Prior to yesterday, I had been invited to accompany one of my company's book cover designers, Jenny, to a photo shoot at a photography studio near downtown Minneapolis. Jenny's assignment was to contract a model, photographer, and a make-up/hair stylist, plus rent costumes from the Guthrie Theater, and then direct the pre-mentioned people in arriving at the best possible poses for 5 upcoming fiction book covers. Jenny is a gifted designer, with a very sweet personality to boot. I was so honored to be asked to go along with her to help out where necessary.
We got there around 9:30 and immediately Jenny and I went into action. I began pressing costumes. She directed the make-up/hair stylist with the ideas she wanted used for each of the covers and in turn, that lady, Tessie, began her magic on the actress, Amber. Now Amber was excellent to work with, as she is a professional actress and singer in the Twin Cities. She just finished being the understudy for the actress for Jane Eyre at the Guthrie , but has starred in many plays and performances. She is just beautiful - 5' 8", with lovely chestnut brown eyes and hair. The stylist had to make her appear 13 years old for the first book cover; 19 for the second; 24 years old for the third; and finally 28 for the fourth. When fully made up and costumed, she stepped into the photography space and began her slow movements, using her eyes, chin, lips, etc. to show many, many moods and looks. The photographer just clicked and clicked away, taking direction from Jenny. By end of day, he had taken more than 500 shots of the different costumed actress/model. I don't envy Jennifer's job of choosing just the right photo for each of the 5 covers. But she is very good and I know they will be beautiful.
I'm including a few photos I took to remember the day. Rachel, this whole experience made me wonder if the process was similar to the ones you had when Josiah and Annika were models.
1 comment:
The main difference between this and what the kids experienced in Japan is that they didn't do any makeup or hair for the kids. Josiah had a little bit of pink color applied to his cheeks at one shoot, but otherwise, they are left au naturel. And why would they need it? Babies are gorgeous without it! Josiah and Annika had to take lots of pictures with different expressions, but each little session never lasted more than a few minutes, then we'd wait for the next shot that they were in. Looks like you had a fun day though--it's always interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes.
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