Athena Marie

This is the result of a fabulous day shooting with the lovely Athena Marie. Now Athena is a very classy-looking woman with a slim, athletic and perfectly proportioned hourglass figure. She also has elegant posture, a smooth slightly tanned complexion and tiny little waist. This is all topped off with her big brown eyes and a smile that lights up the room.

Our six hour shoot whizzed-past in what seemed more like about twenty minutes. I have absolutely no idea where the time went. But we did manage to try lots of costumes, including an assortment of fitness-wear, classically-styled swimwear, vintage girdles, leotards and a very tightly-laced corset – all of which looked great on her. As a trained dancer she brought her pointe shoes enabling us to do a bit of point-work too.

Prime objective

We wanted to portray a fit, happy, healthy woman. I think we have achieved exactly what we set out to do. 🙂 In some shots, I feel as if the shoot released Athena’s “inner child“. I love the sense of fun she was able to evoke. Then there were a few “serious-looking” shots too, which came out far better than I expected. So I have included some of those too.

I’m also pleased we achieved a good variety of styles. The impromptu addition of LED lighting opened up some interesting editing options. And we have my wife to thank for that. Her ability to see things differently often proves invaluable, especially for creative projects.

High-key, low-key

The high-key wrap-around fashion lighting is great for catalogue style shots. It’s also successful and relatively foolproof set-up – a sort of “first-time every-time, all-the-time” configuration. But it can be a bit, well, boring.

Whereas the RGB+CCT continuous LED lighting gives one a lot more artistic licence. Especially for low-key lighting. But the images tend to be “grittier”. In fact, if you zoom in you can see the self-generated noise from the camera sensor. And because of the slower shutter speeds and larger apertures, the focus itends to be a bit softer. But the images tend to be more interesting. This means that some images can lend themselves to emulating various vintage photographic production techniques – from the pre-studio-flash days.

Depends whether you like artsy stuff or not, I guess? And assumes that one’s model doesn’t mind her photographer becoming a bit geeky about such things! lol 🙂 🙂

Attention to detail

Athena is a very thoughtful, considerate person and her pre-shoot communications are excellent. She arrived with immaculate makeup, including matching lips fingernails and toe nails. It was also clear from her poses that she had carefully studied the shoot-plan and had practised some of the poses we’d planned to perform It’s always good to work with someone who pays this much attention to detail. She worked hard throughout the shoot to get that perfect shot.

Lovely model, lovely person and I look forward to working with her again. In fact, his shoot given me shedloads of ideas for future sessions, assuming she wants to shoot again, of course. This includes some short single-set shoots we could do to dovetail with her fitness regime. I’d add that whilst I love the whole retro thing, I’m not averse to trying other ideas and looks, or even matching the old and the new into what a friend calls “quirky visual anachronisms”.