People say my head is just full of fluff…
I say it just is full of sweet stuff!
sweet idea for some creative fun
Sometimes you just want to get creative, and have some fun without the pressure of creating under other people’s expectations. I knew I wanted to try a Cotton Candy Sweets shoot, and I wanted to practice with different lighting set-ups with my softboxes, speedlights, and gels.
So I said–let’s see if I can fill in and push my make-up, styling, and modeling skills!
Forming an Editorial Self-portrait around cotton candy
The main key in creating a successful editorial revolves around establishing a clear feeling –a story. This means transforming the mood of the image by stylizing the hair, make-up, clothing, lighting, and styling any other areas in a way consistent with showing and telling that story. That means looking at the details of a shot, not just shooting what is available.
Editorial Styling of the hair
So I started with the core concept: cotton candy hair. I looked at a few ideas and samples from other inspiration photos, and then tackled the task. I knew I could create a cotton candy look with cotton fairly easily (I had done this on a much smaller scale in the past). The problem was how do I create it in a hairdo that looks realistic?
I decided creating a beehive structure was going to be the best route to go! Lots of hairspray, bobbypins, and backcombing later… I had a structure I could start wrapping the cotton around. I pinned the cotton chunks in place with bobbypins, understanding I could fill in some of the sparse areas in post, and photoshop out some of the bobbypins in post as well.
Choosing a Color Palette for this editorial Shoot
Color tones and palettes play a HUGE role into the mood of an image or piece of art. Soft pastels vs. hard black and white will naturally lend to different levels of contrast, heaviness, emotions, and atmospheres. I knew I wanted to convey a fun, bright carnival vibe but wanted to shy away from from red and being too clownish. So I chose to go with bright, happy colors (pink, blue, and yellow) and align along the primary colors with just a shift in the red to pink.
Make-up
Understanding the colors, I decided to take a spin on a little bit 80’s, bright color glam look. I incorporated pink and bright blues into the make-up, and tried to make it colorful without having it overpower the hair.
Clothing
Luckily, I had a fun, bright pink dress on hand that fit perfectly into this color scheme. I knew it would be a little more form fitting which would go perfect with that wild, slightly burlesque, and bright carnival mood.
Lighting
Because I wanted this to be bright and fun, I knew I would need a soft yet powerful light as the key light. This light was at about a 45 degree angle, aimed down towards my face. I knew this would give a slightly polished, beauty-esque vibe as well.
The background needed to be just as colorful and so I wanted to test changing the background color to a bright yellow, and have that warmth slightly wrap around the face. This was easily achieved with a simple white wall, and a speedlight with a yellow gel aimed at the wall behind me. The surrounding white walls in the room would bounce a little bit of the yellow back around my face which would create just a slight wrapping of the light.
Easy when you control everything–right?
I definitely didn’t anticipate self-portraiture to be so hard! It is hard when you can’t see exactly what is in frame, what body part is closest to the camera, or where light is hitting while you are modeling! It definitely helped me understand a little bit of what direction a model needs, and how to better work with other creative artists in creating a cohesive, editorial style shoot.
I thoroughly enjoyed this project and am excited to do more creative sessions (whether self-portrait or not)!
Below you can check out the images I chose to edit from this fun self-portrait session:
