Xmas Pinups for the End of the Year Wrap

 I wrapped up the photographic year with a couple of Xmas pinup shoots featuring Floofie and Arya. Floofie and I had shot our first Xmas Pinup shoot way back in 2011 and we needed an update. Arya had also expressed interest in shooting the Xmas pinup theme and although I had offered the other spot to Jade, she failed to get back to me, so Arya got the spot. 

I'm not going to write a lot about the shoots, I'm simply going to let the photos speak for themselves. Enjoy!

First Shoot with Arya

Arya in Knit

 I had my first shoot with Arya yesterday. I've not had any shoots for the last three weeks, and I'll soon be wrapping up for the year and starting my seasonal editing. I mean, when it's wet and cold outside, it's much better to be editing than during the warm, dry months when I'd prefer to be shooting.

Anyway, I had previously contacted the first week of August, but we weren't able to schedule anything until this past week. Since the weather has turned for the season, by necessity our shoot was in my home studio. 

Spangles and Skin

For our first shoot, I chose to go with my On Black project which requires a simply three light setup (key, fill, and rim) and a black, light absorbing backdrop. 

For this project, I use various types of jewelry and body chains. I like the contrast of textures––shiny metal and jewels against the skin made to really pop by the light. In most cases, I use also use a table or ottoman on which the model can pose. This requires the model to use compact poses, but one look at Arya and I knew that wouldn't work. 

Arya is a lovely girl with long legs and arms and a torso to match. Given her height and frame, even with compact poses, keeping all of her and the background in frame would be tough without using a short focal length. A wide angle lens distorts the face when used close to the model, so I chose instead to use standing poses. 

Punk Metal Masks

Arya brought an escort with her, primarily because she doesn't drive. He mainly kept to himself and browsed his phone while we shot. Arya posed well and we kept up a nice conversation as we worked. I enjoyed working with her and we definitely got some good shots. She was the first model to pose with my new cyber-punk metal masks and made them look good. 

More Composites Featuring Merrique

Solid Gray Backdrop

The mottled gray backdrop worked well for the compositing with Floofie, but I wanted to see if a solid gray backdrop would be even better. Merrique came over to help me try it out, once again using the setup in my living room. I had already spent a full day driving down and back to shoot with Joey the day before, but Merrique was available and I had the time, so why not?

The backdrop material felt thicker than the previous backdrop. The wrinkles and seams stood out more prominently as well, but since the backdrop would be removed during the compositing process, I didn't worry about that. I definitely won't be using this backdrop for portraits, though, at least not without giving it a good steaming first. 

Forest Queen

Merrique and I shot sixteen outfits to use for my future photoshopping endeavors. The costumes ran a wide gamut of styles. They included fantasy tunics, Hawaiian shirts, metallic bikinis, and even a sweater. I can always count on Merrique to give me a great variety of poses and I took full advantage of her time to get as many variations as possible. 

Fun Look

After downloading the images and starting the editing process I noted that removing the backdrop didn't require significantly less effort than the previous version. Neither version had an advantage over the other, but the solid gray version was larger. That would make it better for landscape aspect shots or for a larger studio space allowing the photographer to be further from the model.  

The experiment yielded no surprises, but I did get to shoot with Merrique, so that's a win. 

On Holiday

Goddess Joey

Blue Goddess

I've been going to the Siuslaw Valley for a few years now, ever since Joey invited me down for a shoot. I was the first photographer to take her up on the offer, and I try to get down there at least once a year. The two of us have shot all over the valley and traveled to a few places outside the valley to shoot as well. Joey's charge is to find the locations while my responsibility lies with choosing the concept and bringing the costumes and props. 

I've been wanting to shoot a fall shoot in the valley and during our most recent shoot I had asked Joey to find us a new spot to shoot. So we set a date for early fall and I made the trip down earlier this week.

Sun Goddess

Joey had told me she had found a great new spot. True to her word, it made an excellent location for what I wanted to shoot. As a bonus, it wasn't far from her home. This time of year, before the rainy season has returned, the river runs shallow and warm so we managed to get some shots in the river as well. 

I had mentioned to Joey that I wanted to do a set of Celtic Goddess images with woad drawings on her face and body and she was excited to do something different like that. We also started later in the day that I normally shoot because I wanted to use the evening sun instead of morning light. That worked out well for us because the river ran to the west side of our location giving us light under the trees for the final part of our shoot. We didn't stop shooting until the light failed.

Celtic Warrior

Our shoot started without the woad designs though, since I wanted to shoot some unpainted goddess versions before she applied the hard-to-remove body paint. We began under the trees with sheer gowns and backlighting from the late afternoon sun. 

Despite being in a county park, the location stayed mostly deserted during our shoot. The first interruption occurred when a man and his dog came looking for a friend. We heard both of them long before they hiked up the trail to our spot. The guy accepted our word we hadn't seen his friend and off he went, pup in tow, back down the trail from whence he came.

Nude Goddess

Our second encounter didn't count as an interruption because no one came anywhere near us. A truck simply pulled into the area, a couple of guys jumped out, looked at the river, and left after just a few minutes. For the remainder of the shoot, no one bothered us. 

We shot for about 3 hours and got some great images. Joey looks great as a Celtic Goddess and warrior and she's much better at handling swords than 6 years ago during our first shoot. 

Compositing with Floofie

Athena Before

I've been trying my hand at compositing images lately, but the issues I've run into are the backgrounds. While green and blue screens are great for video compositing, they suck for still photography. The light bouncing off the backdrop creates color contamination around the outlines of the model that is difficult to remove during the editing process. Black is better, but then you have the problem of dark hair or clothes blending into the background causing problems with selecting just the model. White could work with very controlled lighting and distance, but is a real pain to set-up. So, I decided to experiment with a couple of different gray backdrops that I have in my inventory. 

Athena After

I started with Floofie using a patterned gray portrait backdrop. Since I'm still working on improving the goddess concept, I chose the costumes and props for that inspiration and added some new items I thought would add to the fantasy. I shot this is my home studio (basically my living room where I set up the backdrops and lights withing the confines of the room's furniture). It's not ideal due to the space constraints, but hey, you've got to work with what you've got. 

After having Floofie play dress up for a couple of hours while I took a few hundred shots of her poses, the more challenging work began. Now, I've been working with Photoshop since version 6.0 was released 23 years ago, and I've taken quite a few lessons and attended several seminars. I don't consider myself an expert, but I mostly know my way around the program and I can usually get decent results. Selecting images and compositing them into a coherent and harmonious final shot requires more complex conceptualizations than simply editing an image.

Celtic Witch Before

When compositing, not only must you separate the initial image from the background, you also must consider the angle of the light hitting the subject, the color of the light source, the density of the shadows, and any reflections in the subject. Once you've chosen the background, you then have to match the perspectives and then harmonize the colors between the background and the subject. I'm definitely still learning, but I think my results are much better than my original attempts a couple of years ago.  

Celtic Witch After

The images you see here are simple composites, though. I'm certainly not to the skill level required to add multiple elements to the composite. I'll need to get much better before I attempt that. Anyway, you can see my results in the images posted. 

New Model - Jade

Jade

 I contacted Jade on Instagram on a whim. I just liked her look and the images posted on her profile. To my surprise (because of my prior luck with IG models), she responded immediately and we set a date to shoot within the week. I messaged her on the 9th and we were shooting on the 15th. 

She let me know she would be bringing an escort with her, and I let her know that I had no issue with that. I've never really had a problem with escorts. Usually I can put them to work holding reflectors, which is a big help, or bringing me props. 

Sparkly Girl

Only on a couple of occasions have I had an escort interfere with a shoot. The first time was a female friend of the model who thought she knew better than me how to run a shoot––that ended quickly along with the shoot. The other time wasn't the escorts fault, but rather the model's as she kept using part of our shooting time to show the outfits off to her boyfriend.

That wasn't the case with Jade's friend. He helped with the reflector, but otherwise stayed out of my way and let Jade and me do our thing. 

Amira Chains

Once again, I chose the area around the Sauvie Spaceship for my shoot. I know, I know, I shoot there a lot, but the spot has a lot going for it. It's fairly close to one of the entrance gates. Most of the time, you can count on a wide area of beach, and the woods surrounding the spaceship offer a different backdrop from the water and sand. Then there's the spaceship itself, all covered in colorful graffiti art which changes constantly. 

Caribbean Silk

Jade worked out great for the shoot I had planned. She has the look of a blonde bombshell and posed like one too. She could be both seductive or innocent depending on the outfit. She seemed to really enjoy the shoot, and we managed to get a great many poses and costumes done before we had to wrap up the shoot. I'm hoping to shoot again with her in the near future. I think she'd be perfect for a Christmas pinup.

Two Days, Two Shoots Redux

C'est La Vie

I do enjoy landscapes, but glamour photography is my forté, so I was glad to get back to it. K, modeling as C'est La Vie, was my first shoot of the week. Petite K has a charming smile and easily kept up the conversation as we segued through the costumes I had picked for our shoot. 

When I had shot with Jessa last month, she had brought a couple of her own costume items that gave me an idea for a new concept: goddesses of nature. Based on that, I put together this shoot thinking to expand on the idea. I did a little shopping on Amazon, got a few new props, combined them with some existing outfits and materials I had in my inventory and created something new to shoot. 

Wicked Goddess

Since it was the first time shooting this concept, not everything came together as I had hoped, but that was entirely my fault and certainly not the models. K did an excellent job, but at some point we had a loder gentleman that started watching us closely from a distance and even followed us around to watch K pose. That made her so uncomfortable, I had to speak with the man and politely ask him to leave us be. Fortunately, he got the message and wandered off. There are drawbacks to shooting glamour outside even on a nude beach. Unless you're on private property, and sometimes even then, you can't be sure you don't have an audience.

After I got rid of our audience, we continued the rest of the shoot without incident. I think the shoot went pretty well, all things considered, and I thanked K for her patience and persistence when the shoot was complete. Since she was a photographer herself, we discussed other places to shoot as well, and made plans to shoot again.

When I arrived home,  I set the images to downloading and started setting up for the next days shoot. Fortunately, I'd done most of the prep before leaving for Banff so it was simply a matter of printing the release, loading the costumes and props, and swapping out the batteries in the cameras and flash. 

Nanci on the Shore

Early the next day I picked up Nanci W (@ndu1 on IG) at her hotel. We'd been chatting for a while prior to the shoot and we had discussed using lots of colors in our shoot. I did my best to make that happen. We had a fun conversation on our way to the shoot, and I have to say she's one of the nicest and most cheerful model's I've ever had the pleasure to shoot. 

We had an absolutely fun shoot. Nanci is very experienced and it showed in both her poses and her expressions. She has a great smile, but she can provide both a serious and sensual look when asked.  

Graffiti Girl

I picked a spot near the Sauvie Spaceship for our shoot so we could use the colorful graffiti as a backdrop. Nanci really liked the ship as well as most of the costumes and props. There are too many great shots to share here, but I put a lot of the tamer ones up on my Instagram page and I have many more to share there and on my Deviant Art account. When our shoot ended, I told Nanci what a great time I had shooting with her and I promised we'd try to shoot again when she came back to my area. 

Have a couple of more images on me:

Glamour Hiatus

Banff was a fun break. I still did a lot of photography, but it was landscapes, no posing involved. We actually visited Banff, Waterton, and took a quick trip via boat on Waterton Lake to Goat Island in Glacier National Park on the US side of the border. We did some hiking as well––thank goodness for steroid shots for the knees. 

We stayed in a lovely B&B in Banff. Took a gondala ride up to the top of a mountain for an amazing view of the Canadian Rockies, then hiked down to beautiful lake for some more photos, before hiking back down the mountain for some lunch. 

We had poutine for the first time (delicious), tried a few craft beers, got a culinary tour of the Fairmont Hotel (again, delicious), and visited Lake Louise and Morraine Lake for short hikes. We had clear days for most of our visit, but when we went to drive the Icefields Parkway up to Jasper, the winds shifted and the smoke from the Canadian Wildfires to the east of us made visibility so poor that it wasn't worth the drive. 

We managed to get some nice shots of sunset from Lake Vermillion before we headed down to Waterton. On our way there we had to stop for a herd of bighorn sheep on the highway. All-in-all a very relaxing trip. 

Two shoots scheduled this week. One a day for the next two days with models I've not worked with before. One is from just across the river in Washington, and the other, from just across the border from Victoria, Canada. Time to jump back into glamour shooting with both feet. 

Two Traveling Models, Two Consecutive Shoots

Aim in Linen

This week started off with a bang! Earlier in the month, I had gotten requests from two traveling models that wanted to work with me. There schedules and mine were such that I had to work with one on Monday and the other on Tuesday. Each was a three hour shoot and at my age and with my knees, I simply can't do two shoots like that in a single day anymore. My knees are shot from too many years of steel decks and vertical ladders from my time in the submarine force, so it's difficult for me to walk in the sand or kneel for very long. Getting up from kneeling is even more difficult and I need a helping hand or a cane for that. Photography is, however, a passion so I continue to work through the pain. 

Aim in Lavender

Aim from Australia worked with me on Monday. Given the time of year and how close the river is to where I live, I chose my usual location for outdoor glamour and arranged to meet her near the shoot site. As usual, I chose early morning for our shoot and used a variety of outfits to show off her beauty.

Aim has a slender build, long hair, and an intense look. Her angular poses suit her body type and provide a sensual, provocative look. She would look right at home on the runway or on the red carpet, but was completely comfortable on the beach with me. I had a good time working with her and I was very pleased with the images we produced.

Jessa as Circe

On Tuesday I got to work with Jessa Ray Muse from Colorado. Jessa spends a lot of time traveling as a model and location scout. She runs the Muses of the West Adventures  photo tours as well as models. Jessa is that girl-next-door that you always wanted for your neighbor. She has a vivacious personality, a sweet face, and a lovely body. I truly enjoyed talking with her as we worked and her experience as a model made itself evident with her poses, expressions and easy movements.

Jessa

She offered great suggestions for our shoot and I incorporated her ideas into my concepts. One of her suggestions gave me an idea I'm going to try with my next model. I really can't say enough nice things about her. I'd truly love to work with her again if she comes my way. If you get a chance to work with her, don't hesitate to do so.

So, a lovely week for shooting has ended, and I don't have any more shoots planned for at least a month as I have some family event's schedule and then the wife and I are headed to Banff National Park in Canada for a couple of weeks, a trip we've been trying to make since before the pandemic. In the meantime, enjoy some more photos of Aim and Jessa: