Photo session with Lindsay 2016 details

 Hey everybody! This post is to share the journey I had on the photo session with Lindsay. It was a lot of work but we got some amazing shots! :D


  We spent the first day at Lindsay's house in MA trying out different underwater shots. We used one of her Canon cameras a waterproof camera bag and my SJ4000. The Canon got some nice shots but without going into ranty detail, it was incredibly difficult to work with underwater in pretty much every aspect. Unfortunately, 95% of the underwater Canon photos were scrapped for a variety of reasons, including an entire attempted underwater photoshoot in my red tail that will never see the light of day. :(


  Lindsay, quite understandably, didn't fully trust the waterproof bag to protect her camera if totally submerged, so we only got a handful of shots with the camera completely underwater. After these were taken, some condensation inside the bag (or at least that's what we hope it was) made us both paranoid enough to only halfway submerge the bag enough for the lens to function. Besides complicating the focus, the bag also made the edge of each shot blurry. This added to some photos, giving it a fantasy effect, but unfortunately ruined far more than it enhanced. Still, we did get a hand full of photos that turned out, including two amazing shots. This one is my absolute favourite!

  Props to Lindsay for excellent timing and awesome focus with the tricky Canon camera. I'd also like to toot my own horn for a minute for blowing two perfect bubble rings in a row, as it's still a newly learned trick. Yay teamwork! :D

Here's one underwater shot taken with my SJ400:

⛥ ⛥ ⛥ 

  The second day in the afternoon we packed up and made the drive to New Hampsire. Here's a photo of all the luggage we brought. Both of our clothes (including photoshoot wardrobe) and personal toiletries are in the largest suitcase, and besides my purse, everything else is either camera gear or photo props.

  If you're interested in reading what I brought to and brought back from this trip, you can read that blog post here! :)  Now onto the details of the photoshoots we did in New Hampshire! Since we arrived pretty late in the day, this first day there was spent scouting out locations and planning shoots. Luckily, Lindsay knew the area very well and already had ideas in mind for locations, which saved us a lot of work.

⛥ ⛥ ⛥ 

  The first shoot we did was a mermaid shoot on a cute little hidden side beach by the lake, filled with reeds with lovely purple flowers. I chose the orange tail because the bright colour stood out nicely against the green and purple. :)

  We got some very pre-raphaelite looking shots using the reeds. This one is my favourite, I can only think of an old time oil painting when I see it. Great capture, Lindsay! <3

  We also did an encore of this shoot another day. This time there was a light drizzle which turned into a light rain. We had to be quick to make sure none of the camera equipment was damaged by the wetness, (nevermind being chilly to boot!) but the rain made for an awesome effect on the lake and in my hair. If you look closely you can see the rain in some of the photos! :D

⛥ ⛥ ⛥ 

  For the next shoot Lindsay showed me this location with the PERFECT big rock. It looked amazing! I planned on wearing red lipstick, but in the first couple of shots I forgot it, whoops! I added some in post-production editing, and I'm happy with it. :)

  We decided to try out my siren/shark teeth for the first time during this photoshoot. I had a heck of a hard time trying to get them to stay correctly in the molding process, but they were good to go afterwards. During this shoot we discovered that it generally looks better with only the top teeth in, because I cannot close my mouth with both sets. Both looks good at certain angles with certain poses, and experimenting with it helped me learn what looks good and what doesn't for future photoshoots.

  I do kind of wish I got smaller fangs so I could wear both sets and close my mouth but overall I'm very happy with how they look. I worried this photoshoot would be a bit hard to organize, as some of the friendlier shots will be used for my Mermaid Gipsy profile, but siren-y, aggressive, or "scary" photos stay on my regular Werandra profiles, away from my childfriendly persona. Thankfully, Lindsay and I were on the same page regarding crediting, categorizing, and watermarking photos under the appropriate personas, and it wasn't difficult. Communication is key, if we weren't sure which if an image was a Mermaid Gipsy image or a Werandra image, we'd discuss it before publishing so everything was accurately in sync and there was no confusion. :)

⛥ ⛥ ⛥ 

  These next two photoshoots were standard gypsy themes. Lindsay had locations scoped out, and I had the outfits pre-planned, so everything went smoothly.  I plan to re-visit these outfits at some point, especially the red one. Because the locations were a good trek away from our condo, we stored the outfit I wasn't wearing and a touch up brush/lipstick in the prop suitcase. After we finished with the red outfit I changed in a recreational area bathroom facility into the black outfit and touched up my hair and lipstick, then we hiked even further away to get to the next shooting spots.

⛥⛥⛥

  This next shoot was a lot more complicated that it might seem. The condo had a very neat spiral staircase leading upstairs and into the basement, so Lindsay had the idea to do a demoness shoot at the bottom of the stairs. Very creepy, like sneaking up from the basement out of the darkness. We had to wait until the rest of the house was in bed to do this because it required all the lights to be out.

  I waited in costume at the bottom of the stairs, and Lindsay shone a flashlight (directly onto my face :P ) to focus the camera, then turned out the flashflight and took the picture with a flash. It took a bit of playing with, but eventually we got the effect we wanted. The shoot means something very special to her personally, so if you're interested in learning about it, please read the descriptions on the photos from this shoot in her DeviantArt gallery.

⛥⛥⛥

  This was a simple fashion shoot taken indoors on a rainy day. The beautiful crochet top is by Aurobelle, and part of the photoshoot was due to of a larger modeling collaboration between Aurobelle and myself them to model, display, and advertise their wardrobe. I absolutely love their clothing, and the founder, Jane, is just a sweetheart. It's a pleasure to work them, and it will be an ongoing thing for awhile. I was also in love with the simple aesthetic of the condo's couch. It was very "homey" to me, very comfortable yet not distracting to the eye.

  Besides modeling for Aurobelle, I also tossed out a freebie to The Elephant Pants and modeled their wares as well. I think it looks great with the crochet top, and I do hope to work with The Elephant Pants in the future, they're a great company.

⛥⛥⛥

  The next two photoshoots required kayaking in order to get to the locations. I hadn't kayaked in years, it was very physically exhausting but it was fun!

  After about kyaking for half an hour, we reached the outskirts of an island that was a perfect place for a mermaid shoot. This is the first time the public has seen my clownfish mermaid tail, it's limited edition by Fin Fun Mermaid. I paired it with a cute halo braid and the white Aurobelle top, with a bright blue necklace for a pop of colour.  We did some close up fashion shots for Aurobelle as a mermaid as well. I hope Jane loves them as much as I do! :)

  After the clownfish shoot we kayaked to an island we could actually enter. It was awesome, some people even camp out there! I loved the island, it was so BEAUTIFUL! After we arrived we had a brief chat with another family that were visiting there, then we found a secluded spot where I changed into a flowy black dress for a fantasy shoot with Lindsay's mirror. It might not occur to those seeing the final result of the photos, but the large mirror, the camera gear, and the wardrobe change (including the monofin!) had to travel with us in the kayaks to the locations, so we had to be extra careful on the lake.

⛥⛥⛥

  Once we finished the mirror shoot on the island, we kayaked back to a beach on the mainland where did a cosplay of Dory from "Finding Nemo"/"Finding Dory" as a mermaid. This is also a costume I plan to re-visit in the future, and I also plan on adding it to my mermaid business as a character option. :)  Lindsay switched between shots from water in her kayak and grounded shots from the beach. It was cute!

  The last shoot required a ton of prep and planning, but was a lot shorter than we intended as we ran into quite a few complications. Still, I'm happy with how the shots we did take turned out. :) It's worth mentioning that a small detail that went pretty much unnoticed were the bones and feathers we tied into my hair. The bones were cleaned from a rotisserie chicken, and we tied them and the feathers in with black string.

  The body painting concept was mine, and it was going all fine and dandy until we got to the location and I went to put on the claw rings. The rings were not adjustable and arrived far too large, so I took some wire cutters, cut them, and squeezed them smaller for a better fit. This worked okay with my regular fingers, but it didn't even occur to me that the body paint would make my fingers slippery, like soapy hands. I'm glad we got the black ones because the paint got all over them from constant re-adjustments. There were times when they just slid right off and Lindsay had to put them back on me because my hands are useless with all the rings on. :P Getting the costume on and really me doing anything while wearing it was a huge challenge and took a lot of co-operation, especially since this type of paint doesn't really dry all the way and got everywhere. Glad we brought a towel!

  The paint also was cream/oil based, so it behaved much different than the familiar body paint I'm used to working with. After awhile we took off the corset and the plan for the second half of she shoot was me to smear the paint all over myself with my hands, leaving hand prints and making a scorched or corrupted look....but it looked awful. That was my fault for instructing Lindsay to buy that kind of paint. Sorry, Lindsay x.x Especially on my face. It didn't blend at all. I tried to mend my face by rubbing dirt all over it to give it some feral texture (and minimize the unintentional blackface effect...oops.) but it still looked terrible. Lindsay liked two or three photos from the second half of the shoot, and with a good bit of post production touch ups (the story behind the piece is she is corrupted and mid-transformation) I was able to save one to the point where I liked it and was happy with , but the rest just didn't turn out at all and unfortunately were beyond saving.

  The best part was having to walk home like that. I was wearing pasties under the paint, but it just looked hilarious. We passed a giggling older couple and I said, "I can explain", and the woman answered "I'm sure you can!". Hahaha, everybody was so nice up at the condos.

  To ad insult to injury, the lights in the condo weren't working when we returned (and the fuse box was a disaster), so I had to shower in the dark with Lindsay holding her phone in the other end of the shower as a flashlight so I could sort of see. It was hilariously pathetic, but I was so thankful I had her to hold that darn flashlight. Haha! We originally thought about re-doing this shoot after we figured out the obstacles, but seeing all the prep it took and how much of a pain it was to clean up, weighing the options we decided against it. I will, however, be using a the hand/feet body paint concept again in a later shoot, I really like the design.


Overall, we got some fantastic photos. :) Thanks for reading and sharing the adventure!

Love,
Queen Werandra