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

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 .

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Read more | Comments (0) | December 2nd, 2008

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!

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Read more | Comments (7) | October 14th, 2008

Flower Picking with Princess Skye

Posted by sab | Filed under Photography, Themed, Writeup

Skye and I ventured out to a flower field to take some photographs in one of her beautiful vintage dresses. I was really stuck on what to write about this photoshoot, you can read more eloquent musings about the shoot over at Skye’s Blog :) And now, back to the photographs:

Edit: Some of these images look artifacty, will be re-uploading them in higher JPG quality later.

And now for something a little different…

Behind the Scenes

Skye made a wreath of flowers using some wire:

I plaited her hair into french braids, this was especially fun as it reminded me of my childhood. I have not plaited hair since I was a kid, braiding dolls’ hair and friends’ hair at girly sleepovers.

Flowers, reaching towards the light:

We brought a blanket for Skye to sit on. I was lying on my reflector for the shots where both Skye and I were lying on the ground. There was mass carnage of squashed flowers!

Photographer’s comments

No flash was used because I wanted to use only a reflector for fill. I started out using the white side, but found that the gold side gave a really nice warm tone, and stuck with that for the majority of the shoot.

The post processing brightened everything up and punch up the greens and pinks in the image, keeping it fairly natural-looking. This is a fairly big departure from what I usually do.

It was fun to try something different and great to get outdoors and shoot something on location! Shooting outside brings up a host of issues revolving around the presence of the sun. I would have loved to use a wider aperture for more background blur on these shots, so the houses in the background would be less distracting. I plan to buy neutral density filters so that I can use a wider aperture and get the same amount of light coming in.

I regret not taking Skye up on the offer of waking her roommate to come along and hold the reflector for me, the reflector was acting as a straight fill in these shots and might have looked better from an angle. In some cases, I could not even hold the reflector in a suitable position to generate fill. At least Mirai got to snooze in longer!

In the last shot, Skye has the characteristic raccoon eyes from the sun that every beginner photographer is advised to avoid. For this reason I discarded the photo but Skye liked this shot, so I kept it in the set. What do you think?

Hope you enjoyed the set!

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Read more | Comments (8) | October 9th, 2008

A Battle for the Crown

Posted by sab | Filed under Photography, Themed, Writeup

For this shoot, I wanted to try doing fashion photography, but with an unusual medieval twist. I tried to make it look as “editorial” as possible using poses and lighting appropriate to the theme.

Credits

Models: Christiane Krapf & Natacha Bruder
Makeup and Hair styling: Lily Webb (Beauty Contour)

There may be a few more images from this set posted later this week or next week :)

Click to read the full write-up and see “Behind the Scenes” photos.

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Read more | Comments (4) | August 29th, 2008

Emo Photoshoot with Aly

Posted by sab | Filed under Photography, Themed

Aly got an awesome emo haircut a few months back. We decided to have a little emo-themed photoshoot in celebration of her new hairstyle.

I processed the photos to make them look really over-the-top grungy (this means sacrificing image quality, amongst other things). Then, I arranged 22 of the photos into a surprise photobook for Aly’s birthday! I currently do not print many of my photographs, so it was really exciting to finally see my photos in print and in a book!

Here are a selection of the photographs I processed from that day:

BTW: If anyone knows a real emo / scene kid in Perth, who would be interested in a photoshoot - drop me a line! :)

Click on Read more, there’s heaps more under there!

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Read more | Comments (5) | July 21st, 2008