Wonderland

A shoot idea I'd had for over 2 years and was so glad I got to finally do this shoot. It was the first one I did on my own, without any help from college, I learnt a lot from this shoot, this shoot was definitely a lot more pressure because I didn't have a tutor to fall back on if something messed up, I had to sort out the problems myself.
But I had an amazing model, the same one who modelled as a mermaid and an amazing runner.
These are some of the behind the scenes shots:
NOTE: I did the hair, make up, and spent about £30 on cakes, which is a lot considering I'm a student with not a lot of money to start with!

And here are some of the final edited images.

The Little Mermaid - Final Images

Helloo!

If you read my last post then you would have seen all the work that went into making this shoot, so much latex and planning. But we eventually got there and after a few days of editing here's some of the final images. 

Credit to the model, Lauren Shotton. 

This shoot was so much fun to do, maybe I'll get to do another one like it in the future, that would be amazing!

For now it's onto planning the next shoot which hopefully will be August time...hope you like some of the final images =)

The Little Mermaid- The Creation

Been a while since I've posted anything, last thing was the white angel shoot I did which is still in the process of being edited. But a new exciting project has come along for my final project for college before I head off to university, it was a mermaid shoot. We did all our own props and costumes so we made the tail, made a sea shell bra, there was a mirror for the mermaid to hold and we went to an awesome location called Tal-y-bont in Wales.

Here is how the process went and how we came to make all these different things. I mainly focused on the sea shell bra as for the first half of prep for this shoot I wasn't around much, but this is all I know - Enjoy!

We needed something to build the latex around, which was the main material used to making the tail. So we made a polystyrene structure.

After a layer of latex we stuck straws onto the fin so it gave it some texture and looked more realistic like the fins on a fish. Then we piled on layers of latex (lost count how many). The colour scheme we went for was blue and purple and added silver to it later.

Using a stencil we tried to air brush the scales on with silver paint but it didn't quite work out so we ended up putting on a silver fabric (you will see soon)

With the sea shell bra we started out making a mould out of plasticine then made a mould of it using plaster bandages and then once that had dried we made a latex mould from that.
Once that was all done we could get to painting, I ended up using at least 6 different layers of paint only because I had sketches and knew what I wanted but found it difficult to paint it on. At first I was trying all sorts, neutral colours to blues and greens, trying to be quite fancy with it.
In the end I found the best thing was to use purple, blue and silver. the middle parts I used the blue and purple and managed to blend it together so it looked like it had merged into one and then with the bumpy 'bone' structure of the shell I painted that silver. (You will see the finished thing soon)





Along with the big clams to be the main focus on the bra, I also made some smaller shells to give the bra a little bit more colour and to make it that little bit more interesting. I made a starfish and also some little limpets. This was all done exactly the same way as the clams.

When it came to the location I don't think we could've picked a better location. It's absolutely stunning! Tal-y-bont waterfalls, if you haven't visited it before you should!

We spent about a month, maybe just over that planning, creating and getting ready for this shoot and it all payed off. Hope you enjoyed reading and seeing how all this shoot came together, look forward to showing you the final edited images in the next post =)

Smoke and Champagne

Recently in class we saw something and wanted to get a bit of practice in lighting, and it seemed like a really interesting thing to have a go at. Rim Lighting, which is basically where you light a subject but only see their outline, nothing else.

We decided to use a Champagne bottle and a glass filled with red water, once we got the hang of it out came the smoke machine to see if we could give it more of an effect. It worked but not really as well as I'd hoped.

(Left) With the smoke machine. I quite like the blue effect we get on the back ground but wanted it to be a bit more 'mysterious'

(Right) Without the smoke machine.

Then we moved onto lighting incense sticks, using a flash light and testing different coloured gels and making patterns, faces or flowers with the smoke. Learnt quite a few techniques to this and it came out really good, this has to be the one thing I'm really impressed with and proud of doing.

White Angel

Been a while since I last posted, think it's been 5 months or so. But been fairly busy, got back into doing Photography and have a few bits and pieces I want to share, had a lot of fun over the past month designing some wings for a white angel shoot that is still in the process of being edited so can only show you some pre production stuff; although it's very similar to the Fairy shoot I did last year =)And plus now I've got a water mark so there will be a whole lot more of my photography popping up over the next few months (yay!)

 For the feathers we printed onto Vinyl and then stuck that onto pieces of card, once on the card we cut around each feather and stuck the bigger feathers onto sticks. We built up layers of feathers onto the structure to make them look more like Swan wings.

The wings were attached to a back panel that was attached to a corset (Wasn't involved with making the corset so not posting photos of it, Sorry!)

These aren't the final images I've gone for but examples and shows you the make up we went for and how the wings looked on the model.

Though not all plain sailing as the wings broke off the back panel! Luckily we attached them to a C Stand so Jess (The model) just stood in front of the stand, wasn't all too bad.

That's about it for now, but more photography to show and also planning another photo shoot for next month which I'm looking forward to putting into action. Bye!

Autumn

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, Instagram is still getting most if my attention. 

Recently I've been doing a documentary but got to do a bit more photography for one short scene. A scene of leaves :) 

Not the final image! But something along these lines

Such a simple set up, a 7D camera with a 17-85mm lense, and 1 LED light with a tungsten filter :) 

The final image along with the documentary will be posted soon :) 

All things sweet

So it's been a while since I last put up a blog post, Instagram & twitter have been getting all my attention just recently...but I've also been a busy bee baking. Here's some of the stuff I've done recently.

Chocolate almond cake with cream cheese frosting & homemade caramel sauce.

Devils food cake with raspberry & white chocolate ganache topped with dark chocolate ganache. 

Maple & bacon cupcakes

And just for the Halloween season, pumpkin pie & Jack Skeleton cookies.

I may be good at baking cakes but this is plain ugly, my attempt at making macaroons...so horrible! The mixture was too runny, it didn't pipe, they burnt. It's fair to say I need much more practice!

Until next time X.