{Valentine's Day: The Vagina Monologues at Filmbar in Phoenix}

Hi there! If you are here to see your photos from Valentine's Day/The Vagina Monolgues, then click on this link or copy/paste the link below and copy your photos to your computer.

http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/4780490/1/VDay?h=8b2961

Some stuff to know:

These are large files. They will take up some space on your computer. Because they are large files, they are good for printing out. Because they are large files, they might look a little compressed (or kind of strangely sharpened) if you put them on Facebook. Or they might not, it kinda just depends.

So go ahead and put them online if you like. And if you give a link back to my blog, that would be beyond awesome! xxoo to you!

If you need resized + sharpened photos to put online, email me at [email protected]. Also, if you find that you are trying to print them at a place like Walgreen's and you need a copyright release, email me and I will send you one.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 

On Valentine's Day, I got to photograph The Vagina Monologues being performed at Filmbar in Phoenix. Stacey Champion, the producer of the event, wanted photos of it - follow Stacey on Facebook if you want to find out about all sorts of interesting things happening in Phoenix. The show was so wonderfully performed. I took drama classes for two years in high school and so I am always in awe of people who can act - I really don't feel like I can - when I see people acting in front of an audience - I am so admiring of the bravery it takes to get up front and do something like that. These women were so good! Seriously hilarious, seriously serious, entertaining and informative - I wish I could see it again.

Some of the audience that night:

They (the two in the image below) said, Hey do you want us to pose for you? And then sat back to back like that. I love it when people do that! 

Stacey on her phone:

Painting on the wall outside Filmbar. I ran out to my car to get my phone and saw this and you know how when you see a person but you immediately realize it's not really a person and it's kind of scary? Or am I the only one that that happens to? Anyways, kinda freaked out by this:

There's this photographer in Atlanta named Zack Arias. Photographers looove him. He does workshops all over the country about how to work with light. He's kind of sarcastic and snarky but seems nice all at the same time. I'm always reading his blog to try to figure out more about this whole photography thing. Once I remember reading a critique he was doing of photos people had taken at some sci-fi type convention. His main critique was that the photographers should have done whatever it took to get their subjects into good light and away from bad backgrounds. Whatever it took - and so I always have that idea running thru my head when I am taking photos. Either I need to move to get the best angle or sometimes I need to move people to get the best light. Whatever it takes. So that is what I did: I kept moving people over to the bathrooms at Filmbar, because that is where the best light was. And then I saw the pretty fiber/fabric wall hanging in the bathroom and so I tried to get people in there so that the wall hanging could be a pretty background. I was trying to avoid getting the actual bathroom in the photos but Ivonne (the girl in the purple sweater) and her friends decided that bathroom photos would be hilarious. So, okay.

Pretty hanging lamp at Filmbar:

Love her hair!

She made the BEST food! And was so nice to make sure that I ate some because I think she could tell I needed food.

What is the name of her business? I will link to it here, if you can tell me.

Makeup by starry, starry cell phone light.

  

Everyone waiting here to go on stage made me think of Saturday Night Live. Definitely there was that excitement in the air that I think only comes from live performances.

This is how the event was described on the facebook event page:

V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. V-Day is a catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. V-Day generates broader attention for the fight to stop violence against women and girls, including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), and sex slavery.

Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues, A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer, Any One Of Us: Words From Prison, screenings of V-Day's documentary Until The Violence Stops, and the PBS documentary What I Want My Words To Do To You, Spotlight Teach-Ins and V-Men workshops, to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities. In 2011, over 5,800 V-Day benefit events took place produced by volunteer activists in the U.S. and around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.

"Until the Violence Stops."
www.vday.org

The super talented cast:

        

        

After the show:

 

 

So excited to see Amy (pictured below) using this image as her facebook profile pic. I loooove it when people do that. 

 

After I took photos of the girl pictured above, she took photos of me. (This is the wall hanging I was referring to above.)

Filmbar is so pretty. Right before I left I went around taking photos of the place.

 

 

 

 

Thank you Stacey Champion for having me take photos. It was super fun!