Toni and I have been collaborating shoots together for nearly a year now, this particular shoot цвета I was really looking forwards to because of Toni’s unique vision.
It is fantastic working with someone who knows exactly what they want to create from a shoot, and Toni really knew what she was wanted to achieve. When clients have a clear and exact idea of what they want it makes the entire process much easier. Sometimes clients have a mood board and vague idea, when that happens it requires me to shoot tethered (so the client can see the direction the overall look is going), this can lead to a few different lighting set-ups and is time consuming, but that was not the case this time, I was set up first time thanks to the brief.
It is unusual for me to have such little input into a shoot. What I did offer was suggestions of what models I knew the look would work well on, and a name for the shoot. Toni’s inspiration for this shoot came from Russia. Russian make up and MUA’s are a real fascination of Toni’s and inspire a lot of her private work. So I took to Google translate. Initially I wanted to translate ‘pigments’ but it did not translate properly, so instead I tried ‘colour’…the title was born.
To start this section I must say a big thank you to all involved:
Hair Stylist: Robyn Turnbull
Makeup: Toni Neylon-Walker
Models: Georgia Hannard
As usual a great deal of work goes on behind the scenes at a shoot and on this occasion I decided film a bit of that magic (check out the video at the end of the blog).
For technique once again I will refer you to the video at the end. So much work went into this look, although I’m starting to understand and learn more about makeup due to the style of shooting I love. I could not possibly say which where used…as there where so many involved. Not to mention hair, two hair looks went into this by Robyn all adding that extra drama to the shots.
If you wish to recreate this look, here are some of the products used by Toni for the two looks she created:
The lighting set-up was fairly easy/quick, it only required one light set-up. This came from a 42cm white beauty dish with a diffusion cover. The model stood approx 2m from the backdrop and to her right was a large v-flat on the white side. To her left was a smaller oval reflector slightly nearer than the v-flat. Finally a medium circular reflector at waist height under her to bounce some light back up to her chin. This was feathered away slightly as I still wanted some contrast.
I get a lot of inspiration from artists in Moscow
I asked Toni what inspired the concept.
Toni “I just see things around and want to put them into makeup, the sky, textures, and colours. There’s a huge trend for metallic/gloss and texture at the moment so I wanted to combine the two, adding drops and sort of movement to the final image. I get a lot of inspiration from artists in Moscow which is where I also bought the pigments I used in the shoot”.
If you would like to know more about what I use to capture these images, check my Kit List
