House Of Hannigan: The Union Jack Dress

On Saturday 3rd March, I set off from Basingstoke early armed only with my camera, Simon's flashgun, a reflector and a TomTom (with car) and headed for Hammersmith...
... I arrived just before 10am at Christopher O'Reilly's house (where he was working from today) and knocked at the door. Finally meeting Christopher face to face was great. He's really very lovely. I stepped in, signed a few conditioning forms and he handed over a very large (but thankfully, wheeled) suitcase. Very exciting. :)


The sun was shining as I drove into Westminster and headed over to Abingdon Street car park (also known as the world's most expensive car park ever... I would imagine) and headed to Parliament Square with the dress in tow.


Where else would you shoot House of Hannigan's Union Jack Dress?


Everyone was due to arrive at 11am so, as it was only about 10:15, I had a little wander around, soaking up the sun, checking out my settings vs the weather and identifying some good spots for location.


First to arrive was my lovely model, Yaasmin. She fluttered up the stairs looking very lovely in her cream coat and then we were joined within minutes by my wonderful assistants! David Burch of Prime Exposures and Gemma Pink of Pure Curvation who had agreed to come along and lug things around (Gemma) and help with lighting (David) ...and then few minutes later, we were joined at last by Rosie Cerosio of Cerosio Makeup. This was our team.




Rosie and Yaasmin skipped off to the toilets so that Yaasmin could wriggle into the corset of the dress and Rosie could apply the majority of the makeup. After what was nearly an hour, they were kicked out by the attendant. Now I don't know about you, but if I had paid 50p to get into the toilets there, I would have wanted my money's worth! ... but I was assured that this was no time to kick up a stink. :D


We had photos to take!

 
Now then, at about 10:15, there was this lovely spot with a good view of about 4 red phoneboxes all in a pretty little row, which, apart from the tourists having their photo taken in them, were fairly un-busy.


At 12pm, this area was swamped. The whole of Parliament Square was swamped actually. Sheesh. Immediately, within seconds of unfolding the beautiful Union Jack Dress, tourists began gathering with their cameras and snapping pictures from every possible angle. But we soldiered on anyway!

Rosie had done a wonderful job of the make-up and Yaasmin was looking ready to be a public display, so for our first image, we went for something a bit like this...

As you can see, it was pretty darn sunny. But not a single tourist... ?

(I've photoshopped about 14 tourists and a big sign out of that photo...  True story.)
Next, we went over to The Supreme Court and used the courtyard area there. Which genuinely wasn't busy.

I love this building with all it's beautiful bordering.

This was my one of my two favourite images from the day. ^

 

Next we tried Westminster Abbey. By this point, there were tourists following Yaasmin with their camera phones and trying to get pictures of themselves in front of it! It was, at best, hectic as hell and if David and Gemma weren't there helping, I think I would have been flustered enough to give that special someone a nice big cup of punch-in-the-face.

But we got one good one there:

There were 23 tourists in the above image and some building work going on.


I ain't gonna lie here. I'm a-braggin'. That's some good editing. Matt Bryant would be so proud.

*toot toot* <- That's me tooting my own horn as usual...


We didn't stay here long before moving along to the centre of the roundabout in Parliament Square to frame up with ol' Big Ben.


Interesting fact: the clock tower we all know and love in London is not actually called 'Big Ben' as most are led to believe. 'Big Ben' is merely the name of the bell within the clock tower. Apparently that's not all that commonly known. Now don't say I never tell you anything.


Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures here (WHAT? I know). So we were moved on by the Roundabout Police. (A childrens' programme? Unfortunately not.)


We headed instead to the centre of Westminster Bridge and got set. Rosie applied a bit more makeup here are there and we waited for the sun to remerge from the clouds. It had been quite hit and miss today.

And then it came out and I got my other favourite image ^ thanks to the expert reflector positioning from one David Burch.

 Well... there are the images.


We were lucky on the day that, although there were way too many tourists in the way, we had some sunshine, some great angles, a fantastic make-up artist, a beautiful subject and had the help of two very keen assistants! Honestly, I couldn't have done that shoot without David and Gemma. They carried stuff, helped out with the lighting and Gemma even offered to rugby tackle some of the London enthusiasts in the background with their cameras.




On the whole, it was a great day and the pictures are up on House of Hannigan's site today. Christopher seems pretty chuffed with them too which helps matters...


Check them out (and the others) here:

www.thehouseofhannigan.com/union-jack-dress-project-2012

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!

Kiera Gould: Less Angus, More Kiera

Ok, so following on from my previous post...

Kiera (killing soon in a town near you) came for a longer studio shoot on Saturday 22nd October.


We'd planned to work with each other again once I had obtained my own studio kit, which of course I have.

Kiera turned up with lots of bits and bobs to use, such as some really nice maroon velvet drapes, peacock feathers, most cleverly obtained for a shocking price of 15 'bob' by Bill (Billiam) Thomas.

We started out soft and simple and got a range of beautiful, yet natural, Kieraful headshots such as this:

And this (Ooh! Peacock Feathers!? Thanks Bill!):

And these!:

These last two achieved using a very bright but softened backlight, and a soft main light.

Next up we went for a rocky look. Kiera donned some very pink eyeshadow and we accessorised the bejesus out of her using all the chains, gloves, netted clothing and cuffs, etc, that I could find in the time it took her to get made up. Kiera's hair was sprayed forward into a stylish, yet relaxed quiff and off we went.

I like this one. It's not a typical composition but I like it anyway. So 'ner, ner'. :p

I am aware that these two are incredibly similar but I am yet to decide on my favourite of the two...

... I think it's that right one.

...Maybe.

Anyway, moving on. Next we stuck up a maroon velvet backdrop (as provided by Kiera) and got into a classy ladylike outfit. The top being a really lovely pink corset top that I had failed to take a good picture of when I was first starting out in my very early photography testing days. Every picture blurry, damn it! But I have since learned a lot about shutter speed. *pat pat* Well done Chloe.

Besides, I got another go at it. :D

Right, next I wanted to have a go with a blue gel filter. Kiera changed into a pair of teeny tiny shorts and wrapped her front with a teeny tiny piece of grey fabric.

So Robin, you'll be pleased to know, your sister was not completely naked. Sorry to everyone else for that information. I did try really hard.

I struggled around a bit with this next one having never used a gel filter before. I seemed to think when setting this up that I wanted the blue light to hit Kiera's face. Whilst I fumbled around with this for a bit trying it at different angles, and with the other light on and off, and facing the other light away but pinging it back with a reflector, and facing the same way as the filtered light, etc etc (seriously, everything but!) I eventually brought the blue light up from the back and had the main light hitting Kiera from the front.

And it looked SO much better and less like I'd turned Kiera into a Smurf.

Tempted to Photoshop Kiera as a smurf anyway for comic effect... hmm... I'd probably die horribly. Will try that on a less deadly subject some other time. *notes down*

Right then. Last set. I loved it.

Like with Marlyn's corsetted shoot, I switched to the Tungsten setting for my white balance and we just got so many awesome shots!

So, lucky you! You get to look at a few of these. :D

That cheekbone is a killer. :o

 

This outfit in fact was so awesome, I wore it that night to Martin's halloween work do'. I hitched the front of the skirt right up and put on some fishnet stockings & suspenders, some fake blood and pasty white make-up and went as a bride of Count Dracula. One! Two! Ah ah ahhh!!!

Speaking of which, I 'forgot' to give that outfit back...

Moving swiftly on... Kiera's coming for some extreme beauty shots* next time, possibly in January? So watch this space.

* Extreme beauty shots are unfortunately not beauty shots taken whilst doing something extreme, such as bungee jumping, hang-gliding, parachuting, etc but it's certainly worth thinking about and Kiera's certainly the girl for the job...