Emma

This should really be titled something like: What I Did With My Saturday--as it's just a quickly (and rather poorly) edited shot from an initial meeting I did with a young woman I'll be working with soon.

When I first meet a prospective model or client, I spend time with them getting to know them, watching them, studying them and deciding how to shoot them--and they try on costumes. The best costumes get trooped into the studio, where I take a plain front and side and maybe a back shot of it--no posing, no proper lighting--just a record of how that costume looks on that person, so I can later on sort through the images, and pick the two or three that looked best on them--and plan a shoot around that.

Since I rarely work with people with darker skin, but have been stockpiling makeup and fabrics that I thought would be good on darker skin, as our meeting wound to a close, I asked Emma if she'd mind if I tried out a new gold eyeshadow I'd picked up--one that has a strange consistency--it comes out in clumps and you sort of crush it as you apply it. I wanted to see how it would look on her--how easy it would be to apply in a proper makeup--and most importantly, how it would photograph.

She didn't mind--and this was just a test, so I smudged it on without bother to clean off her existing makeup, wash her face, or even put it on in a well-thought out design.

Only once I got it on, she really liked it--and started asking about eyeliner...so I dragged out a new pen eyeliner I'd purchased (it's Covergirl--and it's heavenly!), and I quickly drew in long dramatic lines. She was so delighted with that--and I was having such fun with the new pen, that I drew in a few more lines, and then added another shade of eyeshadow, false eyelashes, and some lipstick and lipgloss.

Emma got inspired then, and flipped her hair over and made this wild mass of curls, which I sprinkled gold powder in, and then added a couple of leaves.

We were feeling QUITE silly by that time, giggling with each new excess we dug up--and I grabbed a box of rhinestones and improvised a glue for them, with a bit of eyelash adhesive. (I don't often glue on additional things--so I didn't have any spirit gum. Guess I should order some! ) The eyelash adhesive was kind of messy, because it had clogged up, and I had to cut the tube open, to get it out at all..so it kind of smudged on her cheek--but we were just playing, so we didn't care. We didn't bother with blush or powder--because, again, it was just a test shot.

Finally, I had her change into a leotard and I draped some fabric over her, and led her out to the studio, where I snapped some test shots--including some close ups of her face, because I wanted to really examine the way the gold photographed (I've had bad experiences with gold on Caucasians).

Then we were all done, Emma washed her face, and went home, and I started weeding through the images.

And as I went through the test images, I was struck anew by how really lovely her face is--a wonderful combination of very pronounced, soft round curves, and dramatic and strong angles. It actually reminds me of a very young Janet Jackson--back when she was on Dif'rent Strokes, for those of you with long memories!

I zoomed in close to check out the gold...and wasn't quite satisfied with it, so I played with some effects to intensify it--to see what my options were. Then I noticed that her skin (which looks heavenly in real life) has quite a bit of color variation in it--with some areas being more golden, and some decidedly more blue--so I did some rough selections to see how much time I'd need to spend cleaning that up, after a shoot....

...and then I started punching the color of her lips, just for fun--and after all that, I couldn't resist putting some blush on her...and by that point, it was looking interesting enough, that I thought I'd play a bit with some over the top glossy looks--and did something I NEVER do in my normal editing--I used some Gaussian blur on her skin (and some incredibly sloppy cloning and healing brush work--again--not something I normally use in editing!)--

--And the next thing you know, there came out this calf--er, I mean, before I knew it, I had this pseudo-high-end looking image that is not really my normal style at all--is VERY badly edited (heck, I didn't even bother to remove the latex around her rhinestones--never mind the tacky blurring!)--but which I like, nonetheless. Like enough to share, (for a bit, anyway,) before removing it.

So...my apologies for all the problems with it (and they are legion, I know!)--but I figure that some of my loyal watchers might just enjoy seeing a "practice" shot of mine...hearing a bit of what goes on behind the scenes...and can probably ignore the flaws and just focus on what a very, very lovely young woman this is.

(Just wait until the REAL shoot--when I do something like this the RIGHT way! )