Photographer

It was an interesting week for me.  It started with my birthday party at Riversdale beach and with Jepha and Amandine deciding that what they really needed to do was to strip down and cover themselves in seaweed for the sake of art. Okay that wasn't exactly the way it went.  First I went for a "run" on the beach and found this incredibly cool piece of seaweed that looked like something out of Xena warrior princess...kind of like a breast plate of leather but it was actually seaweed...Had been planing a Sea Goddess shoot with Kaarin the costume tutor at Toi Whakaari and figured we could have a trial run, pilot of the concept first.   Walked a couple of k's down the beach to a group of rocks I loved for their rhythm...as well as ability to hide behind if any locals decided it would be a good idea to have a beach walk on a drizzly day.   The seaweed was attempted but soon abandoned as good in theory but not in practice and the girls just got their kit off instead and posed amongst the rocks.  It was pure experimentation and play and from the shoot there were a couple of images that I loved. There was absolutely no hair and makeup this was just Amandine and Jepha as they were that day. Here is the beginnings of work on one I took of Amandine.  Posing nudes really helps you to get your head around posing that is for sure.  We had two close encounters with locals driving by on their quadbikes and practiced the art of camouflage and distraction....ie Amandine merged with a rock while I jumped around and generally tried to draw attention to me and away from her.  Seemed to work as they just went on their way.

I really adore photographing the female form.  When I was a kid I never really had the obligatory teen heart throb images on my walls (except for that one of the lead singer of Duran Duran Mwwaahhh)...no mostly it was preRaphelite paintings like this:

With a sprinkling of Renaissance and   paintings as well.   I love classical posing.  It is demure but incredibly concious of the beautiful curves of a woman's body.  This is what I love...celebrating the curves of real woman and showing them as they are but in their most beautiful light...if that makes sense.

There must have been some energy created by all of that au naturale play as for the rest of the week every woman that came into the studio decided to take their kit off in one form or another.  An artist came in and had herself photographed so that she can paint a picture for her husband for his 50th that he will not soon forget.   One of our muses posed artfully covered by fabric and holding chandelier crystals that were special to her....beautiful.  The final muse went out to our farm with us and we recreated some modern version of a JH Lynch painting that she loved in a swamp area that is there then we did some wood nymph, sexy vamp, and mermaid style shots in the rivers beach.

  I can't show you their pictures as they are private for them but we did take some video of the hair and make up we did for these gorgeous creatures and hope to have it up on the site in the next couple of weeks so have a look out for that.  All of the women that did these shoots were in their late thirties or early 40's.  They wanted to capture that amazing point in their life.  It is a magical time I feel where a woman really comes into her own skin.  The twenties and early thirties at least for me were all about rejection of the beautiful gift of my body...But in my late thirties I am finally feeling like I belong in it....it is mine with all of its lumps and bumps and it has served me well this long.   Sure there are parts that are not as amazing as other parts but they are my non amazing parts...now I think i will have to start looking for someone to photograph me too. :).

Getting up now to go do another one actually now that I think about it....Brilliant a nude day is always a good day.   :)

Nat and Peaches Wedding | Wellington Wedding Photographer

Dias De Los Muertos | Wellington Portrait Photographer

In an impromptu moment we decided to run a competition for someone to be made up to celebrate Dias De Los Muertos.  Bridget and Emily were our winners and we had an absolute blast doing these shoots.  We had decided we wanted to be a bit more romantic in our treatment as by the time we started looking on line it looked like dias de los muertos had been done to death.  So here are our romantically inspired undead girls.  Hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed shooting them.

Gravity Optional - Kinetic Art | Wellington Performance Photographer

Wellington Performance Photographer

I first noticed the group Kinetic Art when they performed in the Zombie dance off in Monster Burlesque.  I turned to Craig and said "these guys are amazing!"  And would you know it the next week they had called me and wanted me to do a series that showed off their tricks.   Brilliant!  Oh my goodness did we have fun on this shoot.  Perfect weather...low tide, cloudy day, amazing moves, and a funny as heck group of guys.   If you have an event or promotion coming up and want to inject some serious energy into it then I would definitely suggest you bring these guys into play. Brilliant.  Check them out at Kinetic Art.  This was a great opportunity for me to see what they can do.  Now I just need to figure out what I am going to have them do next (she says rubbing her hands together and raising her eyebrows in a joyful way).

Chrisna the Artist | Wellington Portrait Photographer

Gorgeous Chrisna had her beautiful baby three month ago.  She has been completely relishing her role as a new mother but was feeling slightly disconnected from herself as a woman and artist.  So she decided to come in and be pampered and reminded of what an amazing woman she was.  We wove flowers and ivy in her hair, did her makeup, played music for her, brought her tea, and reminded her she could dance and swing...we twirled because twirling is good for the soul.   At the end of the shoot her gorgeous son was brought in and we got this beautiful photo with Chrisna looking as beautiful and radiant as her boy.   Now that is what I am talking about!  

Win a Sugar Skull Photoshoot on Halloween

Win a Sugar Skull Photoshoot on Halloween!

My son is half Mexican and when he was in year one at school we held a big Dios de Los Muertos Party and invited all of the children in his new class....not surprisingly no one came from his school , and we got the reputation for being an odd, slightly scary weird family....oops.
We later discovered that the area we had moved into was very Christian and thought it was some sort of devil worshiping of party....Lets just say it took a little while for Sam to find his feet in making friends there.
All of our friends who knew we were not devil worshipers did come as well as TV3 to film the whole thing showing how Dios de los Muertos is actually a very spiritual party, we had our alter and our friends and family brought images of their loved ones who had died and gifts for them...their favourite chocolates, a pack of smokes you name it.
The kids were entertained with my American side Halloween antics and my ghoulishly decorated garage, bobbing for apples and witches brew punch and drinks.  It was a messy blending of cultures and it still intrigues me that the origins of Halloween and Dios de Los Muertos stem from the perception that at this particular time of the year October 31st for the Celts and 1 November for the Latinos was a window between our world and the world of spirits was thinner....Intriguing really.

When I was in the states last year I came across a photography book by a group called 666 Photography and I fell in love with their Dios De Los Muertos photography and wanted to have a chance to do something as exquisite.

Amandine has been working on some designs for sugar skull painting and we wanted to find some  ladies that would like to win the opportunity to have a mini art session with us.  You will need to own a corset for this then you need to do the following:

How to Win

Email your name, any photo you have of yourself and a compelling reason why you should win to artists@lamode.co.nz .  We will post all of the entries into a Facebook gallery and the one that gets the most "likes" by the 29th of October will win the shoot.  The two winning ladies will need to be available ideally during the day for 3 hours on Halloween for the makeup and photoshoot.  We will then be posting the results on our blog on Dios de Los Muertos.  Looking forward to seeing you!   We are gonna have a blast!
Cheers,
Mandi

Glam Grans | Wellington Portrait Photographer

We have noticed a wonderful trend lately of women who have passed into the Nana sisterhood coming in to have their portraits done.  I am loving it.  There is a different sort of body confidence and just flat out comfort in their own skin that I see in these ladies and am seriously enjoying the shoots!

Holy Harper | One minute with my niece

I am up in Rotorua visiting my beautiful wee niece Harper Buchannan.  Now I know I am ridiculously biased but isn't this just the cutest little moppet!!!  Loving her so much.  This photo shoot took place at about 7 in the morning she was sitting on her dads lap and I was carrying on a conversation with her....Oh my goodness there are so many levels of cute here I just want to squeeze her!  Why do we always want to squeeze cute things?  This series took aproximately 1 minute to shoot....ahhh if they could all be this easy :).  Helps I suppost that she spent the first two months of her life alternately waking up in mine or her parents bed.  I miss her so much!!!!!

Oh Baby Magazine | Wellington Editorial Photography

Look out for this months OH Baby Magazine and check out "A Very Important Date" our latest editorial spread featuring the beautiful dresses of Return to Eden.

This is the section....Pretty eh?

Thread Homepage | Frock stars

Our reVamp Party made the front page of Thread.  Very exciting check our the whole story here

Model For a Day | The Gorgeous Kelley

Just a little teaser from today's shoot.  Kelley works for Kiwi bank and decided she wanted to get some beautiful portraits of herself just for herself.  She was so much fun.  We even got some beach time in between the rain clouds.  Lovely day with such a bubbly gorgeous lady.

Lucy Lou Leg wear | Wellington Commercial Photographer

Lucy Lou was created by Nicky.....both the daughter and the tights brand.  She is a ball of fire and full of heaps of amazing ideas.  Emma the ballerina is my partners beautiful daughter who simply came along for a preliminary shoot...she wanted to see what it was about and got recruited for her beautiful legs...for the tights  oh my goodness the tights....and the coolest part is what Nicky has planned....I can't tell you yet but soon I will be able to.   Anyway here is a sneak peak at some of their beautiful range....Oh my goodness are we planning the coolest photoshoot soon!  I just can't wait!!!!

Wellington Beginners Photography Course

Have just put up a new date for a November morning class, for those that would like to get their heads around their cameras before the holidays begin. Cheers, Mandi

Online Ticketing for Beginner Photography Field trip powered by Eventbrite

500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art and Women in Film

Thank you to the gorgeous Sue Bryce for pointing out these two amazing videos by Philip Scott Johnson 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art & Women in Film.

Zuzu | Wellington Portrait Photographer

Meet Zuzana.  I met Zuzana about 2 years ago on my very first fashion shoot with Cathy Davy's.  Zuzu was working as a masseus in Cathy's Salon and was drafted into being a hair model for Cathy's portfolio that year.  I loved her eyes and her gentle way of being so after that shoot I asked if I could borrow her for another one.  A couple of years passed and recently I got a call from her asking her to help her celebrate a landmark birthday for her by capturing her at this stage in her life.  Together we planned the perfect photoshoot for Zuzu and then threw in a bit of randomness just for fun.  Zuzu wanted Bridget Bordeau meets  Kate Moss, meets a french cafe and a preRaphelite painting.   Here is a wee taste of what we came up with.