Modeling & Acting 101 - A Model/Actor's Diary

I haven't had a chance to blog about my experience shooting for romance novel covers but I will be sure to recount that most interesting work experience soon. :-) Till then, I am happy to say I can share my latest tearsheet, which happens to also be the second book cover I've gotten in my modeling career. The male model is Jimmy Thomas who is the new Fabio (for those of you not old enough to know Fabio, he was THE heartthrob of women everywhere by being one of the most popular male models on romance novel covers back in the 1980s and 1990s). Jimmy Thomas is currently one of the most popular male models in the romance novel genre and his images have appeared on thousands of covers (you read that right--thousands...that's thanks to the huge boom with e-books and other digital formats). Here's the cover we both appear on...I believe it should be on the market soon if it hasn't already been published: Me and Jimmy shot many different sets for our shoot and the ...

Hello, my beloved readers! I know I haven't been as active in posting on here compared to other years/months but that's because I've been so busy I've been struggling to find the time. However, I haven't forgotten about you and I do have pages of modeling related topics that will be flowing from my fingertips very soon! In the meantime, wanted to drop a quick post to share the latest publication I'm in. It's a series by author SC Ellington. She decided to redo the cover of her first book, "Unsettled" and chose an image from a shoot I did a little while back. Here's what the front and back look like: It's available as an ebook and in paperback. Amazon has it for the Kindle. It is a romance novel, however. While I haven't read it yet, the author does state that the content isn't for those under 18 so yeah, this is for grown eyes only! Mind you, I'm just the model on the cover, it's not like there are other photos in t...

I'm glad I have friends all across the country! My buddy, Paul, who lives in Indiana, happened to be driving and came across a billboard with a face he thought looked familiar. So he took a picture with his phone and emailed it to me to find out if it was, in fact, me. It was! Here's the picture he took: This image is from a stock photography shoot I did years ago with a local photographer (I've certainly never attended Kaplan College and as you know, my name is not Willette, haha). How funny that it's now turned up on a billboard in Indiana after all this time! Appearing on a billboard has been on my to-do-list of modeling goals and now I can officially check it off as an accomplishment. My new goal? To make sure it isn't the last billboard I appear on!

It's always exciting to finally see images I've shot being used for advertising instead of just as regular images in my portfolio. The owner of Jira Couture Cosmetics posted this recent online ad on my Facebook timeline and I was so happy about it that I wanted to share it with my readers! I just found out that they'll be using this ad in the New York market as soon as the final layouts have been approved...needless to say I am completely THRILLED that my photo will soon be circulating in New York! I don't know if it will be just online or in print but soon as I find out and once it's official, I'll be sure to let you know!

Here are the fruits of my and the other models' labors! Because the catalog isn't out yet (it is still summer, after all), I cropped out the actual shoes being advertised. It is important for models to understand that while it is fun and exciting to share their tearsheets with others, they need to make sure they aren't going to be ruining things for the company in the event that they don't want anyone to see the actual products until they're available for sale. Sometimes that requires permission to share the images or just being smart about what you show and where you show it. This is especially true when posting tearsheets online. In my case, I've cropped out the shoes listed in the catalog. Should the client contact me to remove the images anyway until the fall season comes around, I'll respect their decision...but until then, here they are! :-) Cover: Me, Jenna and Oasis. With a fun SF trolley passing by in the background. This is the scene w...

I'm super excited because I'm waiting to get my copy of the shoe catalog I shot a few months ago in the mail. I haven't done any posts about the Alegria shoot yet because I want to wait until I have the photos and stuff to share in the posts but I've been in contact with the photography, Jay Canter, and he got his copy before mine. He was such a doll and uploaded two of the images from the catalog onto Facebook and tagged me in it. The lighting isn't great but as you can see, it's me! I'm on the cover and the other photo is from inside of the catalog: The cover: me (on the left) and my two model gal pals, Jenna and Oasis. Inside page. Me, Jenna and Oasis in Union Square, SF. The other pic of me is probably the one they're gonna use as the display ads in Nordstrom and Dillard's. I'll find out soon! What's even more exciting is that the line is supposed to debut in Nordstrom stores this Fall and the image of me wearing the oran...

A few months ago, I posted about one of my most recent shoots, which was for a dating website. I just got an email from the client with the ads that came about as a result. Below is the one of me and my "boyfriend" for the shoot, Paul: This online ad will more than likely appear as web banners for DateNation.com and could pop up just about anywhere on the Internet. So don't be surprised if you see me and Paul pop up while you're surfing the Web! Funny story: this image was shot in San Francisco, near the water, on a popular street/area known as The Embarcadero. The other models were sitting off to the side of us and in between the photographer snapping photos, we were all totally clowning around--we'd just finished lunch and were all a little giddy from full bellies and a tad tired from the long day of shooting.  Before this photo was taken, we'd all been talking about the movie "Finding Nemo" and I had just done a ridiculous reenactment of the...

By now, most of you already know how valuable tearsheets are to any model's portfolio. Nothing impresses clients and agencies more than a model that has proof of being published. However, times change and sometimes this requires taking on new territory. In this "Age of the Internet," a new version of the tearsheet has started to become more commonplace in the industry: digital tearsheets. What is a Digital Tearsheet? As the name suggests, a digital tearsheet is the same as a regular tearsheet, except that the source of the publication is from a digital form of media, such as a website, online catalog, PDF file, etc. Do Digital Tearsheets Count? Yes! Although having a tearsheet from a hard copy magazine, catalog, brochure, etc. is a great thing to have, being published online is also an accomplishment worth adding to your resume and portfolio. These days, there are tons of online lookbooks, catalogs, web banner advertisements and other forms of digital media that...

As I like to say, tearsheets are better than money for models because they are direct proof that a model has been published, regardless of where it is. Imagine my surprise when I received a post on my Facebook Wall from a girlfriend of mine, stating that I was in her college textbook! LOL. She said soon as she opened to that page in class, she started freaking out. I can only imagine how crazy her classmates must have thought she was, claiming to know one of the people in the book! Hahahahaha. I had no idea what image it could have been, so I asked her to take a pic and post it on my Wall, which she did. It happened to be a shot from a stock shoot I did years ago for a local photographer who sells her images on the website SnappyStock.com. Her stock photos sell very well because the very same image also appeared in an online section of the PG&E website (that photo is the smaller one associated with this post in the upper right corner). I tell ya, when it comes to doing stock ph...

I was very happy to get a big envelope in the mail today from the company Omnicell, which is a medical supply business that I did a shoot for a little while ago (see my post, "Latest Shoot: Omnicell Product Shoot" ). I'm sure you've heard me talk about how hard it is to get copies of photos from photographers sometimes--nonetheless tearsheets from clients--so receiving these tearsheets definitely made my day! The images from the shoot I did were used for Omnicell's marketing material, brochures and fliers. I believe they may also appear on the company website, but that's not for sure. Below are the actual marketing materials my photos are in, which I scanned. I have the hard copies resting comfortably in my portfolio book. :-)

I'm so excited! I finally found out that the April 2011 issue of Bay Fashion Magazine is the one that my pictures appear in, which are from a shoot I did back in February. The shoot was set up to showcase designer Caley Johnson of Miss G Designs. She specializes in making couture fashion headpieces. Her stuff is absolutely amazing! We networked through Facebook and after sending her a friend request with a message about how I admired her work, she hired me for this shoot, with guaranteed tearsheets as compensation. The shoot took place in her home in San Francisco. A small room was set up as a studio with a plain backdrop. The photographer, Sid Erthal, is my new BFF lol. He is so much fun to work with and an absolute doll...we work together really well and couldn't stop laughing. I hope to collab with him on future shoots for sure. It was a long day because there were a lot of headpieces to photograph, although not all of them made it into the magazine. Some of the pieces...

I did the corporate themed photoshoot for the company Bertliz a while back but the finished products are finally coming out and the photographer was able to give me some digital tearsheets...yay! Berlitz is a language arts company that provides content and information to help people learn to speak different languages. They have language arts products available all over the world and this particular shoot was created to help people in other countries learn how to effectively communicate in the business world using common English vocabulary. The shoot itself was really fun and laid back. We shot in an actual office building in San Francisco and there was a handful of us playing the part of a company conducting a business meeting. The photographer and the models were a lot of fun to work with and we joked around a lot. One scene involved me typing on my laptop while my "coworkers" were looking at my screen. In order to get some genuine expressions I would type the most r...

So after working on certain projects and shoots for months, I'm finally getting some results. I found out a few weeks ago that I did indeed get the cover of the first issue of Mocha Bride Magazine (yay)! I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail but I'm definitely going to need to find out where the magazines are being sold since family and friends are going to want their own copies. =) Here is what it looks like: I just got the chance to scan my magazine images so here is a college of the tearsheets straight from the magazine. Enjoy!

Money is always good, I'll always stress that, but when it comes to other important assets to a model's career, tearsheets are gold. If you are ever offered a modeling gig that is willing to give tearsheets instead of pay, take it! Tearsheets are important because they show legit proof that you have been booked for a particular gig and that it has been published. This type of payment is often better than money because it is a quick way to build up your resume and portfolio. Clients tend to take a model more seriously when they see that he/she has a good collection of tearsheets. As opposed to a really nice image from a photo shoot, a tearsheet contains all the elements that show it has been published: text, captions, logos, etc. For those of you who aren't familiar with what a tearsheet is, it is literally a copy of an image that has been torn out of the actual publication. While seeing a piece of paper with a torn side may sound unappealing, having a portfolio...