Pin Up: a look at vintage american modeling

There's something about vintage americana. The 50s is the most famous and probably most defining decade of Americana. The 50s is seen as the time period of the American dream. Classic cars, baseball, apple pie, the birth of rock and roll, and the American pin up model.

The term pin up originated in 1941, but the style of art had been around for a number of years. Starting in the 20s pin up art began establishing itself to the modern form we know today.

The style of pin up focuses on the allure, innocence, playfulness of the model. Taking the ordinary every day looks and chores and making them more "interesting" in the eyes of guys.  Take the work of Art Frahm for example. A website dedicated to his work gives the tagline : The study of Celery on Loose Elastic.

As you'll find on the website many of Frahm's most famous images feature a woman with grocery bag(s) containing celery and to her amazement her underwear has dropped to her ankles with a suprised male onlooker. 

Another popular Pin up artist is Gil Elvgren. Again taking the ordinary and just giving that little extra nudge.

 
Showing that playfulness and making what would seems to be the playful task of looking at a globe to making it just a bit sexy.

The last pin up artist we'll look at is Alberto Vargas. Son of a photographer, he became one of the most famous pin up artists and his work, Like that of Elvgren, has helped define the classic poses of pin up art.

Pin up art has been featured in paintings, photos, and tattoos.

The past few months I've taken some time to research and do my own pin up work. I've had a lot of fun working with different models and I'm sure there will be more work to come. Here's a few samples of my work. They have very simple editing but I hope to learn techniques to create a painted effect to make them appear more authentic:

Models: Elizabeth, Katie, Kristen Liz & Lonna; Make up: enigma.machine.design, Painting Faces, Beauty by Olivia.

Check back soon for my post of summer beach wraps and fashion.

-Ben

Return of Fashionable Fruit

A while back you may remember a mini set I posted with the lovely Lonna who was wearing fruit as jewelry. While it was a wonderful set, it just wasnt complete. So about a month or so after that shoot we decided to add more to the project.

I needed something brighter, more fun. So for the first look we tried Yellow with Starfruit and Lemon

I really liked the look of  both but the lemon seemed to be more vesatile and fun.

We played around with some earrings made of lemon peel.

And at the suggestion of her boyfriend we even took a few shots of her eating the lemon. (she wasn't too fond of that one)

Overall I'm very happy with the look. The brightness of the yellow matched her top. And this helped give a more casual commercial look to the photo as opposed to the more high fashion style look we had with the blueberry and kiwi. For both the lemon and starfruit I kept the jewelry aspect very minimal using just the black satin ribbon as a choker/necklace. The simplicity and contrast works very well in my opinion. For the make up the subtle yellow helps accent the fruit but not take focus away. Yellow can be a very harsh color but I think this blends quite nicely.

The next look we moved on to something bold. Red is such a strong color and there were so many options. Unfortunately cherries were out of season so I went with my second choice (and probably my favorite fruit) Strawberries.

For the strawberry we went back to the artistic and fashion style like the first series. I love the pose that shows off the natural conture of the body. The idea of natural forms works very well in a series focusing on fruit. Like the yellow we kept the make up minimal but the rose color really pops quite well.

This second photo really shows the almost mask like effect with the eye make up and the subtle graduation of color. Also I particilarly like the grouping of strwberries in her hands.

After completing this set of photos I created a cologe of the four looks, one from each color.

I absolutely loved working on this series. It was a very fun creative process. Lonna was so great to work with and both Olivia and Nicole did great jobs on make up. 

My next series I'll be talking about is a vintage pin-up series I've been working on. Look for another post in a few days featuring that. Also Look for an upcoming post on Summer fashion: Beach Wraps.

Have a great day,

-Ben

Spring is here, new beginings.

Hope everyone has had an enjoyable winter. Things have been very busy for me with shoots and studio changes. I've started a few new projects in the past 3 months. Back in January I started expanding the beauty make up area of my portfolio and in February my studio changed managers and we've been remodeling the entire work and office space.

Expanding the amount of beauty and artistic make up in my portfolio has been so much fun. I've had the opportunity to work with 3 amazing make up artists and quite a few talented models. Here are a few samples:

Models: Jenna Claire, Renee Archbold, and Katie O.

Make Up by: Olivia J of Beauty by Olivia

Model: Carissa Lee

Make Up: Shoranda Iyez of Painting Faces

Model: Kristen W.

Make Up: Nicole Barry of enigma.machine.design

I absolutely love the creativity in each of these photos. Olivia, Shoranda and Nicole all have very different styles and their work is always spectacular. It has been a true pleasure to work with them and photograph their art.

One of my other new projects is summer beach wraps from local Rochester designer Peiris Clothing. It has been awesome opportunity to do some work for them and really puts me ahead of the game for my summer work. Samples and commentary on that work will come later this week.