Jane Queen Of Lemons

Model: Jane
Make Up: Lauren Weber


3rd of the fruit series. Big thank you to Jane and Lauren! And thank you to Alex for coloring Janes hair.

Tamara Queen Of Grapes

Model: Tamara
Make Up: Lauren Weber
Hair: Nikki Tomaino

Tamara Queen Of Grapes - Preview

Well I thought this shoot would be a lot faster and easier then the orange one was since I thought I had worked out a lot of the technicalities (like composition, setup.....) but it was not so. It turned out to be a long and difficult shoot. I blame part of it on fatigue, I was tired when I got started and exhausted by the time we finished. The two main things that took longer then expected were the light color balancing and the outfit. I knew I had all the fabric colors balanced but I was trying to be tricky with the lighting (by playing with gels) and it was hard getting that to work. In the end it wasn't exactly what I wanted but I did get the warmth and coolness I was looking for but boy it took me probably an hour to get that to look good.

I had initially picked a red apple for Tamara. For some reason I just couldn't wrap my head around the apple with her. Then last week I suddenly decided the grape would be better. I think she reminded me more of a greek/romany type lady which is also why I draped the dress across her chest. I thought the grapes were also kind of fitting with that theme. Overall I wasn't trying to be true to that area or anything but thought it would be fun to have a few things inspired by them.

It was my first time working with Tamara. Working with someone new is always time consuming because I'm not familiar with their body types yet. I know that just because certain poses work well for one person it does not mean they work for anybody. It's always interesting to see how people differ. What was awesome about Tamara were her facial expressions. It might not look like much in this shoot but it's soooo hard getting good facial expressions from people who've never modeled before and she was able to give me a variety of expressions. If I worked with her again we'd do better since I know her strengths and weaknesses now. Lauren did the make up and was great as always. I know she was struggling with the eyebrows, I wanted them to disappear into the skin color and eye make up and it turns out this is not an easy task (who knew). It was funny watching her cake on from glue stick to multiple foundations and powders. She's a trooper and never complains about my obsessive instructions. I love working with her. Oh and Nikki did the hair!!! I wasn't sure she'd be able to pull off what I had in mind. All I did was find some reference online for a dutch braid and explained how I wanted the back to read behind the braid. Nikki totally nailed it. It was exactly what I wanted I was totally amazed. I'm super psyched to have found someone who can do up-dos. Yay for my new team.