The News Page 18

 

January to March 2013

Photo shoot Dress Me Up and Shoot Me (2)

1st January 2013

Happy new year everyone(well actually writing this in August, but lets pretend I’m up to date).I survived Christmas and another new year. The usual resolutions were made run more, drink less and practice make up more, well I did two months without drinking, trained hard but then the injuries came on again. Make up wise I did experiment a bit, but early in the year I’d totally lost my confidence in my ability to apply make up so looked around for a make up lesson.
Saturday 19th January 2013

I managed to find a make up service which was only about 10 miles from my house. My appointment was the week the snow came down in London, by the time the Saturday of my appointment arrived most of the main roads were clear, but there were still problems on some of the side roads, especially those with a hill. I managed to negotiate my way there without any problems.

The lady doing the make up is called V or Mistress V, as well as having a dressing service, she also offers dominatrix services, which were definitely off the menu for me. We had a chat over coffee, I had previously sent her some pictures of me having done my own make up, and she showed my areas where she believed I could improve. Instead of just doing my face and talking whilst she did it V, decided that she was going to do one half of my face and I was going to do the other half. On every occasion that I have made myself up and every other make up artist I know starts with the foundation and then builds up from there. V had a very different approach and she started with making up the eyes and then gradually moving on. She had a few other different techniques a couple of which I could muster, a few of which such as opening one eye at a time and trying to apply liquid eyeliner were beyond me.

Eventually between us we managed to get the eyes done, before moving on to the foundation. I had not been entirely pleased with the foundation recently, so I had decided to experiment a bit and V was happy to take part in the experiment. I used the original pan stick and put that on with a sponge to cover the beard line and then after that we used a mac liquid foundation. The combination worked well with the mac foundation feeling much lighter than the pan stick, it had also been a lot easier to apply. After completing the foundation we moved onto blusher which again is another of my weak points, but between us we did an ok job, and again V showed me a few little tips, which was basically making silly faces as you apply the blusher. The last thing on the face was the lipstick and again we experimented with a slightly lighter colour than I usually wear. Finally it was time for V to do my hair and we then took a few pictures so that I could go away and practice.

 


Saturday 30th March 2013 Photo Shoot

Peter has been my web designer for more than 10 years now, we usually exchange emails a couple of times a year, Peter also does a lot of work on other sites, and during this other work somebody mentioned to him that they needed a model for one of their sites.

Peter put me in touch with Sarah and we spoke a couple of times on the phone and she explained what she wanted to achieve and eventually we both found a date in our diaries for the shoot.

Sarah was based in Farnborough, and had lovely big house and I was able to park up on the drive way and heave my bag into one of the many rooms, after having a coffee and chat I unpacked my bags to show her the many outfits that I had with me. I had recently purchased a 1930’s style dress and was keen in doing some pictures in this outfit, Sarah also liked this one and we agreed that this was going to be the starting point.

Every time I have my make up done by somebody new it is always interesting watching how they do it, Sarah was back to the traditional method of applying the foundation and then working up from this, she also managed to put false eyelashes on me without floods of tears streaming from my eyes. About half way through the make up Sarah’s assistant arrived and after making a few cups of coffee she sat down and started to do my nails, eventually most of the face was finished and Sarah then went to work on my hair, she was impressed with the length of it and said it was great to actually work on a tv who had their own long hair.

Once the curlers were removed the hair was manipulated into place with even more hair spray and the final touches were applied to the face, it was then time to go upstairs and get dressed. We started with the red polka dot dress was next which took a bit of time putting on, w then e had to go back downstairs and across the garden to start the pictures.

After a few touches of the make up, we were ready to start taking pictures,to start off we kept with the Vintage theme , there was an desk with a telephone on it and we were trying to do some pictures with me answering the phone. We then stood up behind the desk and this time I was standing up answering the phone. We tried to do some pictures where I was moving the bottom of the dress and petticoat about, and once or twice I almost fell over. Once we had finished in the front room, we moved onto the staircase where we did various poses firstly with Sarah standing below me and me sitting on the stairs followed by, us changing positions and me either standing on the stairs or stretching out on the banisters and head shots being taken.

It was then time to change outfits, and we went for something completely different, this was a short thigh length black sparkly dress. We teamed that up with black stockings and black heels. Sarah then decided that she wanted to do something different with the hair.

We tried to do the pictures different from the first set, we started off with doing the pictures whist I sitting in a chair. Once we had finished on the chair we decided to do some on the floor, there was a black fake fur rug on the floor and I was put into various positions on the rug.

We were done at last, I know it sounds stupid, but it is quite tiring spending a few hours trying to get into impossible positions, stretching necks and shoulders and still trying to smile. I was relieved to get the dress and heels off and get back into my jeans.