A Day in the Life of... Jenn LeBlanc!!

 

Welcome to Knit Purl Stitch Read & Cook's new weekly feature!!

A Day in the Life of..

This is where us bloggers & fans get a glimpse inside the days of our favorite authors!

This week we have amazing author and photographer Jenn LeBlanc!

About Jenn:

I have several constants in life that define me: Colorado, Canon, CJ, kids and curls.

Born and raised in a household of other people’s children in this beautiful state —very nearly with a camera in hand— I never left. I started my own family, got used to the curls, went to college, built a CJ, and started a business, all with a camera in hand.

I always had another passion; storytelling born from daydreams and nightmares. My fingers were never as quick as my mind, and no amount of practice got them there, so it was difficult and frustrating to have this inside me. When my second daughter was born her inherent traits kept me pinned— my only escape the keyboard. Spending my days in parenting chat rooms I got highly adept with one-handed typing and I can still type just about as fast with one hand as I can with two. It’s a great talent to have when engrossed in a scene and in need of a hit of caffeine. I recently finished my first novel but I quickly realized: I was born a photographer.

From the realization that someone ELSE would be shooting the cover of MY book my control-freak took over. What started as an easy cover shoot ballooned into this completely new kind of media, designed specifically for digital book readers.

I live and thrive off chaos and the constant flow of the creative process. I wear shorts and flip-flops year-round —much to the chagrin of my friends and family— and I am currently working on the illustrations for my second novel.

My days are pretty varied, some days I'm home writing, tweeting, casting, and researching like a madwoman. Some days I am on assignment as a photojournalist (which are pretty exciting days— last year I covered the Gulf Oil Spill), and some days I get to play mom and housewife. The day I’m writing about here, was Friday, July 1. This day I got to do one of my VERY favorite things in the world, I got to play in my studio.

I happen to have a crush on the writing of a new erotica author Miss Tiffany Reisz. I think her writing is stunningly beautiful and visual and her descriptions speak to me. I simply adore the hero in her novella Seven Day Loan, and Daniel Part Two, which was published weekly, on her blog. Daniel is a broken and battered human being recovering from an impossible loss. He shrank into himself until another beautiful woman was sent to bring him back to life, something she did rather well.

Anyway, I started thinking about the visual Daniel—since that’s what I do—and we chatted on twitter about what Daniel looked like (The name Craig comes to mind…I’ll give you a second to put…it…together…) and I decided to shoot some fan art for her. The 7DL cover had a woman bound by a ball bearing chain, looks like stainless steel pearls. (P.S. Daniel is a dom) So I wanted to bring the pearls, the corset, Daniel, the crop, possibly some rope, some thread and needles which would come into play in the Dpt2, and a few other things to tie it all together. Oh yes, an insurmountable stack of books. Daniel was a librarian archivist. (Sorry, Sir.)

At any rate, I did some preliminary sketches, found a model who had some pretty muscles, and set up a studio date.

The most important part of studio is a well balanced meal. I always take my crew to lunch before a shoot.

We went in at 2pm:

And we were set up by 2:30 at which time Levi, the talent, decided to start messing with my set.

Daniel had recently returned from an 18-month trek across South America, scaling mountains and exploring backcountry. His clothes were ragged, he was tan, and his body was cut.

Levi was perfect because he gets cut and plays in the Rocky Mountain Sunshine. He started doing two-a-days as soon as I asked him to come to the studio, and though he wasn’t fully prepared for the test shoot he was darn pretty.

We didn’t have a desk in the studio so we used a high table and the “Tom Cruise”. These are boxes that boost a models stature. We nicknamed them the “Tom Cruise” because he (Tom Cruise) is infamously little. Levi doesn’t necessarily need them, but since we used a high table instead of a desk we needed them to balance out the distance:

Levi also used them to pump his muscles. The more he exercises the bigger his muscles get, and not in the obvious way— I mean he does 50 push-ups and his muscles double in size... right then. It is pretty awesome.

Overall it was a great test shoot and I’m looking forward to the final shoot on July 22 where we will make everything absolutely PERFECT and Levi will be razor sharp, and the images will be stunning.

We broke down around 6pm and I took everyone to dinner, Levi was starving of course, so I let him pick the spot. It was high class…Tokyo Joe’s. mmm.

Then I went home to find my niece and nephew ready to spend the night and I sat down where they could not see my computer and downloaded images. I spent the next four hours sorting and processing images

and these are a few of the finals:

Pretty.

That was my Friday. I am very much looking forward to the final shoot on the 22nd. Did I already mention that?

If you are ever bored or in need of some pretty pictures follow me on Twitter at @JKLeBlanc, I often do my casting and share some of the pretties there so you can share in my days. I’m currently casting for my second novel as well as a couple other shoots, the hashtags to follow are #DanielStudio and #CastingPerry.

So I hope you had fun checking out my day, feel free to stop by my blog and check out other days I might have, with and without models. You can also check out my novel The Rake and the Recluse, a fully illustrated romance novel, (because I love pictures) while you are there!

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Thank you sooo much Jenn for stopping by and sharing with us your day & your amazing photos!

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