Website Redesign, Book Publishing, Business Cards, and Stickers! Monthly Update - June

I have been so busy this month. I've hit a stand still with my photography and needed a new start. I found myself wanting professionalism that my work, in photography, was lacking. For starters my website design grew old and was screaming for a redesign. That was one of the first things I tackled. I organized my work through categories to make everything a lot easier for viewing. I also cleared up the layout so it was more spacious and user friendly :) 

Along with the redesign I'm testing out different designs and materials for my business cards I'll be getting made at the end of the summer. I didn't really prepare for how difficult it would be to figure out what exactly I want the design and layout of the cards to be along with the images and paper material options I have. So I ordered a few samples which I will be viewing and deciding on in the next few weeks. 

Along with business cards I will be getting stickers made! This is probably the one thing I am most excited for. There will be two different designs printed, designed by my high school art teacher, and friend, Andrew Dart. Each having one of my characters on it; King & Unicorn Grease. If you follow me you'll know about each ;) The King one is finished (and can be seen above/on my website) and ready for printing, but the Unicorn Grease one is still in the process of designing. But once I have both finished copies I will post them along with a link for ordering.

I'll be printing more than I'll know what to do with and stick them on anything and everything I can get my hands on. So be on the look out. If any of you would like a sticker book or just a few to stick around just send me an email and I'll be glad to send you some! info@austinsullivanphotography.com

All of this leads up to me officially announcing that I will be publishing a book! 

I've been talking about/debating whether or not I was going to get one published or not for the past three years, but never felt that the time was right. Well I have grow so much since I have started photography and have such a huge collection of work and photographs that I feel that right now is the perfect time for me to go through with it. This will be my first endeavor and the book will be 100% written and designed by myself. I'm extremely excited to share this with all of you after keeping it a secret, for the most part, for a little over a month. I have the book title but knowing me it will change so I am not going to be able to share that with you until it is final and set in stone. I will however share with you an image from a shoot I did specifically for the book. That image can be seen above. 

The book will be composed of both photographs and writing. It's going to be what I like to call a "photographic biography". Letting you see the images I have created over the years along with personal information on my growth and development as a photographer. The book will hopefully be printed and ready for sale around Christmas. The only thing that will be hard is not sharing any of the images from shoots I have planned the rest of the summer and into the fall. Of course I will be showing you some because that would be too awful to just disappear for that time, but I really do want this book to contain as many "never before seen" images as possible. Although there will be a large portion of images you have seen from the past. Everything's still under editing and development so I can't say anything is really set in stone as of yet. But it is happening, and will be done.

I hope all of you are doing fine and enjoying the summer! 

I appreciate all the love I have been receiving and also all the emails you all have sent on the website. It means the world to me. 

XX A U S T I N

LOOKBOOK

So I'm laying here writing this inside of a blanket/pillow fort I built, listening to the immense amount of thunder and watching the flickering of lightning bounce around my room. It's 5am and I haven't slept in almost 24 hours. I don't know why but every summer for a short period I go through this weird faze where I literally cannot fall asleep. I can lay in bed for hours and will not be tired. It doesn't matter if I wake up early in the morning and have a busy day and tire myself out, I cannot sleep. It's awful. At least this night I get to listen to the rain and thunder. I haven't built a fort since I was little and I figured, what the heck; lack of sleep will make you do and oddity of things. But this is comforting and soothing. 


Aside from the little insomnia rant above, the reason I'm writing this post is to update you all on a new social media site I recently joined. I've been knowing about it for a few years but never really took the time to look into it and really figure out what it is all about. But when school let out a few weeks ago I went on and nosed around and really liked it. It's called LOOKBOOK.nu. Basically what the site is, in a nutshell, is where you take a picture of yourself and you list all the clothing you are wearing. You can fan others and 'hype' their looks, along with commenting. I thought it was a really neat way to share you fashion ideas and also pick up a few from other look bookers. 


The community on lookbook is amazing. Everyone is super friendly. I only recently created an account and only have 3 looks posted at the moment and have already received more hypes, comments, and fans I could have asked for in such a short period. If you haven't already I highly suggest visiting the site and creating an account of your own. You can view my page --> HERE <-- 
Below are some pictures I have on the site.

xx austin

Florence + the Machine - Jazz Fest 2012

So if you read my previous blog post you would have been aware that I have been laptop-less for the past weeks. My dell laptop, which I've been using for two years, got its motherboard completely fried. Which means I lost everything. It would have been too costly to get repaired so I just made the switch and got a 15" MacBook Pro. Just got it yesterday and I can honestly say that in little over 24 hours it has made my life so much easier. With uploading and organizing my pictures and the speed when opening programs and editing pictures. I also can feel comfortable with editing because I know what the picture actually looks like thanks to the graphic quality compared to my previous laptop. Over all, money well spent.

With my new macbook I was able to, finally, edit my pictures from Jazz Fest a few weeks ago. I checked out of school at 9am because I was "sick". Little did I know that I would be filmed and interviewed the second I entered the festival and it would play on television.. just my luck, right? So all my teachers saw me on the news bragging about how I skipped school to see Florence + the Machine and was wearing my sweatshirt to sweat out my "fever". It was possibly the most mortifying and hilarious thing to happen yet.

We waited 6 hours for Florence. As soon as we got in we found the stage she would be playing at and grabbed the front row spots and sat there until she came on. By the time it was 5pm the crowd went back as far as the eye could see. We had amazing spots, front row center. When Florence came out I was able to get so many amazing pictures of her and throughout her performance she would look down at us and even waved once. It was amazing.. 

So happy with how the pictures came out. I was going to wait to do this post once I developed my film, but I'm not even half finished and I couldn't wait any longer to post these! enjoy :)

xx austin

Laptop Passing Away + New MacBook

So the reason why I have not been posting or updating anything is because little over a week ago my laptop died. Some how the motherboard got completely fried and would be too costly to repair. So instead I'm going to take this opportunity to switch over to Apple and get a macbook pro. I'll have it in about a week. 

I never realized how much of an asset it was until I was laptop-less. If you follow me on twitter you'd already know that last Thursday I went and saw Florence + the Machine at Jazz Fest. I skipped out of school and as soon as we walk into the festival I am stopped by news film crew and interviewed about skipping classes for Florence. Just my luck it was aired on television throughout the day.. So now everyone knew.. lol But, we waiting in direct sun for 6 hours until Florence. They had multiple acts throughout the day but we waited and held our spots until Flo came on. We were front row middle, which was perfect. I would go into more detail but seeing how I can't post any pictures I'll wait until I get my macbook and do a separate post detailing everything along with the pictures, which by the way are amazing! 

xx austin

Monthly Update - April

I haven't been taking pictures in weeks. It's a shame because I've had lots of free time, but for whatever reason I've been run down with photography. I have lost the drive and passion for it (obviously this was only temporary). I got through weird artistic phases where I will go weeks, maybe months, of shooting everyday and I can produce amazing work. But, on the other side I can go days, sometimes weeks, where my camera will just sit and collect dust. But that's normal for me, I need breaks between shooting everyday and not to collect my thoughts and generate new ideas and renew my work. 

With that being said, during this month and the end of March I shot a lot and thought I would share some of those images with you all.

 

 

If you follow me on flickr or twitter or facebook you would have already seen some of these pictures. But for those who haven't please follow!

Also, I've been pretty good at keeping up with my site.

www.austinsullivanphotography,com

If you have any questions or request for pictures, blog post, or anything just email me at 

info@austinsullivanphotography.com ☺

xx austin

Website Facelift

So I decided that my website needed to be refurbished. It was too simple and didn't offer much for viewers or myself. I was able to change a plan so now I have much more space to work with for uploading images; you'll notice a lot more pictures on there now. I will probably be posting on there more than flickr. But if you follow me on twitter I'll be sure to post and keep you updated. 

As far as my creativity, I can say that I have never been more inspired, driven, and conceptually processing with my work. It's hard at time because my mind gets over loaded with thoughts, but it's always better to have too many than not enough.

I will also be introducing you all to King. Very, very soon. That is, if he wants to meet you..

xx austin

Spontaneous Photo Shoot

I've been in the mood for a spontaneous photo shoot recently and decided to go out and do one this afternoon. It's been raining all day and we've been under tornado and flash flood watches. But, that never stopped me before :P So I took advantage of the river being high and shot some pictures with Jack.

 

 

 

xx austin