Jordan River - Winter Pinup

Jordan River was the next model in my Winter Pinup series. I have worked with Jordan several times in the past, but during the pandemic, she decided to take a hiatus from modeling. The last time we shot was in the summer of 2019, so five years later I noticed she was modeling again, and asked her to be part of this series. 

I've always enjoyed working with Jordan. We have done several studio shoots, a boudoir shoot, and three outdoor shoots. She works well in all environments, and I am hoping to work with her more in the coming year. 

She arrived at the studio ready to work and we quickly got to it.

We quickly worked through most of the outfits and then when we were almost done, I managed to pop the breaker for the studio and killed the lights. Since we were pretty much done for the day, I had Jordan get dressed and with the breaker reset, I changed the setting for the shoot for a Christmas pinup I planned to shoot with Nancy the next day.

Despite the breaker issue, which was entirely my fault, we had a fun shoot with some excellent shots to share.

Winter Pinups with Floofie and Jade

I've occupied my mind recently with the planning and executing a series of shoots. Normally, I shoot Christmas pinups this time of year, but I wanted to switch it up this year. 

Usually, I shoot the pinups in my home in front of the tree and decorations my wife designs.

Every year it's something different. One year the tree got decked out in blue and the windows were frosted with a glaze. Another year, a snowflake and snowman theme made its debut. She picks a unique theme almost every Christmas. This year, however, we adopted an energetic and curious kitten, so we decided to forgo a tree. So, I had to change gears.

I decided on a Winter pinup scene and went about gathering the material and costumes to turn Floofie's studio into a winter haven. With a backdrop, lighting from large softboxes, and a fake snow floor, it came together rather nicely. 

Floofie agreed to be my first model for this series. She and I have worked together so often, she can almost read my mind when it comes to posing and I know exactly what to expect when I shoot with her.

As always, she delivered, and by having her model the different outfits, I got a feel for how they looked in the light and with the background.  

After Floofie and I wrapped up our shoot, it was time for Jade. This was only my fifth shoot with Jade, but she has made amazing progress as a model in the year that we've been working together.

As I expected, Jade did a wonderful job modeling the scene as well. I had hoped to do Christmas pinups with Jade last year, but life intervened and we never got to shoot. When she started modeling again, I. told her we'd do a pinup theme this year, so she had to be first after Floofie. She really flexed her pinup muscles for me and we got some great shots.

Floofie kindly let me leave the scene set up overnight for the next model, Jordan, scheduled for the following morning. That made it much easier to get started the next morning. 

 

I just finished my fourth shoot with Jade. This shoot differed from the previous three in that we focused on a warrior motif. This included the Sword & Chains theme, my Military Glamour (pinup) project, and Animal Print pinups. I asked Jade to go wilder with her eye makeup and to keep her hair to a more casual style consistent with the themes. 

For the location, I used a spot that has worked well for previous shoots with a similar theme. We shot in the early afternoon since these early days are now shorter. Fortunately, we had nice weather. Our shoot started with cool temperatures, but it warmed up nicely after the first hour of our shoot. 

After a bit of instruction on how to hold the swords and other weapon props, Jade's poses easily met and exceeded my expectations. She wore several sets of chains and wielded several swords, as well posing as an elven archer before we moved on to the military pinups. 

I brought along a portable Bluetooth speaker so we had music during our shoot. I like to have music during my shoots, and my models seem to appreciate it as well. Jade certainly liked my playlist and asked for a copy or a list of the songs I used. 

At the end of our shoot, I had a quick scare as my car's battery seemed to have died. Once I returned from asking the property owner for a jump though, it started right up (without a jump) and we headed home. 

Bikini Babe Jade

For my fourth shoot with Jade, I decided we'd do a bikini pinup series. I chose a spot on the Columbia River that had plenty of big driftwood logs so we'd have a variety of options for Jade to pose on. The location also included some vegetation to provide background interest for the shots as well. 

I had a large selection of bikinis for Jade to use. We spent about three hours shooting all along the beach and wooded areas of our chosen spot and Jade seemed to have a great time modeling all the different bikinis. She told me later, after viewing some of the photos I sent to her, that the pictures were surprisingly good. I thought so too, and let her know it was the great collaboration that produced such fine results.

Joey is almost the perfect pinup model. Long, red, locks; fair skin with a sprinkling of freckles; a long torso, and a voluptuous shape. I've shot quite a bit with her over the last couple of years, and she never fails to delight. This, however, was her first motorcycle pinup shoot and I think we did an admirable job despite struggles with the changing lighting conditions (natural light with on-camera fill flash set at about -2/3 EC.
 Model: Joey D.
Project: Motorcycle Pinup
Location: Portland, Oregon - Mac-Studios
You can see more of my work here:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mac_photo_nw/ 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/macphotonw/

Pinup Photography

The other day a friend asked me aboutu 1940's and 50's style pin-up photography. She said they had never seen any on my site and wondered if I had ever done it. My answer to them was I had done it, but nothing recently and that it was a matter of costume, setting and lighting. After more thought, I realized that those three attributes determine the style or genre of any people photography.

In any event, I went looking through my archives to see if I could find any specific examples, and of my digital files, this is the closest I 've come to that genre of photography since moving to digital. I did find some slides done with other models that were closer to the style, but I've found that the older Ektachrome slides I used don't scan well to digital.

To be really more of a 50's pinup style, though, the model's pose in this photo needs to be more elongated, that is, her body should be stretched out with much more emphasis on the legs and torso. Additionally, the props need to be more closely aligned to the costume. In this case, a red toy sack and a Christmas tree background would be more appropriate.

So, I've been doing quite a bit of research on this style of glamour, and I think that will be one of my winter photos projects, i.e. to shoot a series of 1940's and 1950's style pinups. I'm working on getting access to the loft of a shop which may work out well for a winter photography studio. I have a number of models that will be willing to work with me for copies of the prints for the portfolios, or for a modest fee. It's really, then only a matter of buying the props and costumes and optimizing the lighting. I need to research the lighting styles a bit more, but I've ordered a couple of Bunny Yeager's books and those will provide good examples for what I'm trying to accomplish. With any luck, I'll be able to post a new entry here is a few weeks with some examples of these types of photos.