La Vie En Rose - Preview

Finally. I can't believe my last shoot was in August. I was excited to work with Shelley. I saw her in a restaurant and spontaneously decided to ask her if she'd sit for a portrait. We literally spoke for about 2 minutes and I gave her my card. She called me back the next day and agreed. I have to admit I was a tad nervous since it's been months since I had met her and I knew nothing about her. Also was nervous that she might bail out the last minute. Not only was she reliable, she was incredible to work with. I always have a clear vision of what I want the shoot to end up looking like and it's amazing when it actually works out. She was totally what I had in my mind. And that girl has stamina she sat still on that chair for hours, never complained.



As for the set. The big thing was that I really wanted to paint the backdrop. I wanted it to feel a bit like a painting. I also wanted her to wear the same painted fabric so she would blend in more with the background. I have never painted on fabric before and didn't know what I was doing. Since I needed a large quantity of paint I couldn't use fabric paint. I found on the Internet a product called textile medium that I mixed in with the paint. This prevented the paint from cracking. I didn't want to pay a lot of money for the paint so I just bought some cheapo kids paint. I had NO time to prepare for this shoot. I wanted to stain her finger tips red and didn't have time to properly test the staining out, ended up using a combination of food coloring, juice and icing. I started ironing the backdrop a few days before because it literally takes days to get all the damn wrinkles out, if you've been following my blog you know by now that I'm obsessed with wrinkles. The night before I started painting the backdrop. I didn't finish until 2am. I was worried that it wouldn't dry in time. This was especially a problem since she was to wear part of the fabric as a dress.

Everything went smoothly. I set up the heaters in front of the drying paint and it actually was all dry in time. The only major problem was that the hairstylist cancelled a half hour before the shoot. That sent me in bit of a panic mode. I'm not very good at doing hair plus I brought nothing with me to actually do hair! So I ran over to Duane Read and bought a cheapo curling iron and a huge can of ultra strong hairspray. In the end I have to admit I didn't need anybody to do hair anyway since I went with open hair. Lauren did make up, she's so talented. I was very specific about what I wanted and she nailed it, love her! Shelley I would work with again any day.

This shoot was all about color and feel.