Silhouette Burlesque October - Halloween Warm Up

Well hello ladies and gents,

This weekend saw the final Silhouette Burlesque of the year, featuring some of my very favourite performers...

Elven Princess, Emerald of The Ace

Morning All,

Well after an epic amount of editing this weekend, I am now ready to reveal the second set of pics I made with Emerald Ace last week. After our improv shoot in the church yard we toddled back to chez Fox for some lunch and for the studio shoot that was actually the reason for our weekend of fun!

I recently acquired a huge pile of celtic/gothic/belly dance jewellery. My first thought when looking at the elaborate dangly necklaces was of Bollywood stars and then of the princesses in 80's fantasy films I grew up watching. So my instant exclamation upon receiving said box of sparklys was "I'm gonna put ALL this on Emerald's head!" Got to love Emerald for her ever willing attitude to have random things piled on her head, last time it was tiny glittering birds and butterflies!

As per usual, the initial ideas we had for the styling of this shoot evolved as we began getting ready. I had in mind a Bollywood feel for the images, using patterned colourful sari fabric as a backdrop, but the minute Emerald got dressed I saw that she was far more 'Gypsy matriarch' than 'Bollywood star'. So first U turn there...

Second U turn, wig, we had planned to use Emerald's long green wavy wig that she wears in her octopus act, but stage wigs receive extra wear and tear from being transported and become bitty rather quickly. Unnoticeable on stage but the little frizzy aura that surrounds a well worn wig is an absolute nightmare to tidy up in photoshop, mainly because it's very time consuming. It's not technically difficult on a plain background but an absolute pain on a patterned one. So... rethink, I have a very similar style wig in red, that I wear when I am 'Boobie Soho' my sing and fling character, so we decided to use this one instead. Turns out Emerald looks AMAZING with bright red hair!

With the makeup styling we wanted to go for an Egyptian/Indian inspired heavy Kohl line look, but with much more colour and as always, added sparkle. Then we piled on the jewellery, a necklace and anklet on her forehead, and a necklace and bracelet where intended. All with green stones to tie into the green makeup.

As the styling came together it became apparent that she had now gone through 'Bollywood star' and 'Gypsy matriarch' and come out the other side as 'Elven Princess, Emerald of The Ace'. I set about a complete re-think of the lighting and backdrop. I selected a length of dark green/black two tone taffetta embroidered with gold and green leaves to use as a backdrop, to give the images a forest-y fantasy theme (although it then took me nearly an hour to iron all the folds out of it, where it had been crammed in my rather overfull bag of backdrops).

In a previous shoot, (see 'The Orinoco Bitch' blog) I had wanted to recreate moonlight but it wound up being inappropriate for that shoot, but now we were in a forest with a elven princess it seemed the perfect opportunity to resurrect this idea. I used one single Lastolite head with a snoot and wide honeycomb to the left, up high centered on Emerald's face. I pushed the lighting about half a stop over exposed to give high contrast and shining perfect pale skin. The light was angled so it just caught the gold embroidery on the backdrop, making the fabric almost invisible and turning the leaves into golden vines hanging in mid air. I would have liked to lift the light up slightly higher to widen the spot and catch the backdrop to the edges but in my small home studio this was impossible.

Soundtrack to this shoot was Laura Marling and Suzanne Vega, nothing like a bit of modern folk music to bring out your inner gypsy/elf queen, although I have discovered it makes you very uncool to admit you like folk music at all, modern or otherwise. Me, I'm a sucker for a fiddle and a bodhran.

Again this was a very swift shoot once we had done with the styling, which we always take our time over as we enjoy the process. First shot to last Emerald was in front of the camera just 23 minutes and every single shot we took was usable. As myself and Emerald have now done 5 shoots together I think we understand each other. I know her face and how it works with the light and she understands (or humours) my sometimes very odd direction, "stare at the moon like it's falling from the sky", "now look at it like it's asked you to do complicated sums in your head!".

Someone has already asked me if these images were actually lit this way or if they were photoshopped. All I did in editing was a little bit of airbrushing on the skin to even out the tone (harsh directional lighting will always accentuate any red tones or blemishes in the skin). I burnt into the makeup a touch to make it darker and more striking, something I always do, black never comes out truly black in pictures. In the previous shoot (see 'Mina' blog) I had lightened the center of Emerald's eyes a little, but I didn't do anything to them in this one, this is how they actually look when given allot of light.

I am so pleased with these images, she is totally how 'Titania' looked in my head when reading 'A midsummer nights dream' when I was little. There's a touch of the young Liz Taylor circa 'Cleopatra' as well I think, it's that beautiful strong jaw line. All the elements really came together to make this, Emerald's great face, the backdrop, the styling, the lighting. Sometimes things just go well, without the struggle, sadly never when you're on the clock though!

So here they are, let me know what you think

CF
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All Images are (c) Cherryfox® Fine Photography and must not be published or reproduced in any medium without prior written permission from the photographer

Impromptu fun in the Church yard with Emerald Ace

Hi hi,

Well I'm so rock and roll that I spent all of my Bank Holiday weekend editing my shots of Emerald Ace from last weekend. Emerald is my current Muse and will aways hold a special place in my heart as the first Burlesquer I photographed for my 'Strange & Beautiful' UK Burlesque books, published last year. We have great fun working together, she's always open to taking on a bonkers character or piling on the drag queen make up, best of all she's not afraid of a bit of ugly beautiful.

After a delightful night of putting the world to rights with crisps, dip and wine, myself and Emerald awoke to fantastic weather, we had planned to do a studio shoot that day but with the combination of the sun and us both managing to get up rather earlier than expected we decided to do an impromptu outdoor shoot first while the light was with us.

With a bit of combined styling, Emeralds dress, my wig and accessories, we came up with a 1920's femme fatale theme. Trainers and sunglasses were donned and with the Evil Genius (also known as my boyfriend Rew) as back up, we toddled down the grotty backstreets of Stoke to the beautiful church yard at Stoke Minster. We must have looked like a ridiculous bunch!

Usually I plan most details of a shoot before hand and more often than not have an idea in my head of the kind of finished image I'm looking to create. I also don't really do outdoor shoots, I'm a bit of a control freak and to be honest natural light scares me, there's just so much to go wrong! But as this shoot was completely unplanned and had no pressures associated with it, we had far more freedom to play around.

We essentially just danced around the church yard, experimenting with the natural light and working with the location props (avoiding any cliched gravestone related shots). Some of the shots taken in direct sunlight came out far too high contrast but the images taken partly in the shade have a gorgeous diffused silent movie quality. When we started working with the mosaic bench, the dress draped so beautifully over the edge that it reminded me of pre-Raphaelite paintings, so we tried to contrast the 20's vamp look with pre-Raphaelite poses and soft facial expressions.

All in all the shoot took about an hour and a half styling to wrap. Really rather liberating and the shots are pretty darned good!

When reviewing the images before editing, I was reminded of old black and white vampire films, Mina in love with Dracula but not yet turned, and inspired by this I paled out Emeralds skin slightly, and dodged the colour of her eyes slightly to intensify the animal gaze. I actually didn't have to do much, Emerald has the most amazing dark green rings around her pale blue green eyes.

So here are the results, do let me know what you think... And tomorrow I shall hopefully upload another blog of the studio shoot we did after this one.

CF
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All Images are (c) Cherryfox® Fine Photography and must not be published or reproduced in any medium without prior written permission from the photographer