In the studio – Jess, Vogue

Yay, Jess is back! We had a break between lockdowns and I managed to get one shoot in the studio. We did our very best to be Covid safe, social distancing, masks and all the rest of it. A pain, but we were just so happy to be shooting again…even if it was for just one afternoon. We were joined by Emma for Hair and Makeup. So it was great to get the old team back together again.

We had decided on a 1990s Madonna Vogue inspired shoot. We spent a bit of time researching old video and photos to get our mood board. Emma was keen to create those stunning vintage finger waves in Jess now blonde hair. We went for three different looks, the Mirror look with a strapless corset.

This was such a challenging shoot, to get the reflection right, without the ceiling or myself in the shot. I only wanted the black seamless paper and Jess in the image. We spent a good hour setting these photos up.

We then packed up the mirror and changed to basic slacks and black vest and tried to emulate some Madonna poses from the Vogue video.

Next we pulled out the white seamless backdrop, and a new ottoman and Jess put on a jacket with the pants. We didn’t have the cone bra Madonna used, but kept it a little cheeky with a black bra and no shirt under the jacket.

I don’t know why, by this stage we were just playing and I pulled out a hat and then we kind of got into this Michael Jackson/Madonna mash up…which seemed to work really well.

It was really nice to keep everything quite simple. Plain unobtrusive backgrounds. Simple makeup, simple props and nice simple costume. It was almost more in the nature of a brand or contemporary portrait session. Of course, we had Madonna pumping on the stereo too!

Sadly, we went back into lockdown and I had to put everything back on hold again…but it felt SO good to be back in the studio.

~ Julz