When did you start getting into photography?

My love affair with photography started when I was 15 or so. My mother had a whopping 3 megapixel camera that I would venture into her garden with. Soon I found online communities like DPChallenge.com, and I thought it was really fun to get a weekly challenge. I learned a lot about the basics through that website, but felt like a lot of the work that came from it was preditable and too "set up" so I continued to shoot and teach myself for the next few years and joined other sites like deviantART. I started out with self-portraits (since I did not have willing models at first) and photographing myself continues to be one of the easiest things for me. I didn't even take my first photography class until college and that was just months ago!

What is is about fashion photography that makes you love it so much?

I have really fallen in love with fashion over the past year or so. Perhaps it is just in an attempt to make up for my terrible fashion sense when I was younger, ha! Either way, I find it fascinating how such little differences in outfits can change the entire mood. I think merging these two passions of mine just seems natural. I've already got some projects lined up for a vintage company and I hope to work towards doing even more soon.

How would you describe your style?

That's a tough one. Some have said "dreamy" others have said "ethereal". I aim to incorporate both of those into my photography, so I do hope it comes off as such. I like narratives and stories and romanticism - maybe my style is something like a daydream from the 60s. Light and airy with a hint of vintage.

If you could shoot anything in the world, what would it be?

I think you could ask me this question everyday and my response would change, I'm constantly in a different mindset. At the moment I'd love to shoot editorials for the catalog of Urban Outfitters or something similar. Ask me again tomorrow and you might get a response like "street photographs of people in Paris." You can almost guarentee that you'll never hear "landscapes" from me, though! I find them boring to shoot.

What do you hope to do after art school?

Who knows, my goals could change. I still have three years to go! Right now I have my eyes set on fashion editorials. If nothing comes my way, I might work towards getting my masters and become a professor, that way I can just do fine art on the side. If all else fails, I'll just open up an antique store, become a cat lady and do nothing but photograph my kittens and trinkets all day.

Thanks for using Carbonmade! Has it been helpful?

Oh no, thank YOU for all that you have done! I've gotten so much more views on my works thanks to Carbonmade and have even gotten some great offers because of it. Everyone I've encountered on Carbonmade has been fantastic, it has been nothing but a pleasure.

Thanks for chatting with us!

For more of Rockie's work check out her Carbonmade portfolio: http://rockienolan.carbonmade.com/

Next week is Internet Week New York and on Tuesday, June 2nd, Dave and I (Spencer) will be presenting Carbonmade at the NY Tech Meetup Showcase. The event we are a part of is going on from 3:30 to 6:30 at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology’s Great Hall. The entrance is on 27th St between 7th & 8th, on the N side of the street.

We’d love it if you came by and chatted us up. I'm sure you’ll be able to twist our arm for a free Whoo! account here and there too. We're looking forward to meeting many of you in person. Shoot us an e-mail with any questions if you have 'em. The Showcase is entirely free and open to the public, so hopefully we'll see you there! We’ll be live tweeting from the event too.

I mentioned last month that you can use your own domain name for your portfolio on the Whoo! account and since then I've received a lot of emails. I thought I'd make it much easier for you all to set up your domain with us by explaining the process in a Frequently Asked Question. It's not the simplest procedure in the world -- the fault of domain registrars around the world -- but I think you'll find it easy enough to follow. Please e-mail us with any questions!

I thought I'd just take a minute to share with you a few simple things you can do to better market yourself on Carbonmade. It only takes a few minutes to do these things and it'll help you gain exposure. Keeping your portfolio up-to-date with new work is obviously the single most important thing, but there's other stuff you can do.

We're the first to admit that our portfolio search is a work in progress and doesn't always yield the most accurate results. But since it gets a lot of traffic from potential employers and others, it's helpful to fill out your About area. Specifically make sure to include your Location (e.g. New York, NY) and Areas of Expertise (Illustration, Photography, etc.). These terms are both used heavily in searches and easily clickable on the right-hand side of the search page. We get a lot of people searching for "New York illustrator" and other similar search pairs when hiring.

After finding your portfolio, potential employers and others will often read through your About area to learn more about you. You'll want to make sure you mark your portfolio as Available for Freelance or they may move on to the next person. It goes without saying that including a quick bio and a link to your e-mail are both important, especially the e-mail bit. A quick bio will help them learn more about the person behind the work. Remember you're "selling" yourself as a complete package, so filling out your entire portfolio will help when looking for a job.

I hope that helps!

A little unpublished secret here at Carbonmade is that you can use your own domain name if you're on the Whoo! account -- this removes the .carbonmade.com from your URL. You can see an example of that by checking out our very own Dave Gorum's portfolio. We don’t have the most elegant solution to setting you up on your own domain right now, but if you shoot an e-mail to us at support@carbonmade.com I'd be happy to help you. You'll need to register your own domain through GoDaddy or through one of the numerous domain providers out there. Enjoy!

Carbonmade reached 100,000 members last week. I was sick, so I didn’t have a chance to thank you all. We just want to say thanks for supporting us throughout these years. You’ve all been great friends and your kind e-mails and tweets have not gone unnoticed. We really appreciate it more than we can put into words.

We ran this little "share your Carbonmade story on your blog" contest a couple weeks back and we were overwhelmed with great entries. Your stories are always exciting for us to read. Reading stories like how Emily got a job in New York City with her Carbonmade portfolio and a phone interview -- because she couldn't afford to make the trip -- just brightens our day. Emily is great: she even praised us when we screwed up! She had written to the Consumerist a couple of weeks back about how "Carbonmade Quickly Responds To Error, Fixes It In Less Than 4 Hours." Too kind!

So thanks to all of you who wrote us with your stories. I want to specifically thank Emily, Jamie, Tim, and TracyLynn for their write-ups. All of you, and lots of others, have been upgraded to Wooh! free of charge! Thanks to everyone and please continue to share your stories with us via your blog, email, and/or Twitter. We're so happy to hear from you.

Having been in a generous mood lately, I thought I'd give away a few Wooh! Accounts to current Carbonmade people. We're actually running a fairly active Twitter account (please follow us) and have given out free accounts in the past when we've simply asked you to tweet out your portfolio to your followers. I thought we'd do something along the same lines with bloggers.

So here's how it will work. Many of you have blogs, so we thought we'd ask you to share your thoughts about Carbonmade on your blog (please make sure to include a link to your portfolio). Specifically, we want to hear about how you use Carbonmade and what you've gotten out of using it. Tell us a story! We love hearing stories like Keane Angle's a few months back.

We're going to run this contest over the next two weeks. The number of winners is not determined yet because we want to make it a ratio of the number of people who actually do blog about their Carbonmade experiences, but we'll definitely be naming at least two winners. Please e-mail us directly at hello[at]carbonmade.com with a link to your post! The winners will be announced on this blog with a link to their post along with their portfolio.

Just about five months ago we crossed 50,000 members, and as of earlier today Carbonmade has over 75,000 creative people who are active on our site. We also passed 1,000,000 images, which only a year ago was just inconceivable to us. While this blog post isn't as exciting as news to come, we want to take this chance to thank you all again for using Carbonmade. Please continue to e-mail us with any questions, to follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our RSS feed for future announcements.

Good day! How are things going?

I've been busy. I just spent a week in NYC attending the Pictoplasma Conference and seeing friends. Now I'm back in LA at my job at American Greetings and working on a ton of personal projects.

How did you get your start in illustration?

I'm not sure there's an easy answer to that. I've always been compelled to draw and doodle. In high school, my art teachers either labeled me a trouble maker or just didn't like me. It was really a travesty. I was basically a good, creative kid who was into punk rock and liked art, but the art classes were horrible. So when I got to college (Truman State University in MO), I went in with an undeclared major. I ended up taking a drawing class and a design class and found out that art classes don't have to suck. And I graduated with a BFA in Visual Communication.

I spent 2 years after college as an Art Director. In essence, I was the entire art department for a small company that printed t-shirts for college fraternity and sorority parties. Seeing nothing better on the horizon, I went back to school to be an illustrator at Portfolio Center in Atlanta.

After graduating from Portfolio Center, I landed my first bona fide job as an illustrator at Funny Garbage in NYC.

What inspires your work?

Jeez...that'd be a really long list. Just about everything that I see or hear influences my work in some way...whether I respond to it positively or negatively. A short list of some of the stuff I like, in no particular order: punk rock art, bmx and skateboard magazines, street art, graffiti, comics, underground comix, cartoons, pop art, psychedelic art, vintage movie posters, candy packaging, detergent packaging and I'm sure there's a whole slew of things I'm forgetting at the moment. If you think you see a hint of some kind of art or artist in my work, it's most likely one of the things that's in the stew.

What the heck is the deal with monsters?

I'm still figuring that out. When I started Savage Monsters Industries, I was collecting a lot of vinyl kaiju toys from the Ultraman series. Villains are inherently much more interesting than the good guys. And I figured that monsters are something that I'd never get tired of drawing since they're all made up anyway. With Savage Monsters, I was (and I suppose I still am) trying to create an entertaining and engaging site that could also double as a portfolio site.

You're a flash guy. What do you think about Microsoft's Silverlight?

I may be a Flash guy, but I'm still a total Luddite. I had to look up Silverlight and I still don't know what it is. I pretty much just draw and animate in Flash. I've got VERY basic programming skills. I've learned that if I know too much about programming and technology, I'll be called upon for those skills, thus, less time doing what I love to do...create.

How would you describe your style?

I try not to describe what I do. Most people's eyes glaze over when I'm talking about my work. I get responses like "So...you're a lawyer?" (That actually DID happen) It's much easier to show someone a picture.

Boiled down, maybe my style is Basil Wolverton meets Dr. Seuss.

What's the goofiest monster you've ever drawn?

I wish I knew. I've been going through all my sketchbooks from the past 10 years (over 110 books) and I've been finding some good stuff.

What's in the future for you?

That's one of the great things. I have no idea. I never would have guessed that I've been the places and done the things that I have so far.

I'm currently working on self-publishing several books of my work, developing properties for tv and for licensing. And I've got lots of pet projects like t-shirts, stickers, trading cards, vending machine toys and other things in the works. Always too many ideas and too little time and finances to bring them all to fruition.

Thanks for chatting with us!

For more of Dave's work check out his Carbonmade portfolio: http://davesavage.carbonmade.com/