Small Town; Big Shoot (Sorta)

Shooting with real models is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while now, but I’ve never exactly had the means to accomplish it. At one point, I knew a girl who did makeup and had reasonable rates, so I contacted the local modelling agency about hiring a model — as it turned out there were a lot of extra fees to using agency repped models that I didn’t know about, on top of the fact that their day rates start at $150. But now, things have changed and, to make a long story short, I’ll be doing my first big fashion shoot next week. And, as I’ve learned, just planning a shoot is half of the work.

Here’s how everything got started — about a month and a half ago I got an email from a personal style blogger named Niki, who also happened to live in Bakersfield. Seriously, what are the odds? Slim to NONE, trust me! But it was true, she not only had great style and an interest in the industry, but also an aspiring model to boot. So suddenly, a model was in place, and the model was key.

Or at least that’s what I thought.

It wasn’t long before I realized it would take more than a model and a photographer — what about make up? Who would do her hair? I don’t carry many accessories, let alone any shoes, so where would I get them? Where would we even do the shoot, and where would we prep? *sigh* I’ve been planning this thing for two weeks and the full details aren’t sorted out yet, but I’m getting there!

My photographer, Ellen, who does all my product photography, suggested a great, woodsy location here in town; perfect for a fall transitions shoot. So we had our location. Then came the hard part — finding a MUA and hairstylist (who would be interested in doing a TF, at that!). It’s looking like we’re going to have to forgo a hairstylist all together — since it’s an outside shoot there wouldn’t be any place for prep. But I figured a make up artist can work standing up, right?

This brings me to my first experience using Model Mayhem. Usually I’m put off by that site because of all the trashy, half naked portfolio photos plastered all over it, but it’s actually been extremely helpful — there are actually locals of all facets (except maybe stylists; I really haven’t checked yet). I was lucky to get in to begin with; they usually only accept stylists who have portfolio pics featuring actual models, and I had to submit were photos on mannequins. But as of right now, I’m talking things over with a couple of MUA’s for next week.

The most fun, and the most confusing, thing so far has been pulling clothes and accessories for the shoot. I’m lucky enough to know Joseph of JosephStephen PR, who is shipping me a ton of AMAZING jewelry and clutches from 4-5 of his lines. I was also able to use LupRocks to find giant cocktail rings, and (believe it or not) Twitter to find a great shoe designer.

So, my next immediate thing to do is confirm the exact date of the shoot with the photographer, and wait for the samples to come in. Next week will be our fitting, and as well as a meeting between the whole creative team. And I’m not even going to pretend like this is such “awful, hard work”; confusing, yes. Frustrating? Sometimes. But I’m loving every minute of it! I just hope the photos come out as amazing and ethereal as possible, and that we can continue on doing shoots like this in the future!

Definitely stay tuned! I can’t wait to show all of you how the shoot comes out!