Vintage Makeup shoot with DD Nickel

Several weeks back DD Nickel and I were here working on a shoot when she presented an interesting idea to me. She had been wanting do to a series of ‘Vintage Makeup’ makeovers mimicking some celebrities from the past. Since i’m all about everything vintage, I thought it was a perfect fit for me. We broke the shoot into 2 days, and D.D. brought along a bunch of her friends who she was luckily enough to get to volunteer, who looked like the stars of yesteryear we were reproducing looks for. I want to thank not only D.D., but all the gals who made this possible– there was a lot of patience, mimosas and quiche involved to get us through each day!

 

 

 

First Up (and personally my favorite only because i love old, silly sci-fi stuff) Is our combo or Barbarella and Raquel Welch in “One Million Years BC” TELL me you wouldn’t go see this movie?!

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…here we have TWIGGY – and I have to admit the ‘color bars’ are a knock off of a shoot i found of hers online! Know what’s weird?… when I was about 5 and at Disneyland there was this huge crowd gathering around someone, and we walked over and it turned out to be Twiggy! At 5 I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but knew it was SOMETHING due to the crowd.

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Next up Liz Taylor – who had died recently right before we did this. So we felt a little guilty, well, not really all that much..

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honestly, who DOESN’T stand around in a mink with a martini?  Stop by here nearly any afternoon, and that’s now you’ll find me.

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so D.D. also had an idea to do vintage cosmetic ads for herself, and my pink and black bathroom worked as a wonderful set! The blouse she’s wearing was actually her grandmothers!

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–so this is a bit Doris Day with a touch of Dinah Shore. I had JUST had this new aqua colored sofa delivered and the timing could not have been more perfect. As a friend commented –“now that sofa is a tax write-off!” She TOTALLY nailed that fresh, kinda over-the-top 50’s smily thing!

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ok so how damn cool is this???!!–here we are trying to capture the essence of Lena Horne. And as you’ll see at the bottom of this post, I also replicated 2 fake album covers for fun too–

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Ooooo baby – it’s Veronica Lake! I don’t even know what to say other than she was perfect for this, and I even surprised myself with how cool the lighting came out. Luckily our model was not suffering mental illness or dead of hepatitis…

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one more ‘glamour’ pose for Barbarella–not really copying any particular shot, but just so cool with the sueded getup and furs! ( a little behind the scenes buzz-kill–there are 2 people holding up the furs behind her – and that small grey ‘patch’ to the right behind Sonia’s head are one of their pant legs—ahhhh, photography is so magical )

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Our last look of the shoot was Clara Bow–which was interesting for me photographically since so many of the images I found had extreme shallow focus, due to the cameras and film speed used at that time. I hauled out the tilt-shift lens and added a fair amount of texture, as I wanted these to feel like they were discovered in an old box of prints somewhere-

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I wanted to include this image because there is something so incredible to me about the gracefulness of this pose that she achieved or this shot. It kinda made it a dream come true image for me, as getting that softness while being aware of the light and your expression  is NOT an easy thing to do! ( another photo behind the scenes spoiler: each of these images EASILY took several hundred shots to get the final, exact pose and facial expressions, as well as a fair amount of Photoshopping. So when people say “I don’t photograph well”–remember that a single image from a point-and-shoot with a nasty-ass direct flash, or standing in the blinding sun with hideous shadows does NOT constitute ‘photography’!!  Thank you- i’ll get off my soap box now…)

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and here are the 2 faked albums I mentioned earlier for fun—

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1 Comment

  1. […] reaching out to some of my industry pals, starting with Miss D.D. Nickel. She and I had done a vintage makeup shoot a number of months back, so I knew she was REALLY into this kind of stuff. We chatted about the […]

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