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?

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Read more | Comments (6) | December 5th, 2008

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 :)

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Read more | Comments (3) | October 15th, 2008