Forbidden 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.
And so the lion fell in love with the lamb

What a silly lamb

No love for Jacob

The reveal

Skin of a killer

The gang!

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 :)

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Read more | Comments (1) | December 23rd, 2008

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

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.

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Read more | Comments (1) | November 25th, 2008

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/

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Read more | Comments (4) | November 10th, 2008