Bag Lady - Part 2

I'm currently curled up with my laptop, listening to Arcade Fire and writing this after a hard day's work. Today, while not entirely planned to pan out this way, was the first day of my Bag Lady shoot. I had to bring it forwards since the studio was pretty much all booked up for next week, and I'd already booked the large studio for today in case I needed it. Thankfully I found out about this a few days before today, so was able to alert people to when it'd be and when I'd like them to be there.

The model I chose was Lenka, and I'm ever so glad I did. She's such a lovely person and a wonderful model! Finding a model was a bit of a nightmare in itself - my first point of call was within the college. I made posters and put them up everywhere in my college and the university next door. Then came the casting call. Four people turned up, which wasn't bad. One of them was Lenka, and upon seeing her I had the feeling I'd found my model.

For curiosity's sake, and for the benefit of my assignment (I have to do as many things as possible) I decided I'd search on Model Mayhem. I contacted 4 models about an urban winter fashion test shoot in Swansea a week from that date. Two of them got back to me. One said she worked full time during the week but would otherwise be interested which was unfortunate, another said that she was fully booked that day but might be able to turn up later on in the day. Uh oh. Not looking good. The other two never got back to me for whatever reason. I asked when the second could turn up but by the time I found out I'd already abandoned all hope of doing a test shoot in Swansea and had decided Lenka was the right woman for the job! I definitely made the right choice, judging by the images :)

Moving on from the model situation I came to assistants, a makeup artist and a hairstylist. I found some assistants, but only two were able to turn up towards the end of the day since they were busy with college work unfortunately. It's ok though, we managed quite well without them :) I'm quite hands-on in my approach so if something needs doing I'll tend to do a lot of it myself even if assistants are there - it's nothing against them, it's just a force of habit. I couldn't find a MUA or a hairstylist in time, so I did the makeup while the lovely Lauren turned up quite by chance and in a matter of minutes had Lenka's hair up in a fantastic beehive-nest-like construction. To quote Lenka, "Is it really that big?!" It was amazing :D

For this brief I have to get around 6 different looks since I need 6 different images. So the dress is being altered as we go along. Today it went from being knee-length to floor length at the back, dragging on the floor. It's absolutely amazing! Matt is a genius when it comes to these things, and that's exactly why I chose him. Katie made some fabulous jewellery - a bracelet made from betamax tape and a necklace also made out of the tape plus some black and white plastic things. She also made a great hairpiece made from a petri dish, what looked like tissue paper and I'm assuming glue of some sort to harden it. Very simple, but stunning. Lenka looked incredible.

Unfortunately, I don't have any final images to show for this just yet! They were still converting from one file type to another when I left the studio to go and catch my bus home. I'm going in to college tomorrow though so I'll be able to pick them up then. I can't wait! We're also doing another shoot on Monday to (hopefully) finish this off. I'm aiming to shorten the time we take this time, so maybe we'll finish earlier that day. Everybody involved has been absolutely incredible and ever so creative. It's so satisfying and almost magic seeing something that was just a mere thought bouncing around inside my head become a reality before my very own eyes. This is one of the reasons I keep doing what I do - that, and it's a lot of fun!

Bag Lady gets a thumbs up from Lenka!