A set of Elinchrom D-Lite it 4's, two 66x66cm softboxes, another reflector, Arctic White Colorama backdrop, a heavy duty backdrop frame and some other bits and bobs, if anyone's interested... (anyone???)
Naturally, I had to rope someone into guinea-pigging for me whilst I attacked them with my new kit. As it happens, at my new-ish job, there is a (very pretty) young office administrator who happened to mention that she would 'give it a go' if she had the opportunity. So here it was. The opportunity.
Melissa and I met up after work on Thursday 3rd Sept and drove to Frimley where we took a couple of test headshots like this one:
The idea of this was that she wouldn't be a bag of nerves when she got in front of the camera on the coming Sunday. Melissa's plenty confident but I wasn't sure whether being in the 'limelight' would put her way out of her comfort zone. I was very pleased to find, though, that it didn't at all. Melissa was as bubbly and fun as ever and we had a great time messing around and trying different looks.
So we agreed on the Sunday in Basingstoke. Notorious Nicholson was back on the case again and turned up at noon to find that I had (with the help of the resident men) shoved all of the furniture over to one side of the room and set up MY EPIC STUDIO OF EPICNESS in the other half. She also witness the kitten (Leela) attacking the new equipment (very helpful) whilst I was trying to get it set up.
This is Leela in her new collar, by the way. Cute.
Melissa turned up at half past and rolled in with a suitcase of clothes. Moving in, are you? Ah ha ha. Best joke ever... We all had sandwiches, lovingly made by Martin before he was banished from the now studio until we had finished. See. I'm learning to feed the models now. And then we set to work.
Rachel got going with the makeup and we started with something simple and floral. Soft light up front and ever so slightly harshly backlit.
Isn't she lovely?
We did all the dresses at the beginning as they were soft and simple. We got such images as:
I liked this little cream dress the most. It was really nice.
Now then. Clearly, we were due for a make-up change by this point as we'd exhausted the more simple and natural look and so Rachel (who was watching the car rally racing at this point) was tasked with something a bit more dramatic.
So here it goes. I whacked the lights up a bit and we went for something a bit more bright and zany to show off Melissa's fun side. Here's what we got:
If you don't know Melissa, this really doesn't look like her, by the way. Great job Rachel. Rachel? Rachel was watching the racing again. :)
So we pestered her again. Rayyy-ch!?
After this make-up change, Rachel went home to sort my pizza out for later whilst Melissa and I finished up with two more outfits. :)
This one was actually taken with the light in shot behind Melissa here. No softbox. Completely nakey. I'm quite pleased with it but would like to try it again a little differently.
Final outfit. Orange and purple. Fab. Very happy, just like Melissa.
And a nice 'over the shoulder' finish:
Ta-da!
On the whole, I would say Melissa was a huge success. She's got a fantastic face, a beautiful smile and those big brown eyes. I would definitely love working with her again (even though, technically, I 'work with her' every weekday... ) and I hope that she takes this shoot as the start of a fun and fantastic modelling spree! I think she'd do incredibly well in catalogue modelling with a face like that and so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens from here!
To top this rather fantastic day off, Martin (my partner) and I headed over to Rachel and Simon's for a pretty darn massive pizza and Ace Ventura; When Nature Calls, which contains such memorable quotes as:
"I'm sorry, how... selfish of me... Let's do ALL the things that you wanna do."
"LIKE A GLOVE!"
and of course:
"And YOU must be the Monopoly guy! Hey... Thanks for the free parking..."
We need to get a hobby.
Lots of lovely images here! Lighting looks great!
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