She coaxes beauty with photographs
Sherrie Blondin taught models how to strut on runways
As early as junior high school, Sherrie Blondin helped other girls make their hair pretty and pick out cute clothes. Though not as tall as many models, she was a beauty herself; before age 20 she landed a modeling gig for a Visine commercial in Los Angeles and earned $19,000. But modeling wasn't her calling. She had a keen talent for small business.
At 21, Blondin opened her own agency in east L.A. After attending makeup school, she specialized in helping Asian and Eurasian women with makeup. The money was good: she could earn $600 for half a day's work. She also taught models how to transform awkward movements into grace, how to slink down a runway so they turned all eyes in their direction.
She traveled to Japan and China. "The girls were beautiful at 15, but they didn't know how to walk," Blondin says. She helped Miss Russia and Miss Lithuania look gorgeous for a beauty contest one year.
But a few years later the business bored her. She took art classes, then a photography class at UCLA. "I fell in love with it," Blondin recalls. She pushed the edges of her art, photographing people in poses and settings that stirred interest, specializing in portraits of pregnant women.
"I like grainy film," Blondin says. She photographed Kate Hudson, and the daughters of Sidney Poitier, developing her own film. After moving to Sonoma County, Blondin did fashion photography, portraits and senior high school pictures. In 2007 she opened a studio in Santa Rosa.
"The most joy I get is when I get a big hug at the end," she says of working with girls who initially can't relax. "I coax out their personality."
Recently she photographed a young dancer. "I had her take her shoes off, float up her jeans, doing moves, her hair flowing." To relax subjects, she often starts photographing outside on the street then moves to her studio under lights.
The yucky parts of being a photographer for hire? Hours and hours, then more grueling hours in front of the computer, editing images in Photoshop. For a set of wedding shots, the computer work could be 10 to 20 hours. "It becomes a job," she says. "I started photography so I could be an artist." Editing takes far longer than shooting pictures.
She works hard to satisfy clients so they love the photos they hang on the wall. "I make history for people," Blondin says. "At a wedding, it's a bride's most beautiful day. I am the bride's eyes."
—James Dunn
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