Practical Pinup - Photographer and Model

Transcription

Practical Pinup
A comprehensive guide to Pinup Photography
Ron Davis
January 28, 2009
Ron Davis!
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Practical Pinup, Page 1
Table Of Contents
Introduction!.........................................................4
What is Pinup?!......................................................5
Pinup is about an iconic concept.!.........................................................6
Pinup Tells a Story!..............................................................................6
Pinup Is Always Sexy!..........................................................................6
The Three Stages of Producing Pinup!.....................8
Preproduction!..........................................................................8
Begin With An End in Mind!.................................................................8
Arrange Details!...................................................................................9
Plan Post-Production!...........................................................................9
Details!...................................................................................11
Color!.................................................................................................11
Hair and Makeup!..............................................................................12
Costume!............................................................................................16
Props!.....................................................................................21
Sets!.......................................................................................24
Simple!...............................................................................................24
Build It!.............................................................................................24
On Location!.......................................................................................25
Models!..................................................................................27
Pinup Models!....................................................................................27
Professional Model!............................................................................29
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Actresses!..........................................................................................29
Wannabe Warning!.............................................................................30
Model Skills! ..........................................................................31
Posing!...............................................................................................31
Expression!........................................................................................32
Lighting!.................................................................................32
Simple!...............................................................................................32
Era Lighting!......................................................................................32
Background Color!..............................................................................34
Post-production!.....................................................................35
Simple!...............................................................................................35
Drawing!............................................................................................36
End where you began! ........................................................................36
Conclusion!..........................................................38
Credits!................................................................40
Models Pictured!....................................................................40
Model Mentioned!..................................................................40
Photographers Mentioned!......................................................40
Ron Davis!
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Introduction
Welcome to Practical Pinup, a book to give you everything you need to
know to start doing pinup photography.
Pinup is an incredibly popular
genre of model photography. Just
about every photographer at
sometime in their career wants
to try it. Every model loves it and
enjoys shooting it.
There isn’t a huge amount of
quality pinup photography
because once you try to actually
create a pinup image, you find
out it isn’t easy. There are a lot of
subtle details and preparation that
Pinup Model Scarlett St Vitus
go into creating the perfect pinup
image.
The following started out as a transcript from a $300 two-day workshop
I offered in October of 2008 at Houston Skyline Studio. This lecture ran
over an hour and I attempted to cover everything I could think of. But an
hour is really too short to accomplish my goal. So I set down with a
transcript and started editing and adding to it in order to get this book.
I didn’t edit it to sound like a book. If I were writing a pinup book, it
would have a different tone. A lot of it sounds like I said it and sometimes it
seems that I changed mid-sentence and mid-thought from one thing to
another.
The workshop included shooting time with two models, Scarlett St.
Vitus (Model Mayhem #205569) and Bella Reign (Model Mayhem
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#364603). They will be referred to throughout this book and I wanted you
to know who they are.
Accompanying this book you should receive another document with a
list of concepts and props for pinup. These are just suggestions. They were
from my notes, and I thought you might like to have them around in case
you end up doing pinup and you’re trying to look for concepts or ideas.
There are a million possible concepts, but this list will help you get started.
Halloween
Halloween is a great time to plan and get costumes cheap for pinup.
As Halloween approaches, Halloween costumes drop in price. For the
month or so before Halloween they’re all really expensive. But right
after Halloween, they drop in price as these seasonal stores liquidate
before closing down.
October is also a great time to learn pinup because Halloween is a
naturally “pinup-y” thing. If you have a costume party, you can shoot
pinup photography just with people in costume.
I mention the book, The Great American Pinup, as a great source of
examples of pinup. Unfortunately it seems to be out of print. You can
search for it online and find it used, though. It is a retrospective, showing
all the poster-pinup artists from all these different eras. You really get a
different view of pinup as you see different ways it has been done over the
years.
What is Pinup?
Obviously, if you’re going to do pinup, you’re going to have to start by
asking, “What is pinup?”
To me there are three basic elements to pinup.
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Pinup is about an iconic concept.
You start with some concept you’re trying to capture in the image. The
concept doesn’t have to be realistic, but it has to be one thing. When you
say, “This picture’s about X,” X is the concept.
Pinup is all about the concept.
Pinup Tells a Story
Then you take that concept and tell a story
with it. So if the concept was traveling or
taking an airplane – you see this a lot in some
of the early pinup – then the story is the pinup
girl with her suitcase. It has fallen open and
all her clothes have poured out. There’s
something happening in the image, and that’s
the story.
Pinup Is Always Sexy
Almost all pinup has to be sexy; it has to
have some va-va-vavoom to it. It’s not reality.
It’s overblown.
It’s bigger than life, bigger than reality.
You’re not trying to be realistic, you’re
trying to capture the essence. I know I’m
probably sounding artsy, but that’s okay,
because that’s what we’re doing here, creating
art.
For example, if your concept is the fifties’
housewife, you want to express that. So you
may have a story like ironing. You are going to
have your model in a pinup outfit doing
ironing. It’s also not realistic, the way “Leave
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Pinup Is Uniquely
American.
Pinup is a uniquely
American art. It was created
to support the troops and
celebrates American
culture. In December of
2008, the French version of
Vogue magazine came out
with their calendar. The
images were pinup, with a
European Vogue feel. There
were bare nipples and high
fashion shoes, but the
imagery was decidedly
American. The sailor outfit
was in red, white and blue
with stars on a blue field.
There was a Boy Scout
uniform. To make it even
more interesting, the
costumes used were from
Agent Provocateur, which is
a British lingerie
manufacture.
Even the French couldn’t
separate pinup from
Americana.
it to Beaver” wasn’t realistic. You know, June Cleaver wore a dress and
pearls to vacuum, right? That’s not what even fifties’ housewives wore to
vacuum. But it’s those elements that come together to make the image
iconic. So when you look at it, you think housewife.
This image of Erica in
nothing but a sheet on a
metal table was actually
based on a classic pinup
image. It is supposed to
have a medical feel. I
actually shot ones where
she was holding an x-ray,
which is what the classic
pinup image was.
Actually, she was holding an
MRI, because I couldn’t get
an x-ray. I have a friend
who’s a radiologist and I
could get an MRI. So she
was holding an MRI.
Since this was supposed to
be medical, we had her on a
metal table. And she’s
wrapped in a sheet to give it
a sexy feel. She’s holding the sheet so that you get these great curves. Her
hair and makeup is retro pinup. We’ll talk a little bit more about hair and
makeup in a minute.
This is an iconic image. It’s telling a story where she had the x-ray and
then she’s looking at the x-ray.
Or you might have a medical situation where you have her getting ready
to get a shot. You could have a second model in the picture who is a nurse.
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And then you dress that second up in the nurse’s outfit that no nurse
nowadays wears.
Did they really wear those outfits back in the fifties? With the little hat
and everything? I don't know. But it is now iconic for nurse.
Pinup is always sexy. It’s always skimpy. It’s always not realistic, and
generally the way it goes unrealistic is to make it skimpy.
The Three Stages of
Producing Pinup
I’m going to go through the three stages of producing a pinup image.
Preproduction
The first is preproduction. You’re not just winging it when you’re
shooting pinup. When I shoot fashion, I can say, “Model, we’re going to
shoot fashion. Show up; bring clothes. We’ll have a makeup artist and we’ll
figure it out when you get here.” When you’re shooting pinup, that’s a
whole lot harder to do. In theory, you can go, “Show up pinup-y,” you know,
“bring your Halloween costume.” But you’re not going to necessarily get
something iconic at the end.
Begin With An End in Mind
You need to begin with an end in mind, to quote Steven Covey.
You have to have an idea of what the final image is supposed to be. It is
always a good idea when you’re shooting – especially when you’re doing
model photography – to have an idea of where you’re going. With pinup,
you have to be much more specific.
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Start with, “What’s my icon? Am I doing fifties’ housewife? Am I doing
traveling? Am I doing nurse?” That’s my icon.
Arrange Details
Next “What’s my story?” For example, I know I’m going to do traveling.
She’s going to have a suitcase; the suitcase is going to fall open or
something like that. This tells you to arrange those details ahead of time. If
she’s supposed to have a suitcase full of clothes that fall out on the floor,
then you have to have a suitcase and you have to have the correct clothes.
You can’t just grab t-shirts and jeans and put them in there because now
you’ve messed up the era. You’ve messed up the details. You have to
arrange those details ahead of time.
Plan Post-Production
Another thing you have to plan is what you’re going to do at the end.
Nowadays, since we have Photoshop we can do all kinds of things at the
end. And I’m going to talk about post-production, about what to do when
you’re finally finished. But in some cases, you know you’re going to do
something in post, and you have to shoot for that thing.
I have a friend who’s a photographer in California. He was shooting an
image for Monster energy drinks, and his idea was to shoot Bride of
Frankenstein girls in lingerie. One of them is Frankenstein, and the other
one is on top of her, pouring Monster into her mouth.
Image can be seen here. Shot by Robert R Sanders.
Now, you could shoot that once. You could say, “Model A, pour the drink
into Model B’s mouth.” You’d have once chance to catch the pour in midstream, because after that Model B is going to be covered in energy drink
and her makeup is going to be a mess.
He wanted the model on the bottom as Bride of Frankenstein waking up,
and he wanted the other model on top of her pouring the Monster in there,
because that’s the product. He wanted the liquid coming out of the can that
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the model on top was holding and the drink in mid-fall between them. He’s
a master with Photoshop, so he knew what he could do in post.
He shot the Bride on the ground; he shot the Bride with the other model
on top of her. Then he took the Bride model out, and he put a bucket in her
place, and they poured –!over and over again – into the bucket. Shooting
the drink to catch it in midstream. So that at the end, he could take that
and Photoshop the pour in.
So if you’re going to do something like that, which pinup can lend itself
to, you need to know that in advance, and you need to plan how you’re
going to shoot for it.
You know, sometimes you might want to put a model on a background
that you don’t have. Like, maybe you want to shoot her in front of classic
airplane or World War II era airplanes. You don’t have World War II era
airplane, but you do have pictures of them, so you know you’re going to put
her in front of one. You have to have some pretty good skills to do that. But
if you want to make it look like she’s where the airplane is, you need to
think about where the light was on the airplane. Then you light her so it
matches up when you put her on the other image.
The point is you need to plan your post-production. If you’re going to do
something big, you need to plan it in advance. You need to know what that
is before you go into shooting.
You may even have to get to the point of doing a shot list. A shot list
means: I know I need these shots. A lot of times when I’m shooting with a
model, I’ll have a shot list because, especially with less experienced models,
they need direction; they need to know what you’re going to shoot.
And so it’s good to have a shot list with that, but it’s imperative if you’re
going for some funky concept with pinup. You have to have that all set out
ahead of time.
I’m going to talk a little bit in the post-production part of this book about
how some people like to make pinup look drawn. They like to take pinup
photography and make it look drawn. If you’re going to do that, then that
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effects your shooting, because a lot of things don’t matter if you’re doing
that. If you’re going to go in during post-production and do huge amounts
of Photoshop to the thing, then blemishes and wrinkles and tags and
imperfections don’t matter as much because all those details are going to
go away. So you need to know if that’s the style you’re going for at the end.
I’m not a big fan of doing drawing. If you want to draw it, draw it. If you
want to shoot it, shoot it. But that can make a big difference to you.
Details
Color
Color is another thing you need to think about. I’m going to be bringing
color up multiple times. You need to think what colors are going to be
dominant in your image, and then at each stage, you’re going to make sure
those colors match up and are done right. But if you’re going to Photoshop
them into a drawing at the end, you can change the color. So if she has a
pair of green panties on and you know she’s going to be holding a blue
lollipop, you can say, “We’ll just deal with the green and we’ll change it to
blue.” It’s not that big a deal. But if you’re not doing that at the end, then
you’d better make them match from the beginning.
So details are the key to successful pinup photography. It’s these details
that are going to make or break your image. The four big ones are hair and
makeup, costume, props, and sets.
Those are four things that you may or may not have in other kinds of
photography. In pinup, you’re probably going to have all four of them, and
so we’re going to go into depth on each of the different ones.
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This is an example where we
have a very simple set, just red
seamless and a table; a prop, an
era soda glass; and a costume, her
little French maid outfit.. There
are some variations on it. And
then her hair and makeup
screams pinup.
Hair and Makeup
Hair and makeup will sell the
whole thing. You can just do hair
and makeup and shoot the model
naked, and it would still be pinup,
because the hair and makeup
screams retro; it screams going
back. That’s why it’s so important
to have hair and makeup.
When I talk about pinup, I’m assuming you’re going for that forties,
fifties, World War II, post-World War II era pinup look. You can make the
case that that’s not all there is to pinup, that you could go back to say the
twenties. You could put a girl in flapper outfit and do something that’s
pinup with that, do something that’s iconic of that era and has a story from
that era. An example of this would be to have her with moonshine, if you
wanted to do a Prohibition set. Still you are going retro and it’s that feeling
that makes pinup.
So you’re always going to another era. And there are very specific
makeup and hairstyles from those eras. As a photographer, when you’re
shooting models, if you are going to do it well you’re going to learn more
about makeup than most women know. A lot of women don’t know the level
of makeup necessary for photography. That’s why when you’re working
with inexperienced models and they say, “I can do my makeup,” you know
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it’s not true. Well, it’s not the same makeup that you do for studio
photography, because the lights are way brighter when they go off. If she’s
wearing regular, every day makeup, it will just disappear. It just goes
<poof> and it’s gone. And then some makeup, you know, different kind of
makeup, it shows up beautifully in photographs.
You don’t have to become a makeup artist, but if you
want to know the language, a great book is “Making
Faces” by Kevyn Aucoin. He’s from Louisiana, or he
was. And it’s a great introduction to makeup.
It also is useful for the looks in it. You can actually
take this picture and go to your makeup artist and
say, “Look, I want this innocent look.” Then it’ll even
give the breakdown on how to do it. Early on in the
book, he talks about eyes and lips and different
things. This is a great book. Actually, this is at my
studio all the time. It’s over in our pile of magazines that we keep for image
inspiration.
Hairstyle
The hairstyle tells us the image is not modern; it’s from another era. For
instance with the forties and fifties look, we’ve got her hair up and twirled
back. There are a number of different hairstyles that speak to that era.
I don't know if you guys have seen Scarlett. She has black hair and it’s
short, and that’s the way she wears it every day. But that also has a retro
look to it. It’s central when you’re looking at models to look at their
hairstyle. In some cases, you can change their hair. For instance, if she has
longer hair, so you can do her hair another way. With Scarlett, you’re not
really going to change her hair unless you have her wear a wig. Wigs are
another possibility.
Hair color in the retro era, generally, I think when you’re trying to go
back retro, brunettes and redheads have a little better easier time of it.
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When a model goes blonde, it works, sometimes she almost has to go
Marilyn Monroe, right? But it can be done.
Look, a lot of my examples are blonde. Bella is going to be a blonde. So
it’s not like you have to tell them, “I’m sorry, you need to cover your hair
before you come in here.”
Makeup style
There are different styles of makeup for different eras. And with pinup,
we’re not being realistic. You’re not getting realistic makeup; the lips are
just way redder than they would be normally. Eyes and eyelashes have a
whole different look. For eyebrows, there are very specific styles of
eyebrows that you see. That’s another way to get ready for pinup. Start
looking at pictures that are retro.
When you read through this, you start getting the different elements of
makeup, and lips and eyes are the big ones. That’s not a problem though
because makeup artists love eyes. They love to do eyes and lips; all the
things that are important to the overall makeup are the things makeup
artists really enjoy doing.
Speaking of makeup artists, not every makeup artist can do pinup. So
when you’re looking at their portfolios, look for people who have pinup in
their portfolios to start with. It can be helpful to them to have an example
image that you have found. This is kind of true for all photography.
Anytime you have a very specific makeup idea, it is good to have an image
you can show the makeup artist and say, “Here, this is what I want.” Or,
“Yeah, kind of like that.” Or “This is where we’re going, can you do....”
A lot of people when they do pinup, they are trying to reproduce a
particular pinup image. I’m not being that specific. But I know guys that
try to match the clothing, the stockings, the shoes. If the model was
wearing hats they want that exact same hats. If the model was using a
suitcase, it has to be the right suitcase, because they’re trying to duplicate
some image from then. And so in that case, yeah, you have to have the
right props. If you have an example image, you’ve got a starting point. And
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then you can come in with the makeup artist and say, “Here, this is exactly
what I want.” Having said all that, if you have an experienced makeup
artist, they can generally figure it out and you don’t have to give them a
whole lot of instruction. I didn’t give Suzie a lot of instruction. I said, “We’re
going classic pinup. We’re going to do this with Bella because she has longer
hair, and we’re going to do this with Scarlett because she has shorter hair.
But I’m leaving it mostly up to you, and just make it look pinup-y.” When
they are experienced makeup artists and have done pinup before, as you
can see from their portfolio, you can trust them to know what you are
going for..
And you may not want to do pinup the first time you ever use a makeup
artist. I mean, I like to use makeup artists. I use them over and over if I
find a good one. And I use good ones who will show up; that’s always good
too. But showing up is amazingly enough a problem with a lot of people,
models and makeup artists both. You also don’t know if a makeup artist is
really able to do the look you want until you’ve seen them do something.
Makeup Artists
If I haven’t shot with a makeup artist before and I’ve got a model coming
and the makeup artist, I’ll tell the model-- well, I’ll tell the models generally,
“Bring your own makeup.” I have a makeup artist and I intend for her to
use it. But A, she may not show up, that can happen.
And B, most makeup artists can cover everything, but sometimes you
have specific needs that a model’s makeup handles. You know, maybe you
have a foundation that you’re not allergic to and you’re allergic to
everything else or something like that. So I’ll tell them to bring their
makeup, and that way if they need to go back to it, they can. But in general,
makeup artists handle all of that. All the good ones I’ve worked with handle
everything.
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Costume
Iconic
The next thing is costume. Costume is very much iconic, not realistic.
The costume makes the look. I
mean, this is a French maid
outfit, okay? Do you remember
French maids? Did they dress
like that? My understanding is
that French maids had an outfit
probably similar to this, but
bigger. So the costume will often
be the same, but significantly
smaller or briefer. This is true
of the nurse; you know, we were
talking nurse a minute ago,
right? It’s the costume that
says nurse. So the costume is
what gets iconic.
It very much happens with
uniforms. You know, if you take
a uniform, a uniform tells you
something. So a uniform that a nurse wears says nurse; the uniform that a
maid wears, a maid; a military uniform is a military person.
And then there are non-uniforms that are uniforms. Like Mrs. Cleaver’s
dress says that era, you know; those were the kind of dresses that were
popular and fancy at the time. I actually have written down on my shot list
a factory worker. That was the blue denim shirt and the red bandana thing.
Actually, one thing, I intended actually to have … If you have ever seen
the music video for “Candyman” by Christina Aguilera, it’s a whole retro
pinup music video. And she goes through a lot of pinup moves. It’s a music
video though, so it’s going really fast.
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I actually have it on my phone. But you see a lot of iconic imagery in her
video. You see the factory worker; you see her in a military outfit. You see
her in a fifties dance thing. Now, they’re all iconic.
Sexy
You take the uniform and then you sex it up. You make it smaller; you
make it see-through. No maid would wear those shoes to be a maid all day
long. If she did, she would be dead by the end of the day.
But you aren’t looking for reality, you are looking for iconic. That means
you sex it up.
Era
Costume tells you the era. It says fifties, it says twenties, it says forties,
whatever era it is.
And then if we want to talk about lingerie… For most guys, women’s
lingerie is just lingerie. But there actually are different styles that reflect
eras. Like with bras, the shape of the cup tells you what era it’s from. So
even with lingerie, you need to think era.
If you’re trying to maintain era, you need to pay attention to it.
Now, everything I tell you is a rule that’s made to be bent or broken,
okay? Matter of fact, when we get to lighting, I’m going to tell you a whole
bunch of stuff and then our first set up, I’m going to break all those rules.
So you need to know what you want. This is true in general in my opinion
when you’re doing photography. Unless you’re working for a client, it’s
your idea that’s carrying the shoot at the end. And so you know what that
idea wants to be.
If you want to shoot a pinup image and you want to do pinup makeup,
and then you want to put her in nineties’ lingerie that’s tiny, you know, in a
g-string, which you just wouldn’t see back in the forties and fifties, you can
do that, because you know that you’re breaking that rule. If you want to
sex it up more and you want to make it that way, then you can change what
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the image is. So you can go ahead and bend those rules. And the image will
still be beautiful. When people look at it, I think they’ll still get your icon.
Even if you didn’t hit the era exactly right in every detail. And we’ll talk a
little bit more about that.
One thing I wanted to say when I was talking about sexy is a lot of times
you can end up with pinup stuff that has fetish overtones, and you need to
decide how much you want those overtones in there. For example, corsets
are natural for some eras. And then corsets can be pushed further and now
they’re fetish. And you need to decide how far you want to go into fetish.
There’s one pinup guy who took a different approach in every one of his
pinup images. I should probably find him on the net and read up on why he
did this. But in every one of his pinup images, the model’s panties are
falling down. It’s weird. She’ll be wearing a dress and she’ll have panties
around her ankles. I don't know exactly why he did that, but he did it in
every image. That’s something you see when people are emulating pinup.
They’ll do the same thing as is in one photograph, but they’ll take it to
extremes and do it out of context. And you have to decide if you want to do
that and what that means to you and to your image.
Nude
I want to talk a little about doing nude pinup. The fact that there is such
a thing as nude pinup very much says that makeup and hair sell the image.
If you search, there’s a guy, I think his name’s Robert Alvarado (Model
Mayhem #15033). He’s out of California. He does incredible pinup stuff.
And most of it’s nude.
You can still do pinup without the costume, but if you do, then you have
to sell it with either the set, with the props, or with the hair and makeup.
But you have to have the hair and makeup. These are essential regardless
of what else you do. The set and the props are the other thing that’s going
to sell it as retro, sell it as pinup, because she’s not wearing a costume.
In general, the models are wearing shoes. Shoes are part of a costume
that can very much tell an era, can very much sell an image, very much
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reflect pinup. There are some shoes you look at and you go, “Those are
pinup shoes.”
Guys, again, you may have to work at understanding women’s shoes.
But it’s a worthy endeavor.
There are two kinds of nude images. There are full nude images, and
implied nude images.
Implied Nude Pinup
The white image of Erica I showed you on page four, where she’s
wrapped in a sheet, is implied nude. Implied nude means that the private
bits are covered. And generally the model is wrapped in something. That
wrapping is something you can use to actually be more pinup. For example,
if you wrapped her in an American flag, then you’ve got that fifties
patriotic thing, and plus you can have the implied nudity thing too. I
wrapped her in a sheet.
When you do implied, you need to think about what it is that you want to
show and don’t want to show, and talk to the model about that. We were
very specific. I really wanted that curve that came down the side of her
body. I considered it sexier, to show like her flank that you don’t normally
see, than to just have her holding her hands over her breasts. So you need
to think about what feeling you want to have when you’re doing implied.
Actually, I brought a towel to wrap my monitor up so I could carry it to
the workshop. And I thought, you know, you could use a towel as a pinup
thing. So in our game, there’s a towel sitting over there. And there’s
another thing, you could wrap the model in.
A towel says something, right?
She’s wrapped in a towel, that means she just got out of the shower,
right? Something like that.
That says something and then you may want to reflect that in hair. You
know, you might want her hair to be wet, or you might not want to. We’re
not going to really have that opportunity here in the workshop, but if you
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were creating an image that she just got out of the shower and she’s
wrapped in a towel, then you could add wet hair. Just make sure these are
your last pictures, because once her hair gets wet, fixing it again will take
quite a long time.
Full Nude Pinup
There needs to be at least one detail in a nude image that pushes it into
pinup. If you’ve got a girl standing on a white background naked, that
doesn’t say pinup. It just says naked.
The hair and makeup; a prop she is holding; the set that she’s in; or the
shoes can push it into pinup.
I really don’t think the shoes will carry it all by themselves if she’s
wearing modern makeup and hair. So she’s wearing shoes with polka dots
and bows?! That alone is really not going to sell it as pinup.
So if you’re going to do nude pinup, you have to add at least one element
that pushes it into pinup.
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Props
Okay, now we’re going to talk about the very small but important
details, props.
This image is of Scarlett. I shot this
for the Goth swimsuit calendar I did a
year or two ago. (We didn’t use this one;
we used the bikini in witches kettle
you’ll see later in the book. I’m also
going to talk a little about how Goth is
related to pinup way at the end.)
You’ve got her in a swimsuit. Which
the reason we did the calendar is
because a swimsuit is so counter-Goth,
it’s not even funny. I mean, most Goth
models you call them and say, “You got
a swimsuit for the shoot?” They’re like,
“I don’t even own a swimsuit, okay? I
don’t go out in the sun. I don’t own a
swimsuit.” So it’s counter Goth, and
that is the point.
So you have some props. In this case, Scarlett brought her skull; that
sells this as Goth and and not just swimsuit.
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Sometimes props are very small.
The model can bring something they hold in their hand and be
interacting with it. Props can be
something that’s in the foreground or
The “Pick A Prop” Or
“Model Improv” Game
the background of an image.
Last year when we did the pinup
One of the shooting
exercises we did at the
workshop I called “pick a
prop.” Or it could have been
“model improv,” depending on
your point of view.
workshop, we had a whole beach
setup. Scarlett was lying out on the
beach chair and we had these martini
glasses as props. She held them for
some images. But we also took the
martini glass and we put it on the
We put the models on
white, with simple flat
lighting.
floor away from her, then we got
down on the floor and shot her with
the martini glass in the foreground
and out of focus.
We had a number of pinup
props. Each participant was
able to pick a prop, and give it
to the model.
That was iconic. The whole sitting
on the beach or wherever she was,
with a martini glass. This was more
of a tiki bar, Astroturf and bamboo
Then we could see what the
model came up to do with it.
Then the photographer gave
them suggestions for what to
try.
set.
So a prop can be in the
foreground, such as when the model
is holding it, or the background.
This would be fun for a
group shoot, or one on one
with a model. If you had time,
you could also maybe work in
costume changes.
Sometimes the prop is the icon.
Say you wanted to do pinup about
music, or pinup about film. I’ve seen
both of these, which is why they jump
to mind.
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So you want to do music… You can take a bunch of records-- this is an
image you see all the time. You take a whole bunch of records. You have to
go find them at half-priced books or something, because you can’t go buy
records. You go buy a bunch of 45s and you lay them all out, and then you
put the model on top of them. Well now the pinup image is all built on the
prop. The prop is records, so now that iconic concept you’re trying to get
across is music.
I’ve seen it with film, where you take actual strips of film and you wrap
the model in them; or you have the film running in and out of the frame.
I’ve seen images before where they must have had people standing on
either side of the camera holding strips of film. And then she’s holding
them, and it is shot so you have like these strips of film coming into the
model. It looks cool, giving you a unique visual element.
You can also have large props.
I mentioned airplanes before. If you want to shoot a fifties pinup bomber
thing and you can get a bomber, that would be great. Or you can place her
in front of a bomber using Photoshop in post-production.
Another example of a big prop is classic cars. As a matter of fact, if you
go to a classic car show, you’ll find there are models there. And we’ll talk a
little bit more about finding models, but that’s one place you can go. These
models are pinned-up to go-- you know, their outfits, their hair, their
makeup are all done to match the car. And so if the car is from the fifties or
the forties or whatever, then they match it. That’s a great way to find a
pinup model with a specific style.
Another big prop would be a boat. If you wanted to do sailor stuff you
would need a boat. When I say sailor, I don’t necessarily mean Navy sailor,
although that would work too. I’ve seen that. But yacht sailor, with the
sailor hat and that thing. If you had a boat, you could actually shoot on the
boat. The boat becomes both the set and a prop, right? So you can have
very large props.
Ron Davis!
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This prop could go under large or small, and that is animals. You could
use an animal. I almost asked Scarlett to bring her dog, because Scarlett
has a little tiny little black and white dog named Belladonna.
And that could be a prop. You could easily do something with a dog. You
could do it with a larger animal. I’ll leave that to you guys to figure out how
that would work. You know, if you happen to have a lion or a tiger that you
could use for a shoot. I have a model who wants to shoot with a seventeenfoot Burmese python. To do pinup with a python is a challenge. So
anyway, animals are another prop possibility. Just make sure that your
model is agreeable to whatever animal you plan to use.
Sets
Simple
Sets are another detail. A set is where the picture is taking place. They
can be simple or complex.
One of the things about pinup is you often do pinup on a blank
background. When I did the French maid image, it was just red seamless.
And you can do it on a simple black background, and everything sells on its
own.
When we did the “Pick A Prop” game, we just used the studio’s white
cove and even lighting on both sides.
The props and the makeup and the hair and the outfit are what sells it
as pinup. So you can be really simple.
Build It
For more complex sets, you can build it. At the pinup workshop in 2006,
I built a beach set. It was Astroturf with bamboo stuff behind it against the
rough wall of our studio. Scarlett was the model, and she had a lawn chair
and beach balls.
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That one I built was a fairly simple one, the way it was. We had the tiki
torches too, giving it a tiki bar kind of feel.
So you can build something in the studio.
On Location
The other way to do complex sets, would be to go on location. There are
a lot of places that were designed to show an era that you’re looking at, you
know, like a fifties diner.
You could go to the Renaissance Festival if you wanted to do a
“Renaissancey” image. I’m not
sure if the image at the right
qualifies as pinup, but it is an
example of shooting on location.
Model Kimberly Boenker (Model
Mayhem #294684 ) is an
accomplished swordswoman and
has her own custom armor. We
could have shot in the studio, but
this really requires we shoot on
location. In this case in the woods
near my home.
There are a lot of people who
have retro rooms. I went to Vegas
once and I met a model to shoot with. She wanted me to shoot at this
person’s house. We went to this house and it was all done in the fifties. So if
you have a retro room there already, you don’t have to build anything, you
just have to use it.
There are places that lend themselves to concepts, like garages. You
know, car garage, you could do a whole thing. If you pinup her in a car
garage and then had a car and have her underneath the car, or whatever
your concept is. That’s using the place as concept.
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Military stuff, you could do that thing as well. Airports, golf courses.
You can also do sports. So if you were going to golf as your concept,
okay, you’re going to put her in an outfit that nobody would ever golf in, but
she’s going to look “golf-y” and she’s going to have an old putter or
whatever. You could put her on a golf course. That would be your location.
So the set often determines whether or not the shot works.
This was Miss
December for the
Goth swimsuit
calendar. This was
actually somebody’s
house. We went in
and decorated the
Christmas tree and
got a bunch of
packages, which
were in the studio
for forever. We used
those a lot of times.
And then we put in
different props as
details. So we were
doing Goth, so there
are skulls and what
have you. Okay, so
now that we’ve got
the details, let’s talk
a little about
models.
Ron Davis!
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Models
There are, in my opinion when it comes to doing pinup, two kinds of
models you want to use.
Pinup Models
Kind number one is a pinup model. These are models who specialize in
pinup, who live it. Matter of fact, you can find women who live pinup, live
this retro lifestyle, and use them as models.
A big giveaway for this is hair. If you run into a woman and she has a
hairstyle from the fifties, then you’ve got someone who’s living it to some
extent at least.
Clothing would be a close second. Pinup models have a tendency to
dress in that style. And you can even find talented amateurs. They’re not
models, but they’re people who just really identify with a bygone era, and
would be able to pull off pinup, even without any experience as a model.
A model I tried to get for our workshop, but she was way too expensive
and she lives in Las Vegas, is Dayna DeLux (Model Mayhem #2871). “Ask
Men” just voted her one of the top ten modern pinups.
She just lives pinup. I’ve seen pictures on her MySpace from when she’s
just out with her friends. First she has the most gorgeous skin of any
human being I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Second, her hairstyle and her
makeup style are pinup.
You see a similar thing with Scarlett as well. She’s actually a very
talented, very flexible model, but her hairstyle is retro. She’s also Goth, so
her makeup style works for pinup. Goth makeup and pinup makeup are
often very similar.
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Lastly, the other good thing about a pinup model is, pinup models have
wardrobe. You need wardrobe, and it helps if the model has it. For instance,
this is Scarlett.
We shot this a while back. As I said those boxes were in the studio
forever. Well, we just pulled them out one day because she had this wig that
had this red and black in it. And here we go talking about color again,
right? She has red and black in her wig, she’s got a black bra on and a black
hat. She’s got this corset here that’s in red. It all looks like one piece. This
is a necklace that I think is still in our room if my wife didn’t steal it. I know
she’s got another one of my Goth necklaces she was wearing just the other
day. But the one in the picture should be in the prop room.
As we were getting ready for the shoot, we pulled out the necklace and
the present and I just gave them to her, and she just tries different things
with them. And this hat’s this little-- once again, it’s an era hat. And it’s
kind of-- what do you call those people who take your bags at a hotel?
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Bellman. It’s this little bellman hat, kind of. You see the little round hat.
Yeah, pillbox, that’s the word I was actually looking for, this pillbox hat.
And so I had this concept of her delivering these packages, you know.
And I hand it to her, and she understood the idea, and we got this picture.
Professional Model
The second kind of model that you would want for pinup is a
professional model or a very flexible model, a very experienced model who
can just pull it off. When you get a good model, she can do a lot of different
stuff.
And both of our models are this way, especially Bella. Bella does a lot of
different kinds of modeling. She does all kinds of different modeling, and
she can pull all kinds of different looks as a result. And so she’s flexible
enough that when our other model backed out on us, I was like, well, I can
call Bella, and Bella can pull it off, even though Bella’s not necessarily a
pinup model.
Actresses
Another good relevant idea when you’re looking for flexible models for
pinup is to look at actresses. I’ve had a couple of models who came in, I
knew them as models and they come in and it turns out they’re actresses.
Actresses are a lot of fun to work with, because if you want to get
emotion or expression out of them, they just do it.
I remember shooting one model/actress. And she’s standing there, and
she’s wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. And she’s standing there and I’m
taking her picture. And I said, “Look tough.” And she just does this-- I don’t
even know what she did. She just did something. And it’s like whoa. It was
really kind of freaky. But I said, “That’s awesome; you know, that’s exactly
what I wanted.” She was instantly able to portray tough.
So model/actresses can pull off pinup, because there is more acting to it
than there is fashion. You know, with fashion, the model is a big clothes
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hanger, so they don’t necessarily have to have a lot of emotion. Matter of
fact, in high fashion, they drain emotion out of the pictures. But pinup is
exactly the opposite; you need emotion. I’m going to talk about that in a
second, but know actresses are very good for that.
Wannabe Warning
But a warning, I call it my wannabe warning. If you’re searching for
models on a modeling site like Model Mayhem, all the models say they love
pinup and they all want to do pinup.
That are true. They love it, and they want to do it.
But....
They don’t have wardrobe.
They don’t do their makeup retro.
They probably have never done that kind of expression and pose.
So you get into trouble trying to shoot pinup with a model that’s a
wannabe.
Scarlett was saying when I was talking to her earlier, she said how many
times she’s seen pinup and they have “dead eyes”. That’s a good term for it.
You see it with new, inexperienced models; you don’t see the expression in
their eyes.
Just because a model says she wants to do pinup doesn’t necessarily
mean she can. Look at their portfolios, which is true with most things. The
two big things you need from a model are the ability to pose and the ability
to pull off expressions, pinup expressions.
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This is Miss October, which
is Scarlett.
There are all kinds of great
instances in here about details
and set and background
lighting and what have you.
But the thing I want to point
out is she pulls off this cheesy
surprised, “Oh, you caught
me.”
“Oh, you caught me” is
pinup. Most pinup stuff is “Oh,
you caught me” doing
something.
And she pulls this off with
the whole, how she holds her
hand, her leg and everything.
She’s not just dropping the
bikini bottom into the witch’s
brew; she’s holding it in a
particular way.
Model Skills
Posing
This whole pose thing-- the thing about pinup is the pose is over the top.
It’s not realistic, it’s cheesy, but it’s also “dance-y.” And you can push it too
far, you can make it look stupid, and you don’t want to do that.
Posing is one of the big skills you need from a model.
She needs to be able to look sexy, and pose sexily without being
pornographic. There’s a difference and she needs to understand it.
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Expression
The pinup expression is again very much over the top, but it’s also very
much a particular emotion.
“Oh, you caught me,” is a main expression.
“Oops, I accidentally did something.”
“Oh no, this is happening.”
Those are expressions that they need to be able to do big without doing
them too big and without dead eyes. I’m going to use that term over and
over again now, dead eyes.
Okay, now let’s get on to the photography part of this.
Lighting
Simple
In general, pinup photography lighting is pretty simple. It’s often flat
which means you’ve got the same amount of light on the left and the right.
The image is being carried by what’s in it and the feeling is being carried by
the model and the makeup and the situation. So you’re not using lighting to
create an image, to create a mood in general.
Most of the settings we’re going to do here in the workshop are going to
be very simple flat lighting, because you’re not really giving any feeling to
setting by the lighting.
Era Lighting
There’s also era lighting, meaning that the lighting itself suggests a
timeframe. The classic example of this is Paramount lighting. It gets its
name because it was used very much in the black and white movie era and
Paramount Pictures used it a lot. It’s a very specific kind of lighting. It
almost looks like a spotlight’s on the model.
Ron Davis!
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I taught it last year, but I don't think it’s normally as relevant for pinup
unless you’re trying to go for that era. And it’s generally used for black and
white. You don’t really see a whole lot of it used with color.
Because that picture that I used at the beginning for preproduction, we
use again at the post-production. And that had some very specific era
lighting.
I’ll just go and talk about it right
now. So that one is Nosferatu. Does
anybody know who Nosferatu is?
Good. We wanted the photograph to
look like a twenties’ black and white
movie. So it needed to be very high
in contrast, and it needed to have a
very specific kind of lighting. So it
has a very specific kind of lighting
because we wanted it to harken
back to that era and look.
So sometimes you pick your
lighting because you want to light
from that era. And then another
situation where you may use
lighting is the color of the
background. This is true when you’re doing a simple thing on white, like we
used here.
Bella and I did a series of images that were eras. One was the sixties,
and she’s in tie-dye. One was the fifties, and she had her hair in curlers, she
had a broom, and she was sweeping the floor.
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Then we had this other one, where she had a flight attendant’s outfit,
flight attendant’s costume, which she’s going to bring tomorrow and you
guys will get a chance to shoot that. She was lying on this big suitcase.
Background Color
For the sixties one, where she’s wearing the tie-dye, I shot Bella on
white. Then I gelled in two different lights, one red and one green, to match
her tie-dye. That was how I lit the background while I lit her from in front
with white. She’s in her normal colors, but the background color comes
from the gels on the light.
Another time you might use gels on a light for your background is if
you’re on location, say you’re in a retro room. You want the model to stand
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out from the background. You don’t want the eye to go to the background
first or to the background. So what you might do is gel the whole room a
color.
There’s a picture of Angela Ryan sitting on a couch in this retro room.
Her hair is really bright red and she’s wearing these yellow shoes and she’s
got her back turned to you. Then there’s a room behind her, but that whole
room is gelled red, sort of a pinkish red. It’s not quite the red of her hair.
Image can be seen here. Shot by Octavio Winkytiki.
That does a number of things. First of all, your mind cancels out the
background, because that’s red and it sees her, because she’s white.
Another thing it did was it adds all this red to pull the yellow of her
shoes out. There were a few other yellows too, all in a diagonal line with her
shoes. I think she had a bow in her hair and those shoes on. Other than
that, she was naked. So the pinkish red brings out the yellow and makes
her skin more startlingly white.
So that’s one thing to think about when you’re thinking about color. Not
just what color does a thing need to be, but what color do other things need
to be to make those colors pop out. So you’re automatically drawn to the
model.
Now if you meditated on the image for a while, you start seeing the
background, and you get the “retroness” of it as well. So you can use
lighting for background as well.
Post-production
Simple
All right. I prefer simple post-production. I’d love to just get it in the
camera and not have to do anything post-production. That’s my
methodology for all my photography, as much as possible. So the only thing
you do in simple post-pro, you get it all in the camera, you may go remove
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some blemishes, you may change your contrast a little to make the colors
pop. But basically that’s all that you have to do if you’re shooting pinup and
you did it right in the camera.
Drawing
Some people, like I mentioned earlier, they like to make their pinup
photography look like drawings. And to do that, you really have to do a lot
of post-production.
I’m not going to teach you guys how to do that. But you’re doing a lot of
smoothing out and taking out details to make it look like it’s drawn. And
that’s a whole art in and of itself.
End where you began
Lastly, I wanted to say that you need to end where you planned on
beginning. You know, if you’re doing the Monster thing at the end, you need
to have the water that’s going to fall into the cup.
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Here are the Nosferatu images before and after post-productions/
Photoshop.
After
Before
If you look at like the original Nosferatu photography, it is extremely
black and white. I mean, there’s hardly any grey in it at all.
I did that to this image.
I contrasted it way down, so your levels go where all your image is right
here. Or actually, it’s out here, and nothing in the middle. But she looked
horrible, right? Because she’s a beautiful girl. He needs that contrast. So I
ended up making a layer mask and painting the contrast out of her. But I
needed that look with him. I needed him to be that harsh.
Also, in one version of this image, I actually had a circle around it, it was
vignetted, because a lot of times, in those old black and white movies, you
would get that round shape from the lens.
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You need to know what it is you’re trying to get at the end, and that
effects your post-production.
I shot the Nosferatu black and white. I didn’t convert it at the end. I
prefer to do that most of the time. You know, there are times when you
shoot an image, you look at it later and think it would look good black and
white and you change it. But when I know from the beginning I’m shooting
black and white, I’ll shoot it black and white.
So that’s post-production. Keep it simple, or if you want to make it really
complex, go take a Photoshop class.
Or check out this video, The Pinup Effect
Conclusion
Becoming an expert at pinup means you will know more about women's
hair, makeup, and clothing from past eras than most people who lived
through those times. !It means you need to know lighting and pay
attention to color. !It means you need to understand posing and icons. !
Mostly, though, it means you need to understand the general concept of
pinup and become creative in your interpretation of it.
Hopefully I’ve at least put you on the track to gaining this knowledge,
because the reward is some of the coolest and best images you can produce.
Pinup is incredibly rewarding for a number of reasons. It lets you explore
these like patriotism, gender roles, what is sexy and what is sleezy. It
attracts the most interesting and talented of models and is in very high
demand.
If you have any questions on this journey please feel free to contact me
via GlamourApprentice.com. I blog there regularly, uploading new images
and the story behind them daily. If you haven’t already you can get a free
mini-course on model photography.
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!
Free Glamour Apprentice Model
Photography Mini-Course
1.
10 Common Mistakes of New Model Photographers
2.
6 Components of a Quality Portfolio
3.
Shooting Girlfriends and Wives
4.
TFP, TFCD, TFwhatever Explained
5.
Creating Value In The Eyes Of A Model
6.
An Easy Way To Build Rapport With A Model
7.
Shooting In A Doorway Video
8.
Deliver the WOW Factor
9.
The Naked Truth About Nude Models
10. The Quickest Way To A Quality Portfolio, Pt 1
11. The Quickest Way To A Quality Portfolio, Pt 2
Sign up Now
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Credits
All photography featured in this book was shot by Ron Davis of Glamour
Apprentice and Reactuate Photography. Copyright is reserved and no
image can be used with permission of Ron Davis.
Models Pictured
Scarlett St. Vitus (Model Mayhem #205569 )
Bella Reign (Model Mayhem #364603)
Erica Kelly (Model Mayhem #309577)
Stacey Ekert (Model Mayhem #839534)
Kimberly Boenker (Model Mayhem #294684 )
Ivory (Model Mayhem #68884 ) Ms. December
Marc Moorash (As Nosferatu, Seraphemera Books)
Tara Ward (Model Mayhem # 7567)
Model Mentioned
Dayna Delux (Model Mayhem #2871) DaynaDelux.com
Angela Ryan (Model Mayhem #368)
Photographers Mentioned
Robert R Sanders His Website
Robert Alvarado (Model Mayhem #15033)
Octavio Winkytiki. Winky Tiki website
Ron Davis!
!

Practical Pinup - Photographer and Model

Transcription

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