Siren body paint shoot with Orion

Hello, readers! To-day Orion and I met up for our third photoshoot of the year. We'd been planning this for awhile now, and it was really fun to bring it to life! We traveled all the way to Delaware for the use of this specific pool, as it is very deep and doesn't have a distracting pool liner. We're both really happy with the photos. :)

This concept is a relatively simple one in terms of theme, or at least as far as the Werey/Orion duo go with our usually out of the box photoshoots. However, there are a couple of factors that make this one more complex than my standard mermaid shoot. First of all, it involved a skilled body paint job (wonderfully done by Orion, of course, with waterproof body paint), my siren teeth, and it was shot underwater.

While I've done underwater shoots in the past, this was Orion's first time shooting one. With his vision disorder (called "visual snow", a rare but life impacting condition, please share and spread the word on FB!) he tried all sorts of different goggles, including mine from Swim Elite and his nephew's clunky full face mask, to help see the underwater camera's tiny display screen. Nothing really worked, so he ended up forsaking the goggles all together and shooting blind, basically just getting lucky with timing and our almost telepathic connection. I'd say things turned out amazing by regular photoshoot standards, let alone blind luck shots! Bravo as always, Orion!

The bodypainting took us about two hours or so; it shouldn't have been nearly as long, but the airbrush gun kept jamming. We used light blue for the majority of the highlights, mostly on my face, shoulders, chest, and belly. We used black paint in the airbrush gun to make the scale patterns using a fishnet stocking. Below you can see some of the belly details underwater.

I had a charcoal greyish colour on my arms- a last minute addition as we ran out of blue, and a fortunate save mixing the black and white over what little bit of blue we had left. It looked really cool! Orion also did some texture additions, spots and subtle stripes here and there. As always, he did a fantastic job, even with the issues we encountered. Here are two above water shots to show details in colouring.

Orion also attempted to apply some neat flowing fabric to my arms using silicone (visible in the 3/4 body photo above before I actually got in the water), but alas, they didn't dry properly, and ripped off with the motion in the water tugging at them as I swam. Since the airbrushing was done over top of this, when they ripped off they left clean streaks on my arms with no body painting. You can see it clearly in the photo below, I think it still looks neat!

You can also see in the reflection on top the water that I am only wearing the top veneers in reality, the bottoms were edited in during post production. Unfortunately, editing them into the reflection was beyond my skill level. :P

We also tried to use Amy's Canon camera in a waterproof bag, but it proved to be difficult to use and the photos weren't turning out as well. Plus, the scare factor of submerging a camera not built for underwater use...we scrapped that idea after a few shots and relied on my yellow underwater camera with the occasional shot captured with my SJ400. Here's two taken with my yellow camera.

Since wearing contacts underwater easily spells out eye infection, we shot without colour changing contact lenses. Orion's original plans involved my red contacts, but with the help of some digital editing in post production, I was able to add that soulless empty black eye effect that looks so creepy. Some photos were better suited for it, but I did what I could, and I'm happy with the results. :)

Although it wasn't a very ferocious photo, I felt the need to include this FANTASTIC capture of a near perfect bubble ring! For some odd reason, bubble rings are easier for me with my top siren teeth in, probably has something to do with my lip placement.

I must say, I think the highlight of the day was actually after the shoot, when Orion put on my mermaid tail. What a beautiful mermaid. If I'm not careful, he'll run me out of the business. :P