Leg Make-up

Glorious Vintage on Flickr is one of my favourite sources of unconventional, entertaining and-of course-vintage pictures!

This one is just hilarious:

Picture from Glorious Vintage on Flickr, February 2010.

It is absolutely fascinating and astounding what fashion creates in order to make us look better! What can be done to make legs leggier? Absolutely, leg make-up! Unfortunately for the woman in the picture who gets the leg make-up applied the MUA has got a bit of a shaky hand.

On the other hand there is nothing to worry about wrecking your fancy expensive nylons on a night out; runs were yesterday!

While I was writing this I started to wonder whether people got the idea of tattooing nylons onto their legs. What can I say, entering the words tattoo nylons and leg into my google search window provided me with masses of information which I rather not want to blog here ...

However, the top hits actually lead me to sites where the exact opposite was for sale, namely stockings (and sleeves!) with tattoo prints. Examples can be found here and here. Somehow this is typical for today's fashion: one site advertises:

These have got to be the COOLEST things we have carried in a LONG time! Invisible mesh printed nylon sleeves that cover your whole entire arm to give the FLAWLESS illusion of a full arm sleeve tattoo! Now you can have the custom work without the pain or commitment!

Sounds pretty lame (and actually not exactly eye-candy) to me in all respects! I say let's paint those legs ;-) ...

6x6 in Black & White

Everyone who is interested in photography and has the slightest bit of nostalgia within oneself will probably agree that black & white photography has great appeal. Somehow it is quite funny that black & white pictures and films have that much charm, character and sex appeal, since humans are usually seeing the world in colour for the last few thousands of years. So maybe it is the fact that things appear more intriguing if the distractions of colour are taken away ... Now that I think about it, we actually do see the world in black & white sometimes and that is at night time. However, not all black & white images have a connotation with night or darkness, but possibly there is something unconscious going on?

In any case I do love black & white and, yes, film too! My recent ventures into black & white have, however, turned out to be quite challenging, as I think it's really hard to take great black & white pictures which underline the very charm of not being in colour.

There is one guy who, in my opinion, is an absolute genius of black & white and on top of that, he shoots medium format! Here's one of my favourites:

Photo by Maxim Chelak, Mai 2009.

His Flickr name is just great too: Maxim Chelak. I haven't worked out yet whether this is made up or his real name, he is Russian after all. No offense, but for my ears both sounds reasonable.

Here is another one which is really fantastic (and an absolutely beautiful model, lucky blizzard!):

Photo by Maxim Chelak, November 2009, Model: Natalia Vlasova.

If you find these pictures inspiring too, here are some more links to his photos and his website:

Website

Photograph

Edina Tokodi (her website)

Happy Easter !

After a very busy March, I think it's time to catch some breath over Easter! I even managed to take an arty snap of our Easter Tree with painted eggs ;-).

Have a great Easter, lots of food and chocolate!

Photo by Martin Trefzer, Easter 2010.

Light Directions

This is a composition I had in mind for a long time. Thanks Tatjana for your patience when I took dozens of pictures while moving the lights all around you! I think I managed to keep her happy, since she still smiled on pictures taken later during the portrait session. If you are interested, you can find a set of photos here.

I used one D-Lite strobe from different directions in order to obtain a number of pictures which I then put together to get this one:

Photo by Me (large on Flickr), 2010.

I was interested in how it would look like when pictures of the same face, lit from different angles, were put together in one image. The pictures are ordered according to the angle of the light in the respective photograph. The one in the middle is the starting point where the light comes from the direction of the camera. To the left and right the horizontal angle is then increased/ decreased in 45° steps. The same applies to the vertical axis. The single pictures on the right, at the top and at the bottom are lit from behind, from the top and from the bottom.

The whole set of pictures could be kind of wrapped around to form a sphere around the model. Hope that doesn't sound too complicated!?

Anyways, I think it looks quite funky and it is interesting to see how such a simple thing like the position of one single light source can change the character of a face in a portrait entirely. From now on I will have a nice example at the ready, when I have to give another flash or studio light workshop ;-).

Wedding Photographs Follow Up

I just came across another (this time not trashing wedding dresses) great wedding shot:

Photo by Ronald Soliman 2009 (I believe), Delaware, US

This wedding picture is just great. There is everything in there: a memorable moment, the groom may now kiss the bride, excited relatives and kids who behave!

On top of that I think you are a pretty good wedding photographer, if you are able to see and capture(!) moments like this on a mayhem wedding day.

Trash the Wedding Dress!

"Now why would you want to do that to such a bloody expensive thing?", I thought when I came across an article with this very title by Dahlia Rideout on divine caroline. The article features winner pictures of a photo competition "Trash the Wedding Dress". Here's my favourite one:

Photo by Bartosz Jastal, Poland, 2009.

Reading through the article I was then once more utterly amazed that this photo contest takes place regularly and is organised -amongst other ones- by the Wedding Photojournalist Association. Their website states: "WPJA is a professional organization composed of photojournalists and wedding photographers from around the world. What sets our members apart in the industry is their candid, documentary approach – a distinctly artistic vision toward wedding photography."

And that's exactly what's going on. Here's one of the most original wedding shots I've ever seen:
Photo by Deborah Kates, Illinois US, 2009.

Looking at the amazing shots on those websites I reconsidered and thought: "Actually why wouldn't you for such a great shot!?!".

Just think about it: there is no other occasion where you will wear your wedding dress ever again. After the wedding you spend another couple of hundred to have it dry-cleaned, then you wrap it up and put it somewhere until your grandchildren either find it eaten by moths or cry out in amazement: "Unbelievable, did you really fit into this dress when you were young grandma?"

I think you will agree with me that it would be better to have a great framed trash-the-wedding-dress picture at your wall or even on the attic which is actually interesting to look at and the line you hear will be a different one: "Wow grandma! Are you a princess who had to go to a great deal of trouble before she could rule just like the Disney ones?!"

I know it hurts a little when thinking about the price, but it's everybody's own choice whether one wants to be cool or lame!

Margie Gillis at Glorious Vintage

I found this absolutely fantastic photo on Flickr:

Photo Scanned from Margie Gillis Booklet (1995 Place des Arts, Montréal Performance) by Glorious Vintage, November 2009.

I absolutely would love to do a shooting like this myself! Any willing North Yorkshire dancers reading this ;-)?

The photograph shows professional dancer Margie Gillis. You can find her biography and more information about her work in the Canadian Encyclopedia. I wonder how often she had to do this jump in order to capture the perfect moment. She has this amazing grace in her movement, which looks just great and gives the picture its dynamic. Margie Gillis was invested as a Member of the ORDER OF CANADA in 1988 and received the Walter Carsen Prize for career achievement in the performing arts in 2008. How cool is that?

I'm not quite sure who the photographer is, since it says on Flickr that the picture was scanned from one of Margie Gillis' own booklets. There is another guy mentioned alongside the photograph, Jack Udashkin. However, he is a bespoke producer of dance and was at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa for 12 years (1988-2000), so he is most likely not the one who took the picture. At the moment, he is developing a project to mount Festival Chaosmos, a biannual international dance festival in Montreal, which began in 2007.

I love her style so much, I just have to post another picture of her, which is on top of that taken by one of my favourite photographers Annie Leibovitz!

Photo by Annie Leibovitz, showing Margie Gillis in "Torn Roots, Broken Branches," choreographed by Margie Gillis

I want a studio!