Wayne KC: Androgynous

I had an idea for a striking set of portrait photos of Wayne KC of NOIR Photography so we discussed it and met up one evening to give it a go.

Now I may have suggested to Wayne that these were only ‘portrait shots’… I didn’t mention that he’d be wearing dramatic make-up, gaffa tape, a leather collar and a long black skirt but sometimes, it’s better to keep these things to yourself rather than scare off your subject…

So I turned up with all my gear and set it all up. We used Wayne's background for ease as it was readily available and I sat him down and got started with his eye make-up. A nice set of smoky-black eyes, mascara, black eyeshadow, blackened eyebrows… you get the picture (you really will in a minute).

Next, I cut said gaffa into thin strips and positioned them around the lower eye in what I can only think to describe as a Clockwork Orange, owl-like manner.

He put the skirt on rather like a poncho and I put the leather collar (which is actually a leather cuff) around his neck and gaffa’d it to stay in place. It was at this point I realised that Wayne trusts me too much.

We took the first set of images from varying heights and angles. This straight on shot being my favourite of these:

This effect was achieved with the colour balance too on all the blacks only, giving it a sort of teal green radiance.

Next, we took off the skirt-poncho and leather cuff and gave Waynie some lover-ly black lips to balance out the darks and lights a little. I got him to take his shirt off as is customary in my shoots (I really do promise that it’s not) and got him sticking his elbows forward to bring out those gorgeous collar-bones and really step up the androgynous-ness… ness…

This time, the effect was achieved using a cyan 'variation' but this time, the whole image for a more alien look. Ooh.

Funny story: Wayne once dressed up as a girl on a night out and very nearly got hit on by a guy he knew. They were mortified.

That being said… he does look surprisingly good as a girl. Not only could he pull it off but he could pull it off better than a lot of actual girls…

A bit of an Andrej Pelic.

But he’s a boy! But he IS a boy! But he’s… a… boy… !?

Anyway, my thanks to Wayne for letting me attack him with black leather and gaffa tape. Especially as I’m a girl (otherwise I can’t see how it would have been a problem…)

Check out Wayne’s work here!:

Wayne’s Website

Wayne’s Facebook Page

Wayne’s Blog

Wayne’s Twitter

Ceri Williams: Despair and Destruction

That’s what you shall experience if you decide to work with Ceri.

Not really. She’s fab.

I sent her a text on the 9^th May to enquire as to whether she was free on Sunday the 13^th because I ‘had an idea for something’… and she was! And thank goodness otherwise this would have been a very short post, wouldn’t it?

I was in Wolverhampton that weekend so wasn’t sure what time I’d be back but I got to Farnborough around 4pm and Ceri and I went about shredding some old dark clothes into strips. She asked why but was told she’d see when we got there. To which she asked ‘Oh, are we going out then?’… Hee hee. I’m sneaky.

I managed also to rope housemate and legend, Matt Evans into coming along as well as an assistant, and assist he did!

We got to the location in Hindhead for about 6pm to meet the most beautiful sunshine I’d seen all year. At first I was a bit miffed as it was on the wrong side of the building but it turned out OK as it was falling in through a broken window. Could it get any more magical? (Obviously, I mean without a unicorn).

I got Ceri dressed and Matt and I knotted all the strips of fabric together before tucking them up under Ceri’s corset. We positioned them around her (in a fashion of which you might be able to gleam from the final photo) and just to finish the effect of Ceri’s fabric-y tendrils creeping their way across the building, I went around the back, climbed a tree (something I regretted not limbering up for in the days to follow) and threw some fabric in through the windows. This way, it looked as though Ceri’s dress was snaking it’s way up the walls and out of the windows.
 

 

^ There's me in the tree...

We started off sad, sorrowful and a tad creepy… O_o

Here's me directing that shot XD

Heh. I look like I'm directing Hamlet.

"No, no, Ceri! It's 'Alas! Poor Yorrick! I knew him, Horatio... yadda yadda'. Really feel his sorrow!"

Ahh... pretty... ->













 I wanted to ‘leg it’ after seeing this one on my display after taking. *shudder* :

 

But I didn’t! I soldiered on (very brave) and continued to work this girl to death after her nearly 3-month break from modelling…

Next up, Matt ‘Wind-Machine’ Evans, fanned my beautiful, yet scary subject to create some oomph/wind/epics and got Ceri to literally, put those lungs to use and scream the house down...
 

And a right banshee she became!:

If anyone heard us in the neighbouring houses, they’re not going to be approaching this place again in a hurry!

We got a couple more shots with a broken mirror on our way out of which this was the best one:

Poor little doll. What have you become, eh?

And then we spent a few more minutes working on a different project for Ceri before we lost the light.

All in all, a bloody good day actually!

Thanks to Matt and Ceri for your hard work on this one. We did good. x

Self Portraits: A Bit of 'Me-Time'

Right... truth is... I haven't been able to get my creative on for a couple of weeks and it's made me hungry for image creation. Big time.

So, I got a new lens for my birthday (thank you to all who emailed and messaged to wish me happy birthday. If you want to give me a 'free' gift, please recommend me to your friends, share my blog or share my Facebook page www.facebook.com/chloeisherwoodphotography as that would be most ace of you.). Martin kindly bought me a 50mm f1.4 Canon lens. Yum yum. Unfortunately, due to various reasons, I had no-one to test it on! D':

So, needing to get a self-portrait done at some point (whilst they're lovely, I feel a little pretentious using old modelling shots as my portrait images), I volunteered myself late one evening. \o/

Here's how it went!

I got the camera, complete with new lens set up on my new tripod (another birthday gift, thanks Adam), set the aperture to f/1.4 (because I can :D ) focussed roughly where I thought I would be and set my camera on a timer.

That didn't work.

with such a shallow depth of field, of course I wasn't going to end up in the correct place. even despite the 20th or so attempts... O_o

So instead, I kept the same settings and then pushed the button manually.

Naturally I looked away at the last minute because I'm just so very shy. ;)

So that one was under a tungsten bulb and with the tungsten white balance setting giving it that lovely cold/blue look. Which I like. Makes me look a bit elfy.

And then next I popped up one of my lights for a bit of a sharp shadow/lighting effect.

And got this....

... with the shallowest depth of field EVER (n.b. not an actual fact)!
Well there they are then. Took a lot of trial and error to get just these two. Didn't really like the rest. Too blurry, not well-framed, wrong angle of nose, too much cowbell, etc.

Will refrain from talking a lot about myself now and leave...

... resisting.... usual... egotistical... comments... erk...

... struggling... with... self...

But I am pretty fabulous though.

OUT!

Zachary Street: Featuring Emma Bugg

I met Zach at a Savage Media production (Butcher’s Blossom) in 2009. I was helping out in wardrobe at the time. In the last year, we’ve come across each other a few more times on various sets and at the last one, he mentioned a potential modelling portfolio being put together.

A few weeks later, he messaged me about this modelling portfolio and we decided to get together in November to get it started.

Important note: I met Zach’s girlfriend, Emma Bugg at the last film he was working on. She is also of the acting persuasion and is, frankly, stunningly beautiful. So I told Zach to bring her along to spice his portfolio up a bit with a girl here and there. :D

So Zach and Emma came down to Basingstoke on the train on the Sunday morning and theybrought so many clothes. Well, Zach has brought so many clothes. Approximately one million suits, maybe two. How many waistcoats does this boy own? I think we will never know. Also, major hat fanatic. So many hats.

We started off nice and easy. Black Emporio Armani shirt on white, with two soft-boxes. Came out all nice. He’s a natural. You can tell he practises his model-face in the mirror. :D

See.

Emma meanwhile, was set up on the sofa with her coursework, reading up on some stuff. Well, I couldn’t have that. That is way too much good behaviour!? So I interrupted her (of course) and got her into the dresses she had brought with her. Which were awesome.

We went with Emma in black first with Zach in his grey suit. Whit whoo. Don’t they look gorgeous, dahling?

And don't you just love that hair colour!?

And then Zach looking all handsome in black and Emma looking beautiful with her cream dress complete with massive vintage bow. We were fans of the bow.

Yay bow!

OK, so next we did a more rock scene look. Dressed them all in jangly chain-like accessories and dog tags and the like and then, we took it outside. My first experience with using studio lights outside (Squee! How exciting!) And here’s what we came up with this one:

I love this one SO much.

And this one's not bad either.

We also took a couple of these inside and played around with those ol’ gel filters again.

I started off with red…

… which came out pink:

Best image from that set. XD

So then we went blue instead (the old favourite). Nice and moody.

A nice bit of contrast between the orange-red hair and Zach's blue cheek!

Right then. Well, it was going to happen eventually. Next, Zach took all his clothes off.

We (I mean to say, Zach and a very keen Emma) oiled him up a treat with an oil based moisturiser. And then I (and I do mean I, this time) sprayed him all over with water.

Pa-choo! Pa-choo! Got you.

This is what happens next:

Note how his ‘model-face’ has become much more intense now he’s finally got  to take his clothes off...

  

Such an intense look, Mr Street!

(My favourite. Look at that lighting! Phwoar!)

... And there's that old Tungsten setting again. :D

Needless to say, this was a wicked shoot and I had a great time with Zach and Emma.

Sorry Ladies, this one belongs to Miss Bugg and I can't see that changing as they're quite possibly the most loved up couple in the world but expect to see more from Zach again early next year!

Toodle-pip!

Mary Luke: Wardrobe Extraordinnaire

Mary is a long-term friend of mine from my college days.

We spoke recently about shooting and, being busy bunnies, we arranged them over two evenings rather than over the weekend.

Evening 1: Wednesday 19^th October, 7pm

Mary brought a small portion of her wardrobe to my house. This ‘small portion’ FILLED my house. There was the most MASSIVE suitcase I have ever seen in my entire life, being carried in by Mary (who is about the 3^rd of the size of said suitcase), a massive shoulder bag heaving with shoes, and then a further bag of shoes. And another box of shoes.

Now of course, this was totally my fault. As Mary said (repeatedly) “you didn’t specify!”. I had said, bring as much as you can carry. Fill a suitcase. Literally, as much as you can. My mistake. Sorry Mary. I didn’t realise that you owned one of every outfit ever made and that you happened to have a suitcase the size of the UK.

We got set up, chatting for a while and got Mary made up and into outfit one:

 

We had lots of awesome clothes to choose from. There were corsets and dresses and tights and trousers, chokers and shoes, the list goes on!


Outfit two was a bit more lacy and gothic and this was our best image:

And then, of course, because she can’t envisage a shoot now without her presence, Ceri “Look At Me” Williams turned up! Apparently, Mary invited her. A likely story indeed… >_>

And so Mary and I tried to carry on uninterrupted, which of course, was now proving difficult with Ceri jumping in front of the camera at every given opportunity and stomping her feet when she couldn’t have her own way.

She’s going to hate me when she reads this but it’s all true, look!:

Still, regardless of our unexpected Diva waltzing in and making us laugh uncontrollably, Mary and I got a good few shots to use from evening 1.


Here was outfit three. A Religion silver dress:

Then there was the black red and blue corset which was AWESOME:

The purple netted top, which was my personal favourite:

(Beware: too smexy for the naked eye.)

... and then there was actual nudity. Wa-hey!

We ended on that happy note. :)

Evening 2: Thursday 20^th October, 7pm

Disaster struck!

Unfortunately, everything went wrong on Evening 2. My car was at the garage being fixed and so I had got the train to work. Some pilchards on the M3 then decided to have a bit of a pile up and Basingstoke was a mess. I got out of work and got the train back to Basingstoke. I was picked up by Martin and then by the time we had fought through the traffic back to the garage, the service desk wasn’t open and so I couldn’t get my car. If I had got to the car, the shoot would have started very late anyway, but I was miffed.

Not as miffed as Mary must have been though as she had not got my messages due to driving to Farnborough to meet me there and got them when she arrived. Oh dear. Worse still… Mary had gotten me a present. And it was amazing (though I didn’t know that at the time). O_o


I obviously apologised profusely until her ears bled and we rescheduled Evening 2 to the following Tuesday. It did mean that I could start on the edits from Evening 1, though.

Evening 2B: Tuesday 25^th October, 7pm

Evening 2 was epic. I love the whole thing.


We started off punk-rock with big 80's hair and tassly bits. :D

And then we moved onto this pink gangster outfit that was, quite frankly, amazing!

Ain't she a character!?

 

And a beauty.

I love those. :D 

We did get a variety this time again with a lot of awesome outfits and things.


We had the awesome black lace parasol and dress:

This one is quite funny because, for those of you who don't know, Mary is pretty darn short (approximately 2ft tall ;D). For this one, as the skirt was so long, we stood her up on an upturned bin to get some height on the girl! Ha ha. I think it looked pretty cool though actually:

We had this wicked leather outfit:

Phwoar.

*Jelly Legs*

And then finally, we couldn't resist the inevitable Lolita outfit opportunity.

For those who don't know Mary, as I said, she's a bit of a short arse (sorry Mary, please don't bite my ankles), she's also obviously into her gothic stylings, however, she's also a fan of the ol' Lolita styling which she can really, truly get away with incredibly well due to her diddiness. That is a word. I just wrote it in the dictionary myself.

Now I have this giant teddy bear, Mister Ted (is there no end to my genius) that I won at Chessington (I know, is there anything I can't do, right?) and so with Mary literally looking like a little gothic doll and Mister Ted being as oversized as Mary is undersized... what a fookin' pair they made!

Observe:

HOW COOL IS THAT!?

As my avid fan, Adam Gould says, she looks like a little borrower! Awww. Can we keep her?

Anyways, amongst other things, Mary is also interested in Cosplay (eurgh) as is Ceri and so there may be some of that soon *shudder*.

Aside from that, doing these images in the evening kind of limited us to the studio due to lack of lighting but all those who would like to see more gothic Mary images on location, say 'aye'!

Must... buy... portable... battery... pack... for... lights...

... so... expensive...

*cries forever*

Goodnight Kids!