Lusicovi Creative

Artwork #2 for the month of March? check! A little down to the wire, but I think this one is done as well. I may play with it a little more though. It's part of the Sea and the Stars series I'm working on, but it's also inspired by my reading of a beautiful and magical book last summer called The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. She didn't know it, but in writing that story she directly influenced this piece most obviously and heavily, the series that I didn't really know I was working on, and also reignited the spark of my creativity that had become bogged down with stress and everyday life. And for that I can never thank her enough. All that aside, The Night Circus is an EXCELLENT book and I recommend it to anyone and everyone! You can find it here. And you can read more about the wonderful Miss Morgenstern at her website, here.

I would love to here your responses to this piece and impressions! Let me know in the comments! :)

Your Tell Tale Heart

This month for the Photographer's Connection Just Shoot it! Challenge, I was challenged to get creative with food photography. Maybe it's how ridiculously cold and snowy it has been lately, but my creative inspiration came from frozen fruit and flowers. It sort of evolved from there into snow AND champagne. And freezing the flowers did not work at ALL like I imagined. And ultimately I wanted to do this shoot mid afternoon, but then only had time to do it well after sunset. BUT, I still really really like some of the shots that I ended up with. One of my goals was to arrange the fruit creatively but to also pay close attention to the details, which I think I did improve on. My other big goal was to really focus in this shoot on not overshooting and on getting the shot right and in correct focus as quickly as possible (partially because, hello, snow inside with the heat quickly turns into a watery mess), because this is something I know I need to work on in my photography in general. 

So, what do you think? Do these photos make you want to run out and get some delicious fruit for your next ice cream or cocktail? Or possibly just go out and play in the snow?

Hello all!

As some of you may know, I am really focussing in 2014 on building Lusicovi Creative into a fully fledged, bona fide business. This means learning and implementing everything that goes into being and running a business: taxes, marketing, invoicing, budgets, branding, etc, etc, etc. It's a long road, but I am determined and I have found a ton of amazing resources! So to that end I have been thinking a lot lately on the what and the why of my dream photography business. Why I am doing it, and also why anyone should choose to hire me to do their portraits (as opposed to anyone else out there with a camera). Something along the lines of a missions statement, and what I want to do with and for every client that is unique and special and well worth time and money. I have a lot of thoughts, but this is what I've come up with so far. Since I do not have a fully fledged website yet or a page on which to put this, I thought for now that it could make a nice home right here on the blog. 

So without any further ado, 

The What the the Why of it: Magic in the Everyday (a mission statement...of sorts)

I believe in magic. Not in the sense of wands and wizards and spells, but in an everyday sort of magic. I believe in the magic of people. Of what they can do and achieve with passion and love and determination. Of how they can connect with people and the world around them on a daily basis. I believe that there is a powerful type of magic in human connections, that emotions are how we connect, and I believe in capturing that magic.

A piece of art, whether a painting, a song, a story, or a portrait, is a preserved memory of the most magical thing on earth: people. Across space and time, the most important thing about artworks (including portraits), is their ability to preserve that magic and to connect two people. 

Photography captures light, yes, but the camera also captures much more. Portraits capture love, caring, devotion, joy, determination, silliness, imagination, and all the magic of being alive. They capture time, they tell a story. They are magic, they are memory, they are art.

So what magic do you want to preserve? Let me make your story, your love, your magic, into a beautiful piece of art.

Since I was lucky enough to get to create both the cover artwork and cover design for I Is Dead, I have several great images that we took in order to create the cover image. I had one of the most enthusiastic models ever, and he was great to work with! The brief we worked off was to depict the main character, Ai I, in an alleyway illustrating a particular point in the novel where he is bemused, rundown, and questioning his own identity and reality. Tom did an amazing job depicting the mood, so we ended up with plenty of images. We chose the best for the cover image, but I wanted to share some of the outtakes as well! 

I Is Dead by Thomas Sabel, cover artwork and design by Lusicovi Creative

"Shipping clerk, Ai I the Third, is thrilled to join a cell of the Committee of Reality in the spread of the Truth. With the aid of his Intuitor, Ai becomes a loyal worker for the Committee, even at the cost of losing his home, his family, and his identity. Only when he discovers the Committee's diabolical plans, does he react only to discover that without an identity he might as well be invisible. Or is all this delusions of paranoia?"

An embarassingly long time ago, my friend Kaylin held the first reading for her soon to be novel, Tell City, at this excellent bookstore downtown called Indy Reads Books. We had a great time getting everything together for this and all in all I would say it was a resounding success! Here's to many more Tell City adventures and successes! :) 

Wow, I am so behind on this blog! Thank goodness for snow days where I can catch up! Back in early September, I met this super awesome author with tons of energy, excellent ideas, and a similar love for Neil Gaiman. She is writing a novel, called Tell City, and was looking for an artist to create some cover art and marketing materials. We also did some portraits of her so she could have some professional shots, and basically had a grand old time creating the apples for the cover and marketing images. We have quickly become great friends, and I am so grateful to have this girl in my life! She is an excellent friend, a great creative inspiration, and wise beyond her years:

"Remember to Dream, for it is one of the most important parts of being alive and being human." 

The Lovely Caroline. :)

{Sneak Peek!}

First [real!] look at the photos from the Indy Literary Pub Crawl event Saturday evening. Kicked off at Indy Reads Books on Mass Ave [which is basically my new favorite place, who's surprised?] Not only was this an AWESOME idea, partnered with an awesome place that promotes literacy, and featuring an awesome author (Dan Wakefield. kind of a big deal), but it was completely an event and organization that I can 100% get behind and support. And let's be honest, I got to hang out with a bunch of other nerdy people, dressed as Yvaine from Stardust [general call out: did anyone get a picture of my costume by the way?], for free. AND I got to use my brand new amazing lens that I just got for my birthday. Basically, an all around fantastic night and a great group of people. Win-win-win. Stay tuned tomorrow for the rest of the photos to be edited and posted! :)