Beauty & Braids

Today I got the chance to do a little beauty creative w/ photographer Sian Melton in my apt.!  Do you know how nice it is to not have to lug my kit around and just wait for ppl to come to me.  Her and I had been talking about shooting a Beauty story for a long while now but she had been super busy, I've been busy, the model we wanted was busy and then there was the issue of where to shoot it b/c she's in Oakville and doesn't have a proper studio out there.

So about two wks ago now I approached her again w/ the idea of a creative and I offered up my apt. as the shooting space to lure her in lol.  Apparently, my amazing apt. is the perfect place to shoot a small beauty creative b/c it has lots of natural light, blank walls and high ceilings.  Sian then approached Vienna, the model we wanted to use before and she was totally game so it was set and I was super excited!

I've had this one concept in my head for a beauty story literally since I was in Paris and bought these amazing magazines.  There was this one article about this one runway show and I just loved the Hair & Makeup so I was dying to create something w/ a similar feel but of course put my own spin on it.  I'm just so happy I finally got to shoot it b/c these concepts sort of have expiration dates and of course they lose their appeal after awhile.  Sometimes it's hard to get a photographer to agree to a beauty story when it's not even their concept to start but Sian is totally laid back and loved the concept so that was great.

I wanted to do something w/ a very ethereal feel to it so I can't wait to see want Sian is going to do in post b/c  it will look totally different then the pics she took today...which were already pretty cool!  I wanted the makeup to be mostly underneath the eyes and blended and faded out but I also still wanted it to have a bit of a messy feel if that makes sense.  For the hair I wanted to do an awesome braid story again but this time I wanted to crimp the hair first which I did w/ a really tiny crimper.  Time consuming but SO WORTH IT b/c it just gave the hair this amazing texture and gave so much volume and bulk to the braids.

I know I already have a braid story and I do love that one but it's getting a bit old so I wanted to update it w/ something new.  Plus that was in black and white so not the most useful to me and the makeup was super clean in it and being that I now have some new amazing clean beauty the story is not that useful in my book even though I still think it's really pretty.  Sometimes it's hard to get rid of a story even though you still love it b/c it's either a little stale or you just have a better story that represents a similar concept.

So I'm just giving you a taste of some of the looks...you'll have to wait and see for the real things ;)

After the crimping everything else went really quick...even after the 1st look was done all the changes were fast!  What a great team!

 Sian & Vienna doing their thing!