I took my final set of images yesterday at the Old Rep Theatre in Birmingham. I had no assistants, no digital as back up; it was just me, the subject, the Mamiya and 5 rolls of film. By the results of my previous shoots I knew exactly what I wanted to capture this time, more images of the subject getting ready, less close-up portraits and paying more attention to the venue itself. I was hard not to pay attention to the venue itself in all honesty. It was spectacular. It was the perfect location to photograph a burlesque performer in, there were red velvet chairs and huge lights on the walls, I had sketched a few ideas on my notepad prior to the shoot, so I knew exactly where to position the subject.
As she has been the main feature throughout my work I thought it would be appropriate to carry on using Miss. Von Vamp, she is open to direction and has a certain confidence that really comes to life behind the lens. I had sent out numerous emails, Facebook statuses and tweets about the location that I had hired for this shoot, I have about 200+ burlesque friends on Facebook, so I thought I would have had more of a response than I did, I even sent out messages to more alternative/pin-up looking models who have a similar looks, but no one got back to me. I had also asked model, Charly Malone, who I have worked with before, but she had a deadline that day, so unfortunately couldn’t make the shoot either.
I’m quite glad I only used the one Burlesque performer in the end, I think the images are far more intimate than those which I have used 2 or more models in. Surprisingly everything went a lot smoother with just the two of us, Charlotte managed to change into three outfits and I had (more or less) perfected focusing and exposure on the mamiya. I feel that this series os images are my most successful, so I will be using a selection of these for my final prints. Now I’ve just got the hard part in deciding which ones to use! I’m still contemplating whether to create a book or not, my images, aesthetically are very different from each shoot, so I’m not sure if they will work as a set, but I will ask my peers for advice at the final critique with the mentors. I am more than happy with the results from this shoot, and I feel they are my strongest work to date, I hope I get the same response from others and that the viewers of this blog can see the progression of my work from when I first began this exploration.
The roles have reversed!
