Dominique

And while I was at it......retouching the Gloss images....I also finished retouching a couple of images from my shoot back in January, with Dominique.
She and her agency have been asking about these images for ever! I feel bad because usually I am really good at delivering my test shoot images to the agency shortly after the actual shoot but this time around several things just kept coming in between.
Finally a couple of them are done and delivered and they are also up on my website.

Moving on to the next project......A hair beauty test tomorrow with Kim and Hikari!

white space

Last week on wednesday we shot the trousers story for Gloss magazine in the gloriously white space at Location05.
Call time was 8:30AM and everybody showed up ready and enthusiastic to shoot!
Allison St. Germain, the stylist, had arrived to the studio already at 8AM, to start unpacking a potpourri of pants;
Wide leg, ankle length, slim legs and a variation of materials from linen to jersey to silk and fabulous accessories to match!
We had to accomplish 9 shots that day and Hikari (hair) and Kim (makeup) decided to make hair and makeup changes every third look.
They started with a softer more natural look and ended with a stronger more slick look with a spiky/messy look in the middle.
Very nice!
I had already decided to mix daylight with a couple of strobes. One strobe I gelled with a blue gel (for the ambiance) and on the other a yellow gel (for the skin).
While I was testing the light I felt I wanted to add an additional dreamy effect to the already white spacey room and decided to put a bit of fuzzy white fabric around the lens....Just a tiny piece.
It worked!! It gives a cloudy out of focus effect at the edges of the image.
It was an amazingly well organized and calm day. No hitches which is rare! AND I worked without an assistant that day!
Karolina.B, our model was wonderful to work with. She exceeded my expectations big time!
We even finished ahead of time and around 4PM we could wrap the shoot.....Well, the others finished :).....I had to run back home, download all the images to my main computer and start editing. At 2AM in the morning I sent a layout suggestion to the magazine and low res jpegs for them to see first thing Thursday morning (Irish time).
All this because they needed the story done and ready by Monday February 16th (2 days ago)!!
Needless to say: I spent most of the week-end retouching their selected images and on Sunday night I posted the final images on my ftp site.
Mission accomplished! And we got the cover!!

Good job everybody!

casting

Today we had the casting for the upcoming Gloss magazine shoot.
It was a crazy day for many of the models as Fashion week is around the corner and they are holding their castings, fittings etc these days.
I was a little worried about the turnout of our casting but out of my list of close to 20 models that I wanted to see only 5 didn't show up, so all in all it was a good day.
I have to say that all the girls were beautiful but as always, when working on a project, you are looking for that face, that look that fits the idea you have in mind.
I have a tendency of casting very pretty, ethereal looking girls....porcelain skin, long hair....very romantic looking girls.
Kim, my makeup artist and friend knows me by now and can pick out in a wink of an eye the girls she knows I would choose for my shoots.
In this case though we where looking for a girl with a bit more spunk, a little tougher, with tons of camera presence and who moves (stands, walks, runs, jumps etc) really well as the studio will be quite sparsely furnished and there will not always be something to interact with.
We finally saw Karolina.B from Ford models and I had that moment of click in my brain where I could just see her fit into my "story". Hard to explain what that means but that's how it works for me. :)
It's like when you are out shopping clothes sometimes. You are not sure what you are looking for but you know you will know when you see it.
Now, hopefully I am right.......I will know on Wednesday.....and the story will merge together nicely with the images I have in my head....and if I am really lucky; even better!

Locations

Today I have spent all day running around town looking for locations for Gloss magazine.
On Wednesday next week I am shooting a trousers fashion story for spring 09 and I need to find an inexpensive location to shoot at.
After having covered a few friends of friends loft spaces and apartments I finally went down to 200 Hudson street and visited Location05.
Great space! All white on white. White furniture, glossy white walls, floors and ceilings and a ton of light!
This space is perfect for my shoot and although my budget was a bit below what they usually charge they where so nice in working something out for me.
I am very pleased.
This will be a great fashion story and I can't wait to shoot it!

http://www.location05.com

Chocolate

Ok, so some time has past since I last posted on my blog.
I went to Sweden for one week to see my family (images to come) and for the past week I have once again been deeply buried in retouching work.

Last year I got the idea to shoot a chocolate beauty/accessory story. I contacted several chocolate companies around the country asking if they would be interested in sending me samples for my shoot. The response was overwhelming! Almost every company responded and sent me the most gorgeous looking (and tasting:) chocolate.

My friend Kelley Quan; a brilliant makeup artist and the editor of zoozoom.com magazine really liked my idea and decided to not only work with me on this project as the makeup artist but also to publish the story in zoozoom (should be out within the month).

We cast Heide Lindgren from Muse management as our chocolate girl and she was wonderful to work with.
Johnny Laroy did the beautiful hair, Allison Berlin styled our shoot, the manicurist Shamina was absolutely amazing and Mary Arch did a brilliant job with the set-design, giving the shoot a flair of art deco and old money.

The only glitch of the day was that Heide had to leave our shoot at 5PM which we found out about around 2PM and we didn't get as many shots as we would have wanted with her.
These things do happen in our unpredictable world of picture taking so we just had to figure out a way to make our story work regardless.
Mary and Allison came to my rescue and together we created some really amazing still-life shots and the story came together beautifully at the end.

Here is a sneak peak of some of the images from this shoot.

Cheers!