RSS FeedForbidden Fruit Tastes The Sweetest (Twilight Cosplay)
Posted by sab | Filed under Cosplay, Finished Images, Movie Review, Photography
A couple of Fridays ago, me Aly, Christine and Melia went to see Twilight in cinema. The whole thing was very entertaining. Highlights include the overwhelming number of uncomfortable close ups, overused 360 degree panning camera, myspace glitter text effect applied to the skin, flying scenes that were reminiscent of martial arts series’ set in ancient china, seeing Kristen Stewart’s confused expression in almost every scene, awkward dialogue, inconsistencies and amusing editing techniques. I did enjoy some of the cinematography, lighting and set construction in the film (fairy lights in the background are so pretty), I love Kristen Stewart as Bella and was pleasantly surprised to discover that Robert Pattinson (as Edward Cullen) looked more attractive as a vampire.
What really set the atmosphere of amusement was hearing the squeals of pre-teen girls coming from the back of the cinema when Robert Pattinson (playing the part of Edward Cullen) came on screen. Sadly, noone showed Taylor Lautner (as Jacob Black) any love, but it wasn’t a huge surprise given the dorky hair extensions they put on him, proving that long hair just doesn’t suit some guys. Apparently, he’s getting replaced for the next movie.
Anyway, I digress. Last Saturday we got together again to do a Twilight cosplay in honour of the hilarity of the film. We had a lot of laughs. The photographs turned out way better than expected and now we’re not sure whether or not we are genuine fans of the franchise…
Credits
Photography & Postwork: Sabrina Wong
Edward Cullen: Alyssea
Bella Swan: Amelia
Jacob Black: Christine
I wasn’t involved in makeup, putting costumes and wigs together - these guys are amazing and put it together themselves :) Shoot direction was a joint effort between all of us.
Characters property of Stephanie Meyer.
Have you seen Twilight? What’s your take on the film? What do you think of our cosplay photographs? I’d love to know :)
Tags: bella swan, Cosplay, edward cullen, model: Aly, model: K-chan, model: MistressMelia, twilight
La Vie D’une Poupée (The Life of a Doll)
Posted by sab | Filed under Fashion, Finished Images, Photography, Themed
I met Skye on the first day of last year’s WAICON, Perth’s only anime convention, and took some photos of her. I sensed there was something special about Skye and asked for her number so that we could stay in touch and possibly collaborate on a photoshoot later on. Luckily, I did not come across as a creepy stalker and scored her mobile number ;)
The concept was to shoot a series of photos in Skye’s lolita outfits, with the idea of taking photos of a lolita doing ordinary day to day activities such as waking up, going to the bookstore, going to get coffee, and catching public transport, a sort of “day in the life of a doll”. “La vie d’une Poupée” means “The Life of a Doll” in French.
Our first shoot was on 6th March 2008 and the last was almost 6 months later on the 24th August 2008. We got to know each other quite well during this time, discovering that we had mutual friends (being Perthed) and our adventures together provided many laughs. It was not only our personal connection developing, during that time Skye and I developed our skills in modelling and photography (respectively) pretty significantly - Can you guess which sets of photos were taken first and last?
Credits
Model, Styling & Makeup: Princess Skye
Photography, Postwork, Direction: Sabrina Wong
Photography Notes
I actually wanted this to look like a Vogue editorial but I’m happy with the different way it turned out given my inexperience at the time. In terms of lighting, I used only available light, in some cases adding a reflector (many thanks Kien for holding the reflector!). In terms of composition, the photographs turned out more like portraits than fashion shots. I should have used more wider shots to soak up more of the full outfit, environment and atmosphere of where we were shooting.
Using blurb.com, I designed a photobook of these photographs as a belated present for Skye’s Birthday. I used the Landscape Hardcover book with ImageWrap and am very happy with the quality. If you’re catching up with me and want to have a look, let me know. I have my own copy and would be happy to show it to you!
Hope you like the set, which photos are your favourite?
Tags: editorial, j-fashion, lolita, model: princess skye
In memory… Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Posted by sab | Filed under Photography, Themed, Writeup
The concept for this shoot was to bring awareness to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that happened on August 6 and 9 (respectively) in 1945, near the end of World War II. According to Wikipedia, this was the only time to date that nuclear weapons have ever been used in warfare. The nuclear bombs killed over 200,000 people from the direct hit and also from resulting illnesses and injuries from exposure to radiation.
The symbol of the paper crane originates from the story of Sadako, a girl living in Hiroshima at the time of the nuclear bombing who developed leukemia from the effects of the radiation. There was a rumour that if one could fold 1000 paper cranes, one’s wish would be granted. Having being diagnosed with only one year of life left, Sadako’s wish was to live. She started folding cranes out of anything she could find in the hospital such as medical wrappings, she even asked other patients if she could use their get well present wrappings to make her cranes. Sadako made 644 paper cranes before she become too weak to fold any more and soon after, she died.
Bloodied paper cranes are a confronting symbol, used here to represent the people who died and those who are still alive today, suffering from the effects of the nuclear bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I had only around 50 paper cranes, folded by hand over two weekends and a few of them were made by my partner in crime. I dipped them in red food colouring to simulate the bloody look. I don’t have any pictures of this process because I had red stuff all over my hands.
Here’s a closeup of the eye makeup we used for the shoot, crafted by the skillful Jane Wong:
Haylee C was fantastic to work with, she was very friendly, looked graceful and had very natural flow about her, I would love to work with her again. (I always say that, but it’s true!)
Many thanks go to Adam for allowing me to use his garage for this setup. We had to jump start the cars sleeping in the garage to make space for the shoot. Unfortunately, Adam wasn’t around for the shoot as he had something on, but left me in his backyard with his garage door remote. The set came together nicely with the rough brown material backdrop and the blood stained paper cranes. I hung the cranes using string and wooden dowels I found at Bunnings, taped securely to the backdrop stand. Here’s a blurry picure of the backdrop / set I constructed in his garage for the shoot:
I used a pilot’s helmet and goggles to make the central person of the photoshoot look like a pilot, representing one of the pilots of the aircrafts that flew the nuclear bombs from the US into Japan. I directed Haylee to look upset, remorseful and angry over what had happened. There will be final, polished photographs coming later but here is one preview:
A couple of outtakes we took for fun at the end:
I hope this shoot does not offend anyone, it was intended to raise awareness of what happened at the end of World War II and pay respects to those to lost their lives and developed illnesses due to the bombings and effects of the radiation .
Tags: hiroshima, makeup artist: jane wong, military theme, model: haylee c, nagasaki, world war II, WWII
Retouching Before & After - Chantelle
Posted by sab | Filed under Photography, Retouching
Here is the retouching before / after post for Chantelle James’ Test Shoot that I posted about yesterday!
Image 1: “Intensity”
To be fair, I gave her direction to look angry on this shot and that is why she looks so aggressive before retouching. I made some minor adjustments to face orientation and eye size to get this image looking the way I wanted it to. The aim was to ease up the amount of anger that was emanating from the picture, but still keep it as a strong look.
Image 2: “Freshness”
I loved this image straight from the camera, so I just made some adjustments to the right shoulder.
Image 3: “In the hood”
No image manipulations on this one, just some colour / contrast adjustment to make it look edgier, like an urban music artist promo shot.
Hope you enjoyed these!
Tags: before/after, model: chantelle james, retouching
Test Shoot with Chantelle James
Posted by sab | Filed under Beauty, Finished Images, Photography, Writeup
About a week ago I had the opportunity to shoot with Chantelle James, a striking, fresh face on the Perth modelling scene. I wanted to try something more “normal” than my usual work so I didn’t have any special theme in mind. The idea was to do a model portfolio-type test shoot with a very natural makeup look.
There wasn’t a lot of notice and a couple of the studios I checked out were booked, so we chose Chantelle’s house as the location. We shot these images in a small space in her loungeroom, amongst all the sofa chairs, against a plain light blue-coloured wall. Much to my amusement, her mother came in and gave me some strange looks at one point during the shoot.
Chantelle was a delight to work with. She was eager to follow direction, help out with styling ideas and looked just as stunning in person as she does in her photographs. Her boyfriend was around helping me out with the reflector, he was very quiet and easy to work with too.
Chantelle picked out two outfits for us to use from her wardrobe. The first was a brown strapless elasticated dress and the second was a two-piece outfit, consisting of her father’s white singlet and her mother’s vintage shorts. The latter was my favourite, really bringing out the youth and freshness in Chantelle’s look. In terms of hair styling, we went with a messy hair look in some photos, achieved with just a few hair clips, pulling some bits out. Later on, I did a sidebraid and placed a massive peachy-pink silk rose on the side of her head, which I purchased in David Jones a couple of months ago, on a whim!
Chantelle James can be found on Model Mayhem and is represented by Xtreem Model Management, there are some amazing pictures of her by Gary Sandford on her profile, you’ve got to go have a look at those :)
My next post shows you a few before and after retouching comparisons so you can see what difference my post processing has made to the original pictures.
Tags: model: chantelle james, writeup
Hime Gyaru J-fashion - Finished Images
Posted by sab | Filed under Finished Images, Photography
Here are the final processed photographs from the Hime Gyaru photoshoot I wrote about a couple weeks back. This is a mocked up a fake magazine cover of a fictitious magazine called “agehu”. I tried to process the photos in a similar style to “ageha” magazine images, hence the extreme airbrushing of skin and proliferation of sparkles.
Here is a full length shot of the outfit and backdrop.
One portrait-style photograph:
Go to my flickr account to see the rest, there’s quite a few more over there :)
Here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sabbiesab/sets/72157607778018967/
Tags: fake magazine cover, makeup artist: jane wong, model: marlene lim
Pumpkin Carving on Halloween
Posted by sab | Filed under Crafting, Travel
I went down to Dunsborough this weekend with friends. Celine was awesome and bought pumpkins for us to carve as well as a sheet to put on the table, carving utensils and patterns. The pumpkins were literally hard to carve and took a long time to scrape out to an acceptable one inch width for carving. We all wondered how people in the US did this on a regular basis, but had fun along the way regardless :)
Here is the custom design that my partner in crime helped me to carve out using corn cob stabby things, a cheap knife and a miniature saw from the pumpkin carving kit.
Quickly testing out how it would look with a light inside.
With a candle inside the pumpkin.
We used 1.5 kg of pumpkin to make pumpkin soup for dinner: there were twelve of us.
Here’s a pumpkin carved by Kien, Sena is sitting in the background with his creation.
Everyone’s pumpkins were still there in the morning!
Hope you guys had a fun Halloween last weekend too!
Candy Cult
Posted by sab | Filed under Miscellaneous, Photography, Uncategorized
Visited Candy Cult with Skye a couple of weekends ago to see Chisa’s artworks. The exhibition was really inspiring and cute, featuring a mix of vector and hand-drawn illustrations printed onto thick white cardboard. I love this style of illustration, and it was great to see that most of the pieces were from local artists :) Skye and I pored over each piece and walked out feeling happier.
The exhibition is still on if you’re interested, check out the details on the Candy Cult website. I would highly recommend it!
Escape to her Garden Sanctuary - Part I
Posted by sab | Filed under Fashion, Photography, Writeup
Concept of this shoot: A girl wanders out into her garden and discovers the joy of the natural surrounds there, losing her inhibitions and becomes immersed in the beauty of nature.
I noticed Kerry Edmonstone’s striking look and contacted her about arranging a shoot. I took on the task of styling and visited her house to have look at her clothes. In the process, I noticed how beautiful her overgrown garden was. Coupled with the abundance of ruffles and lace in her wardrobe, the idea for the shoot was born.
I contacted my friend Jane Wong to be the makeup artist for the shoot and gave her free reign over the look.
Cut to last Saturday: A soft tune floated across the bedroom to my body in slumber. It was 4:50am. Gathering my things and getting dressed, I was excited about the day ahead of me. Jane and I all assembled at Kerry’s house at 5:30am. Kerry sipped coffee.
Here’s a shot of Kerry’s bed, completely covered in tulle petticoats and other things we used for the shoot.
Time seemed to pass too quickly while Jane was applying the makeup and finishing the hair.
During this time, I popped out to scout the back yard. I could see that the light was perfect, but also knew that makeup and hair would take another hour and the light would not be the same by then :(
I crept back into the house and pinned the artifical butterflies to the bouffant white tulle petticoat.
By the time we were done with hair and makeup it was about 7:30am.
Please note: The final images will be posted in Part II.
Lowlights
Time of Day
It was ~7:30am by the time we were ready to start shooting. The sun had moved well above the horizon and blasted bright cheery morning light into Kerry’s garden. I mentally noted that I would need to wake earlier to catch that elusive, mysterious early morning light and carried on with the photoshoot. We cut one look out of the editorial because we were still shooting at 11am, and by then it was too getting too bright. It’s a little ironic that I’m calling this issue a lowlight…
Breaking my umbrellas
Occasional slight breezes blew the lightweight Manfrotto Nano stands over a handful of times. Multiple tumbles slightly demented the hollow metal stem and spindly arms of my white and silver Westcott 43″ double fold umbrellas. I had too much faith in their ability to bounce back from such incidents and there was sufficient damage to warrant the acquisition of some new umbrellas.
Mosquitos
Kerry’s garden was rife with mosquitos, the ruthless parasites eagerly awaited fresh blood. Kerry probably suffered the worst, as she was standing still for the long periods of time and was not entirely covered up. I caught 3 mosquitos in the act, and 3 or 4 of them got away before I realised, leaving behind angry white bumps in a sea of redness.
Picture of a Mosquito taken by Alvegaspar
Highlights
The Garden
Kerry’s garden was wonderful, featuring rich shrubbery and litte splashes of colour provided by patches of flowers. My favourite part were the twisted vines climbing around a giant tree in the center of her garden.
I tried to minimise the appearance of things such as a swimming pool, clothing line, the asbestos fence and the neighbours’ tin roof. I made some tradeoffs in “niceness of foliage” vs “bad stuff in the background”, this will become more obvious when the finished images are revealed.
Blue Steel
Kerry has this amazing “intense look” that came intuitively to her, which I really liked. She referred to it as her version of the Blue Steel.
Experimenting with flash on location
It was fun to experiment. At first, I wanted to use only natural light and a reflector as I have in the past, but at the last minute decided to use strobes & umbrellas. This is the difference that a flash can make:
There’s still some shadow under the left eye, but it is a definite improvement.
Fun times
I was 5 or more metres away when I took this, so I don’t know what they were laughing about :)
Kerry had very boufy, teased hair at the end of the day. We had to flatten it down using water and gentle coaxing. Kerry has amazing, beautiful thick hair which is fantastic to tease, I hope she did not have too much trouble combing it out!
Bunny
Kerry’s pet rabbit was hopping about the house and garden throughout the day. The furry creature seemed curious about the shoot, nibbling on grass nearby, watching with shiny, beady eyes.
Kerry said that rabbits were the perfect pet: very quiet and low maintenance. I have been hankering for a pet rabbit ever since that day!
The shoot was fun and I was very happy with the images we made together :) Hope to upload the completed images soon, look out for Part II with our 4-image mini editorial.
Kerry borrowed my petticoat skirts to shoot with a talented photographer on Sunday: Sylvia Niderla. she’s already uploaded a couple of photos here and here :)
Tags: Canon 24mm f/1.4L USM, editorial, fashion, makeup artist: jane wong, model: kerry edmonstone
J-fashion: Hime Gyaru Photoshoot - Part I
Posted by sab | Filed under Photography, Themed, Writeup
J-fashion is one of my secret fascinations, and recently Hime Gyaru style has really caught my attention. Hime Gyaru is an indulgent and elegant style, girls who follow this style look for dresses with an abundance of ruffles and bows. They drape themselves with pearls, roses, sparkling jewels and more bows! To complete the look, girls will tease and curl their peroxided hair into huge bouffant styles. They look like real princesses!
The most famous Hime Gyaru store in Japan is Jesus Diamante, have a look at the site if you’re curious. It is completely in Japanese, but pictures speak across language barriers ;)
Marlene Lim approached me about modelling in a shoot, mentioning J-fashion amongst other things and I ran with this particular idea. I enlisted the help of my friend Cheryl in styling, she is quite knowledgeable about this style, she has travelled to Japan several times and keeps up with the trends through magazines and videos. I had Jane Wong onboard for makeup - I discovered she also has a secret fascination with this particular style.
Lowlights
Restricted Space
We worked in a spare room out the back of my house. There’s barely room for the backdrop, even before I put up the light stands and umbrellas. I took more close crops of Marlene’s face and torso for this reason. I also did that because she looked so darn cute!
Temperamental Flash
Every 2 or 3 photographs, the flash I used to light up the legs did not work. I could not find the spare pair of batteries sp I grabbed the first lot I could find, which were a freebie pack. I suspect they were too low power to work properly - please tell me this is a viable theory, I’d hate to think the flash itself was faulty.
There were not a lot of lowlights, so let’s move onto the positives!
Highlights
Styling
Having the help of Cheryl in sourcing and making materials was a massive relief. She remembered this awesome Dotti dress when nothing else in the shops was suitable. I bought it in a size Medium in the hopes that one day I can wear it. Jane laughs when I say things like that!
The dress was clipped at the back to the model’s size, she’s a lot smaller than a medium for sure!
I bought a metre of black satin to make the bows - we made a few little small ones for the hair, which we lated hot glued to hair clips. I learned that hot glue doesn’t stick particularly well to metal. We made bows for the shoes and decided to use sticky tape on them to attach to Marlene’s shoes. I left Cheryl with the task of making a giant bow for the front of the dress, a week later she produced an amazingly straight bow for us to use! Cheryl lined it with a canvas material inside to hold its shape better.
We made the necklace together: Cheryl masterminded the design, I bought the materials and we put it together as a team!
The Wig
I think it speaks for itself. The wig is fantastic quality. I could even wash it if I wanted to, but I’m scared the curls will wash out to a small extent. It saved a heap of time on hair styling, as it came pre-curled and only required a bit of combing to settle the way we wanted it. I cannot thank my friends Shasta and Christine enough for helping get my hands on this gem. I try it on when nobody is looking.
Here’s Marlene wearing a wig cap, she looked adorable with it on:
And then after the wig went on:
The Backdrop
It was a great relief when the backdrop came together. On Thursday before the shoot, Cheryl and I were stood in the middle of Spotlight scratching our heads. Initially, we decided that a bubblegum pink backdrop would be wonderful and picked out the material. We then stumbled upon this rose backdrop and changed plan completely, which I am very thankful for. In hindsight, a pink backdrop would have looked tacky.
The materials I purchased to go into the backdrop were:
- rose curtain material
- yellow gold organza
- creamy-gold satin
- artificial flowers
Here are some photographs of the backdrop being deconstructed:
I discovered I have magical draping abilities with a box of safety pins and the cream-gold satin. It is all pretty straightforward, I just used safety pins, elastic bands, clamps and more safety pins! I hear you can get cheap clamps from Bunnings.
Makeup
We had lots of fun discussing makeup tips for asian features and how to make the eyes look bigger :) Marlene came wearing coloured contacts and bought a heap of fake eyelashes from overseas to choose from! I’m not sure exactly what went on with makeup, during this time I was running around putting up the backdrop and making chicken nuggets for us to snack on ;)
I know that we ended up doubling up the eyelashes, and strategically put eyeliner on the bottom lid to make the eyes look rounder and open them up.
I also know that it looked awesome, thanks to Jane!
Having Fun
I do not really know what to write about this so here are some pictures:
I had a great time and am really happy with the results of the shoot and the effort that everyone put in to making it a success. Thanks guys!
I have to get back to postwork on this shoot now, look for Part II of this post for the final images!
Tags: behind the scenes, Canon 24mm f/1.4 L USM, hime gyaru, indoor, j-fashion, makeup artist: jane wong, model: marlene lim, studio, stylist: cheryl har, writeup
Sabrina is a freelance photographer living in Perth, Western Australia. She also enjoys graphic & web design and a crunchy side of hot chips.