Sunday 15 April 2018

Dolly horror

Every week, Alley comes up with something inventive for her all-female photography group to shoot. Week 12 was 'horrify me - scare with a truly horrifying image.'

So.. up into the loft I went. I regularly go up there these days as just behind where the camera was positioned for this shot is my rather unglamorous walk-in wardrobe. Yes, I have so much shite I am now adding to the loft! Everything is in storage boxes and on lined up clothes rails - it would make quite a cool backdrop for another shoot, but yesterday I shot the other direction as I liked the clutter and the wooden beams, and I wanted some of the hatch opening in the shot too.

I used my Pixapro 308D constant light - bit obsessed with it right now.. the light doesn't travel very far, (more for headshots) but I like its coldness and the fall-off. Definitely going to be taking that to the Walter's Wardrobe photography event this coming week and I'm SO excited about that!
Back to this shot though - this is nothing like the kind of stuff I normally shoot. I never shoot horror or urbex or anything like that really, so it was a bit out of my comfort zone. I left the little lightbulbs on in the loft - there was one behind me in the distance - I thought it would help the lighting a bit and create a backlit effect, but the 308D mostly overpowered them.
I smudged a load of black eyeshadow all the way around both eyes and down my cheeks, pencilled in both waterlines with black eyeliner, blanked out my lips with concealer then drew black veritcal lines like stitches over the top using eyeliner. Didn't bother with any other make-up as I knew I wanted to the shot to be wide rather than close-up. The wig is an old one I don't use often but when I do, I usually love the results.

Anyway, imagine all your old dolls up in the attic came to life and were pissed off and wanted revenge for badly cutting their hair and leaving them to rot in the dirt & cobwebs, bahaha.

(Zoom lens on 20mm - settings are f5, ISO 800, 1/100th sec)
Please click on the image to see a larger version..


Wednesday 11 April 2018

Two in one at the spa

Week 11 was a busy one as I was travelling around London and then Birmingham with not much time to shoot. I took my camera and a light to Birmingham in case our hotel room was nice, but it wasn't - in fact I'm sorry to say it was quite dated and small, but the hotel had a spa and I managed to take a photo on the Fuji X30 from across the other side of the leisure centre, lol.


WEEK 11Composition: Negative SpaceMinimize the composition to isolate your subject. The composition should be simple, thereby drawing your viewer to the subject.
So that was the brief for one challenge - I balanced the camera, (much smaller and easier than the DSLR) on some towels on the floor and held the remote shutter in my hand. To capture the negative space around me, I shot my final selfie here at 16mm.

The other photographic challenge was: "Once upon a time there was ........ I want you to tell me a fairytale, but specifically your very own fairytale & it doesn’t have to be a happily ever after....." 

Great! So once there was a girl who went to The Photography Show at the NEC Birmingham and she bought all kinds of cool things she'd always wanted.. and a pretty bohemian patterned camera strap because she could.. and caught up with loads of friends. And then she came back to the hotel, had a glass of wine and slipped into the spa.. the end! 
If that's not a fairytale, I don't know what is ♥

I'm basically lazy and have offered the same photo for both challenges :)
(Please click the image to see it larger)

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