So here is the blog about todays vintage fashion shoot!
Model: Joanne Thorpe
MUA: Saher Zahid
Assistant: Caterina Capurro
Firstly I want to thank my most amazing colleauges and our model Joanne for doing such a good job on the shoot today. I hope they found it as much fun as I have done!
The planning for this shoot was actually quite challenging, not only accounting for the rubbish winter weather, but also on the limited wardrobe selection / props we had. Cat lives locally in the area and told me there are some great vintage stores where she lived, so we went hunting for some bits for the shoot in the morning. (Quite last mintue I know..) But my word, I never realised that was actually that much vintage stuff in Hastings!
There are a few independent fashion boutiques around old town but without a pull letter, its difficult to get anything on loan. We ended up stumbling across a second hand vintage / antique store called "20th century funking junk" (great name i know). There were tons of stuff there. Hats, clothing, old items which would work great as props. 3 vintage hats in the corner of one of the stores caught my eye. A black "Paille" (straw) hat with a big ribbon, made in Italy. A red cloche from Spain, and a dark blue floppy hat with pink flower. I got my wonderful assistant, Cat to try them on, and I thought they looked great. They werent too expensive, but I wouldnt go out of the way to buy some hats for a single shoot, so I asked the shop keeper if she would lend it to us. Suprisingly, she said yes! So I left a deposit and off we went.
Joanne and our MUA Saher arrived just after lunch. For some added challenge, Joanne's hair was redder than I imagined! (she normally has black hair, and althought she did tell me pre shoot that she had dyed it red... but I didnt expect it to be quite that red!). Despite this, it was actually somewhat a pleasent suprise, as the hat matched perfectly with her hair (esp the Cloche).
We sat in Cat's apartment and went through the mood board, and tried out all the outfits that Joanne brought with her. Mix and matched with some of Cat's own wardrobe too, then Saher did her magic with the make up. Her make up was carefully thought out so she could add more in between different looks.
We headed out around 2:30pm. The golden hour was 14:53 to 15:53 today. So it not a great amount of time for the shoot. We were however totally blissed with great weather! Sun was shinning and it was not blowing a gale wind! (for once). The light was perfectly diffuse and soft. no artifical lighting. Only had some extra bounce from a white reflector. The settnig sun created some warmer hues to the shots on the background of some rather grey looking clouds.
I used my nifty fifty lens on f/2.2, ISO 160, 1/250 sec setting for most of the shoot. As the light dimmed, I upped the ISO, and reduced the shutter speed a little. Thankfully, i didnt have to bump up the ISO too much.
We had some interesting time holding the hat at an angle on Joanne's head for a slanted shot. In fact we had a rather funny one with the hat sliding off the slide of her face as if it was stuck there. With my assistants, we timed it perfectly and created the shot of the day. (hat balanced just right). We only got time to change the outfit properly once, and used differnt coats for differnet looks. We ended up shooting till around 5pm! Joanne did a great job despite the cold weather. We were all pretty satisfied with how the shoot went. Well done team! Can't wait to retouch the photos now!