Indianapolis Lifestyle Photographer | Project Ten

Last month I stumbled upon Project Ten through Emages by Emily and her Layers project for October. From there, I clicked my way through the blog circle and settled on Jessica Downey Photo and her Layers project. This is what got me started. I spent some time reading and researching about the project and how Jessica came up with it. I also searched around and found A LOT of other projects with the same concept. There’s the Ten on Ten photo project that is open to photographers who post ten images on the tenth of each month, one every hour for ten hours. There are other groups that post fourteen images on the fourteenth, and so on. Earlier this year, two of my favorite photog-friends and I started and contributed to our own version, 52 Times. It was a photo-a-week project with themes, but with life happening all around us, we couldn’t keep up and it dropped off the map. As I made my way through the various Project Ten blog circle contributions, I couldn’t help but get my Art & Fear itch and feel a desperate need to participate.

Not wanting to create my own spin off and copy awesome artists and what they are already doing, I went out on a limb and contacted the founder of the project in crazy hopes that I would be able to network with these photographers scattered across the country and make my way, not only into their project, but into a refreshing circle of artists. Low and behold, I heard back and was invited to join the Project Ten Challenge group on Facebook – a spin off created specifically for photographers with the same motive as me. HOORAY! Interested!? Great! Maybe you can join, too!

So after the Project Ten photogs release their project and theme on the 10th of the month – ten images, taken for the purpose of creative growth and artistic aspiration within the set theme – those of us in the challenge group have until the 10th of the following month to put together our own series off the same theme. This time around, the theme was LAYERS, if you couldn’t already tell. Since I work full-time, and not as a photographer, I tend to be pretty limited on time and models for my ideas. At first I thought about having my trusty, live-in model (also known as my husband) make this cake while I photographed him, with the grand finalé being a grown-up-cake-smash (that I SWEAR I am still going to do someday), but Life Created beat me to the idea! Back to the drawing board I went!

I live in a place where layers are essential this time of year – we’ve been wearing them for a few months now. I also have learned a lot about farming in this past year – specifically chickens. My day-job allows for it, and in fact, encourages it.  Who knew there were so many types of chickens!? All different shapes and sizes and breed and colors…. all broken down into two major categories: broilers and layers. Layers. LAYERS. Hooray! LIGHT BULB! You see, broilers are your meat birds – and they can be hens or toms, if you want to know even more, and then your layers, are…..well…. your layers.

DONE. I asked two of my FABULOUS co-workers if they’d be interested in modeling for me. I explained the project, my vision, and we set up a time. They loved the idea. And from culling my images, I’m guessing they loved modeling for me, too. It’s not too hard – just be yourself, chase chickens, and try not to freeze your butts off!

Side note: If I ever put together a ‘what to wear’ guide – I should hire these two, give them zero direction on what to wear (which is what I did) and BAM. Guide, complete. Want to know what to wear to your next photo session? See below! And they even showed up intentionally dressed in layers…. and not by my direction! Couldn’t be happier with these girls, these photos, and everything about this shoot!

We were outside for about 20 minutes – tops. Our fingers wouldn’t let us be out there much longer than that… the Rocky Mountains are COLD this time of year! In that 20 minutes, I was shooting for ten photos… I ended up with 40+ edited images that I ADORE. It was hard narrowing it down, but these are my ten for the project. And since I love these images and this concept so much, I will blog later on with some of my favorites NOT featured here. And as always, you can always head over to Facebook to check out sneak peeks and postings!

Enjoy!

<3

casey and her camera is an Indianapolis Lifestyle Photographer specializing in family, couple, lifestyle, senior, and wedding photography for Indianapolis, Indiana and the surrounding areas.