Time to reveal my big secret!

Hi everyone!
Today I want to tell you something that I wanted to tell you for a very long time but for several reasons I did not. Some of you may already know it because it may also be a bit obvious when you think about it. Sooo: For the past year you may have seen the name Silver Pearl Photography popping up here under my photos and the truth is, it is me!

I am not only a model but "in real life" I also work as a professional media designer & product photographer. I do not share that work here and probably never will, and for a long time I was not very interested in model photography. I only took self-portraits just for the fun of it. For my final exams in photography school I had to shoot several themes with models though, and the more I did the more I fell in love with it! A year ago I came up with the name for this project (and well, if you know my silver-grey bunny Pearl you may know where I got this super creative name from :D As you may also know from my model name, I am not very good with names^^') and since january I worked very hard on building a portfolio that I would be proud of.

I wanted to learn, fail, try again, get better, find my own style and grow to become a respectable photographer one day - and not just be "La Esmeralda, another model who picked up a camera because her best days will soon be over". Or whatever one could think :D It took me a while to figure out what I wanted do do with this and I wanted to tell you about it when my work would be good enough to show, and I am finally at a point where I am happy with it. Well, not happy like "I am where I want to be" but happy like "I know (pretty much) what I am doing and I know where I want to go one day".

Another reason why I separated modeling and photography: I didn't want to scare any models or clients away who could like the work but might be intimidated by the experience that I have as a model myself. That is why I am not going to post this at my photography page but I think as most of the photos I post here are self-portraits, it was about time to tell you! (If any of these models who don't know me yet reads this now, please don't feel intimidated! I will probably wear jogging pants, a nerdy shirt and no make-up when we meet and will feed you with tea and chocolate, and you even can pet my bunnies if they let you ;) )

When I really started this in january I asked my best friends (who, luckily, are some really cool models already) to model for me and back then I thought I was going to become a wedding photographer and only do "classical" shoots. But the more I did, the more I realized that my love for fantasy and for photoshop is way too big to do "normal" photography! So over the months the work I did as a photographer became more like the work I show you here, just with some other amazing faces :) These days I mainly do make-over shoots and turn my models / clients into fairy-tale princesses, queens and goddesses and will probably also separate the wedding photography from my fantasy photos in the end of the year. I am incredibly happy that people like the themes I came up with and so grateful for the trust that I got from my clients! I do the make-up and styling and the outfits are all made by me, from designers I worked with as a model before or from my own wardrobe. For my free projects I also got to work with some really talented designers! Most of the accessories are also made by me and I created many things especially for these make-over shoots.

In the past years modeling always meant that I had to travel long distances to meet photographers and often wait for photos. I loved the results so much, but it often was very time-consuming, exhausting and expensive to travel everywhere. I still love doing it and appreciate awesome collaborations so much, but when you want to do this as a job you have to come up with easier solutions. These days I am able to do lots of the things entirely on my own (or with one or another amazing assistant! <3 ) and am not only the model but also make-up artist, stylist, photographer and editor of my photos. Phew, and often also the designer of the costumes. Since I was interested in photoshop even before I started modeling back in 2009 and got better over the years, I already edited many of the photos that I did with other photographers myself. All this experience, also from my job as a media designer, was of course great for photography school and during that time I got the best help that I could wish for from my friend and photographer Heiner Seemann, who helped me and taught me most of what I know about lightning (and who still I always love working with :) )!

Another person I want to thank is Alex Zatsepin, (you might know his work as he is the photographer of my model friend Elisanth), who designed the wonderful logo for me. It is a bit funny and sad at the same time - I have a lot of ideas for design and logos, but not for myself! It is super difficult for me to design my own stuff and I don't feel like a professionally trained media designer at all when I am trying to do it :D

I also have to thank all the models and designers I already got the chance to work with, so if you like any of the ones you see at my photography page, please check out their work! Also huge thanks to my best friend Aurelia Isabella, who is not only a wonderful model but also a great assistant and help with everything, to Elisanth for the constructive criticism, for Lilif Ilane for advice and inspiration and to M. for everything <3

And if you like, I would be really happy if you would check out and follow my adventures as a photographer! And who knows, maybe you also want to come over for a make-over shoot one day? :)

By the way, as I got many questions before: when I do close-up self-portraits of my face I mainly work with my first camera, the Canon 600D, which is really cool for stuff like that because it has a flippable Display. For everything else I work with my Canon 5D Mark II but would really like to upgrade to the 5DS one day :) I most love working in the studio with different flash lights and am not so creative when it comes to outdoor shoots.

I hope you understand why I didn't tell you about this for such a long time, I just wasn't ready to do it before! Thank you so much for your support over the years! I wouldn't be where I am today without you guys and the motivation that I get from your comments and messages. Sometimes it is not easy to just keep going, but then you are here to cheer me up with your wonderful comments and I love you so much for that <3
And by the way, as all the photography things were very time consuming I didn't have as much time for modeling as I had before. So this is also a reason why I haven't been that much in front of the camera this year, compared to the previous years. I am not sure yet what I will do in future but right now I hope that I can do more shoots as a model again because I really miss that :)

Here are a few more photos that I took of other models and you can find many more photos and the full credits on my Silver Pearl Facebook page: