English Mustard

This shoot was a work in progress, one of those things that just bubble over while your day dreaming and thinking of things you could do, and then you stop, and start drawing and adding colour and thinking 'what can I cut/buy/borrow to make this work like that?' I gave myself a budget of £40 for the whole shoot and went over about £11 (generator..) I think it is quite dangerous not having a budget, well for me anyway!

First of all, I found out my model, the stunning Hannah Cooper was only in town for one day, the bank holiday Monday, I got a confirmation from Hannah on the Friday night that she could definitely do it, so I had to organise the shoot and buy everything for it on the Saturday....

Marked with an X (I already had)

Wire                                                 Blue spray paint 

Sieve x                                             Ivy

make-up x                                        Extension lead x
Blue chalk                                       Make Dress
Pins x                                               Hair Doughnut 
Hair spray x                                    Hair pins
Smoke machine x                           Jewellery 
Arch                                                Ghost chair with arms x 

Flash guns x                                   pocket wizards x

Camera x                                         Tripod x
Glasses                                            tape

boob tape!                                      Scissors x

So as you can imagine, I was a tad busy, as well as having a shoot to do on the Saturday too.

The dress was a broken Karen Millen which had been stained with oil, so I cut down the front and folded the sides back, I then added about 15 metres of blue and black fabric, the blue was a very light chiffon, I wanted it to catch the wind. In the picture > 

This is my lovely dress before it got ruined (sorry Mrs Millen!)

Obviously I had to pull the waist in a lot for Hannah, attached the new fabric under the lip of the skirt, and pulled it up to meet the section on the right of the hip. 

This was my sketch for the shoot..

I bought the arch from a garden store, it was only 

£4.90, and then picked all the Ivy from my mother in laws garden and the surrounding fields the morning of the shoot (at 6.30am -commitment!). I had found the location the Friday eve and figured out were the sun would be, I was then very happy to hear that my lovely friend/photographic assistant Kelsie Low could help out (she is amazing) and my gorgeous Fiancé Mr Colin Ginn offered his muscles up to drag the generator (and heavy stuff) across a field. And provide some skirt throwing on a very windy day! which I cant imagine was too much trouble for him!

Morning of...

Hannah met me at my studio at 1.30pm and I did her hair and make up (I would naturally, have the very talented Natasha Pearson on the hair but the Jammy thing was in Rhodes) so I used a big big Doughnut wrapped her hair round it then added more padding in a pair of tights to get her hair higher, I then curled the lot over the top. I knew Hannah was going to wear glasses - her own, so just did some pink blush all over and then eye-liner flick. Hannah applied the pink lipstick (Rimmel- heart breaker). Then I literally sewed her into the dress. which took about 25 mins.. 

At location

We sieved blue chalk all over the floor and dress 

Built the arch

Wove the ivy through it and sprayed blue 

set up the shot 

added Hannah!

Had a great time!!!

 Model. Hannah Cooper

Assistants. Kelsie Low & Colin Ginn

Photography. Hair & MUA Becky Long

I think Hannah looks like Vivienne Westwood's dream dolly, I love the contrasting colours and am glad I kept with the theme. I called the shoot English Mustard because she was in a rape seed field, and the rape seed looks remarkably like mustard.  It's funny because this was never meant to be a 'big' shoot but it just snowballed :) but I am glad it did.

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Maternity shoot

Today I did a beautiful shoot with the lovely Toni, she is 6 months pregnant and has the cutest smile, in the world!

I wanted to do something a bit more like my fashion work, a bit of set building all for one final picture.
For some reason I always prefer to have one 'perfect' shot form a shoot, much like the English mustard shoot I did with Miss Cooper, Which I need to Blog about, Sorry! You work everything to a point for one picture. Hours of planning and sorting all for one shot, seems a bit silly to some people, but I think that a shot stands a world away if its the only one, It think its treasured more. I loved doing this, and really like the tones in it, it is very Magenta and warm, it took quite a bit of colour correction as we were in a bath tub and the cool walls did nothing for her peachy skin, although the flowers helped.

As per usual, I used my 50mm 1.4 (my bokehlishious lens)  and also used a diffuser (big round white thing that diffuses light) and natural light (the sun ;)

The gorgeous Toni was in the bath with water, to keep the ivy floating, I used blossom and a couple of Gerbs ( Toni's favourite flower) it took about 45 minutes to set up, 25 mins to do hair and make-up, about an hour to pick and then 25 mins to shoot whilst prodding and picking at her hair and the flowers.

I would just like to say Thank you to Toni for being so patient and Beautiful. X