Third Shoot

Jack Fleming wasn't as well known as he is now when I first worked with him. Now he's had the chance to shoot with people like Tiger Woods, Jack Nicholson and Christina Aguilerra. Back then he wasn't nearly as well known.

I was married to a Blackwood when I first started my modeling, so that's where the name originally came from. Legally, I was actually Amanda Blackwood. Just to make sure things are perfectly clear, I'm not a Blackwood now, but the name lingers like the taste of a fine cigar accidentally inhaled - a memory from the past that is both heaven and hell...



My husband went with me on that photoshoot and I felt far more secure in going to an actual studio. Jack had some nice surprises in store for me.

Once more I brought my own clothes, including the jewelry and gloves I had been given after my episode of Extreme Makeover had been filmed. I also brought the red dress from the previous shoot. I was very much at a loss for nice clothes. I had to use what I had. Jack was willing to work with whatever I had. In fact, Jack had been one of the orignal photographers who had contacted me back when I was gearing up to do my first ever photoshoot. Looking back on the first shoot and the quality of photos Jack was able to provide, I often wonder how things would have turned out for me if I had shot with him in the first place.

He had an actual piece of the Red Carpet from the award ceremonies in Hollywood somehow. A friend of his worked in the prop section of some studio and Jack was always getting goodies from who knows where. I decked myself out in the 6 month old dress and stood on the carpet like a movie star. For two hours that day, I was made to feel like one.

My weight has never really fluxuated much, but for some reason in those 6 months there was a dramatic decrease in my weight. I had gone from 165lbs to 125lbs and my wonderful black dress was loose on me. Jack used black binder clips to hold it tight around the middle and the results were well worth the few hand beaded details I lost in the process. The dress was still magnificent. I kept it for many years.

The last few shots we took were on a solid white background and floor drop sheet. Though when they first were put on a CD for me you could still see the shoe prints on the white floor, they have since been photoshopped out. I wish I still had that CD of pictures, but they're long gone now. When I got divorced, Mr. Blackwood kept a number of my personal items, and I believe that CD was one of them.

Jack told me about a company in near by Burbank that would sign people up to be television and movie extra's. He said that I could possibly stand to make a go of it, and that I would never know unless I tried. My husband at the time was a stunt man in the industry, and though he encouraged me at first, that tune changed quickly later on. That's a story for another

Later, another photographer was working hard to convince me to shoot with him. Though I never did, this creation was one of the attempts he made to convince me. I loved the work he had created, but when B.T.P. started talking about wanting to do glamour nude photoshoots, I quickly backed out. There was no way I'd ever do it.


Below is my favorite shot from that day...

Hair-Story

I often get questions about my hair these days.

People ask if I've ever had long hair, or if I have always had short hair and ever thought of growing it out. I often try to explain the lengths of my hair over the past decade, but at this point it's been short for over 6 years and I'm quite used to it. Don't get me wrong, I've often thought of growing it back out, but each time I try, it gets to my collar of my shirt and starts to bother me. I think if I could get it past that point, my hair would survive. But yes, I've had very long hair most of my life.

(See left and below).

I had short hair as a kid once... and was teased for it

mercilessly. I had gotten the idea after the movie "All Dog's Go To Heaven" came out after the character Ann Marie (see character on the right). My hair was long and constantly tangled. Mom and I decided it was time for a hair cut, so she put it all in a pony tail and braided it down. Then she put it in another ponytail at the bottom and chopped away. The braid was removed and put into a plastic bag for my father. He still has it somewhere.

Mom cut it off at such a crooked angle that we really didn't have many options. It was either the "Ann Marie" cut, or short like a boy's hair cut. I had gone through that in Kindergarten and earned the nickname George (I'll save that for another day). I really didn't want to go through that again, so Ann Marie it was.

Several years ago Dad retired from the military and got a job working on the base painting missile trucks. One of the guys that worked with him had a very long ponytail nearly the same color as my hair. He had the brilliant idea to take that ponytail with him to work one day. He then grabbed a pair of scissors, held the ponytail in one hand and the scissors in the other. Then he tugged on the guys ponytail, sliced a bit off of MY ponytail, and held my ponytail out for the guy to see it. He said the man's eyes got as big around as saucers and he started to scream. He reached back and discovered his own ponytail was still in tact. I'm sure he wanted to kill my father for that one.

When I was 17 my mother pulled me into the bathroom and dyed my hair blond. She told me that she had never really liked my hair color. It went to a bright carrot orange, so she dyed it blond again and it came out Strawberry blond.

That summer I got my first ever modeling job, working as a Runway Model at a "Back to School" fashion show on the military base. I was shy, but that job started to bring me out of my shell. Several years later when I moved to California, I found myself working with a photographer during my first photo shoot ever (see above). The photographer, Christopher, was rather inexperienced and this was the best picture we got from the shoot, but I've always loved this shot.

I've had several different colors used in my hair over the past few years. To the left is a photo of me right after the Extreme Makeover show cut several inches off of the bottom in 2004. They feathered it along the sides and gave me bangs after giving it a rich chocolate brown color. I didn't have the heart to tell them, but that was the exact same haircut I had in 1998, and I had cut it myself. Even the color matched the old photos of my hair from 6 years before. It just wasn't enough of a change for me.

In the mean time, I had gotten married. My new mother in law had once been a very talented hair dresser before a car accident messed up her back. She couldn't do it all day anymore, but a hair cut once in a while didn't hurt her. I asked her for a big change - and she obliged. We cut it off rather short, had it layered and feathered around my neck, and tried to color it back to red. It was so dark from the Extreme Makeover show that it really didn't take, but I was so in shock over the length of my hair that I wasn't focused on the dark color. It was an alien feeling, running my hands through it and finding my fingers slipping free just at the neck.

People seemed to think that the dark color suited me, so I stuck with it for a couple of months. I stuck with the length too, but having to put it up in little poofy pigtails I called Panda Ears in order to work food service was rather annoying. I decided once more that it was time for another change. I went back to Sue and asked her to cut it once more, this time to get rid of it all.

If I hadn't cut my hair the last time I never would have gotten any of the modeling jobs I ended up with. The short, red hair suited me, but was also edgy, pixie-ish and feminine with my facial features. Immediately I was picked up by several photographers for my unusual look. I was a rare thing - a girl with short hair, a girl with red hair, and a girl who didn't look Butch because of the length. Richie Bravo was the first photographer, and within days I was working with several others, including Jack Fleming Photography and D'Jef Photo Styles. Fleming has since made quite the name for himself.

I've played around with my hair a bit, trying to grow it out and then deciding to chop it all off again. I've had bangs, I've had

none. I've gone from brunette to blond and then back to red again. I've played around with my hair a lot, but pretty much consistently for the past 6 years it has retained this primary style and color, just with a few minor variations. I even tried the "Ann Marie" thing again once... and decided that it suited me even less in

adulthood than it did when I was a kid. It was a very short time

before I let that one grow out and got rid of the Duck Tail.

My hair has always been a way of expression for me. People tell me that I should grow it out, that I should cut it off, that I should do this or that or get a perm or get extensions or shave my head. Well, it's my hair and I do what I like with it. It's a part of me and I'm grateful that I even have hair. I'm glad I have a way to express myself and my own personal style without resorting to something like tattoos or piercings.

And now, I've done this style for long enough...

I think it's time for another change.

I was GOOGLED!

Through an odd series of events, recently I made a new friend. I wont go into the details of how this acquaintanceship occured, but it's quite the interesting story. This new friend and I email back and forth almost daily about the area where we live (we're neighbors apparently) and some of the oddities of the internet, like Craig's List.

Today an email was sent to me by my new friend that they thought would alarm me, but instead actually managed to flatter me beyond belief. I don't know if that would have been the same, had my blog not been mentioned, but the fact remains that I was flattered.

This friend googled my name, saw a picture of me with a name badge on, zoomed in on the name badge, discovered my twitter name, found me on twitter and then clicked the link leading them to my blog. This long and twisted series of events is about as twisted (though several hours shorter) as how we met in the first place.

It started me thinking.... and you know what happens when I start to think. I start to blog! So, here I am.


Back when I used to model, I was splashed on every Google image search for pages with nothing but my first and last name, sometimes just my first name. I had photos that were in the San Diego Tribune, pictures on ModelOne.com that came up under different photographers, modeling photos for costumes that Lorianne made (think Ren-Faire) and photos people posted once they received my Harley Davidson catalog with my 'autograph' in it (see photo above). They would snap pictures and put them on Flickr. Others had projections of my face from the Queen Mary shoot on walls behind them durring a presentation on Photography. I was everywhere. I wasn't always ok with that, but I was everywhere. That's mostly the reason I'm so cautious with my personal information. I know how easy it is to find me on the internet. The city I'm listed as living in in Los Angeles - Yeah, I've had stalkers.

These days if you type in Amanda Blackwood, you're lucky to come up with two pictures. The first one would be of me dressed as Mary Jane from the 1st Spiderman movie with my ex-husband as spiderman. This is the photo that remains on the San Diego Tribune website from more than 4 years ago now. Yes, that's really me. And yes, it's really on their site. My face actually made a thumbnail on the front page of that news paper.

http://photos.signonsandiego.com/album66/06_G

The other picture is one from last summer when I went to Twestival and worked as a volunteer. I have a reputation for being well dressed at all the events I go to. This event was no exception, as you can see while going through all of the photos this particular photographer has taken of me. He is, hands down, my most favorite photographer I have ever worked with, and will always be a very dear friend of mine. One of these days he's going to bring his Fiance down to Los Angeles so I can finally meet her in person (Michael).


Michael is easily the greatest photographer I've ever worked with, but that isn't built on sheer talent alone. We are friends and have a deep connection, like that of family. That makes me far more at ease with him than I am with most photographers. With Michael, I wasn't afraid to laugh or be silly and goofy - and was actually expected to be that way sometimes. It was ok for me to laugh out loud and I didn't care if he snapped a shot, where most other photographers didn't want to see my teeth because they weren't straight. The picture to the left here is one that Michael took on one of our many adventures.


I've worked with people like Bravo Magic Imaging for several shoots, though a few photos in particular have lived on in the minds of those who followed my modeling career. (to the left - a shoe ad shot by Richie Bravo)

I shot with Jack Fleming when I first started out. He was still getting his "sea legs" in the world of photography when I first met him, but with raw talent and a lot of people who believed in him, he rocketed into the world of celebrity photography and now gets invited to events like Christina Aguillera's baby shower and Tiger Woods at the PGA a couple years ago. He's been able to shoot Jack Nicholson as well - something I understand isn't easy to accomplish. The picture to the left is from the first shoot I ever did with Jack and remains one of my favorites.

I once dated a guy that had an eye for photography. He hadn't been an actual photographer for many years, but he still loved to do it and I was his favorite subject. We shot THOUSANDS of photos over a couple of weeks time. We never ran out of creative ideas and locations to shoot at, and eventually even shot at the Queen Mary. Though it was some time ago now, the memories made while beeing 'spooked out' on the Queen Mary live on.

I've had a lot of fun over the years. From Bravo Magic Image, Jack Fleming, D'Jef Photography, Michael O'Donnell and several other photographers, I had a good run when I decided to be a model. People ask (not that often anymore) why I don't continue to model. They laugh or scoff when I explain that I'm too old. I'm not bitter over the age thing... I proved that I could be a model. In fact, the age cut off is at 24 years old and I didn't do the Harley Davidson catalog until I was 26 years old.

I have nothing left to prove to the Modeling world. I've done it. I've been there, I've seen it.

But I'll admit - I didn't realize until today - I miss getting Googled.