Friday 13 November 2009

The Pin-Up Project (Jan 23rd-25th)

30th January 2009.
Jim Bateman & I had planned last weekend's photoshoot for quite a while.

I got a new book for Christmas from Nick of paintings of classic pin-up photographs and we spent most of the time recreating many of them.
I'd stuffed my bag full of clothes, lingerie, hats, accessories, make-up, hair pieces, props including a fluffy hot water bottle, cuddly toy, hardback book, a few vinyl LPs and a paper fan.
Jim's recently introduced me to this new style of photo editing, which involves using a Photoshop plug-in called Imagenomic/Portraiture. It's a quick airbrush, but you can completely control how much smoothing/saturation boost/sharpness you want to give. It lifts and smooths any photo in a matter of seconds.
It worked perfectly for these images, especially after upping levels to create something very high contrast and high saturation to give that 'painted,' almost cartoon feel.

I have discovered many cool Photoshop tips & tricks recently; it's fun trying them all out.

Jim & I started shooting at around 11am on the Friday (23rd) and got through 7 sets, each with very different hair styling, so poor Jim had to put up with me whinging that no amount of hairspray could hold it in place, etc!
We had a great giggle and although I worked the poor guy's socks off, I'm glad to say we both think we got some stunning images, many of them looking authentic in a very 40s style.

He also has this knack of taking stunning photos of me, whatever I'm doing. He'll tilt the camera, he'll zoom in, zoom out, move all over the studio, edit excessively to find the limits - no idea is ever left uncovered.
And he's so relaxed about it all - even when I'm not!
This is one of the many reasons I love working with him.

First thing Saturday morning, we did swimwear glamour in my two Wicked Weasel bikinis before I'd curled up my hair and carried on with more cheeky pin-up pouts & smiles, including doing some work in the kitchen.
I went home very happy and very satisfied with achieving exactly what I was after.
Most of the shots were clothed, but when I did get everything off, Jim said how much bouncier I seem when I'm nude.
He's got a point. I do love being naked, but I didn't realise there was a physical reaction!

Nick M who kindly picked me up, drove us back as I don't think I could have carried that ridiculous bag back again on the train and we stopped off for a bite to eat & played a few games of pool in a local pub before he had to head back to Basingstoke. I popped in to see Robert afterwards to say hello at the end of a very busy weekend.

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