Shooting for Hairtalk, one of my favorite companies! I have worked with them many times and they are wonderful people, talented and creative and fun! Plus the hair is always amazing! I usually leave shoots for Hairtalk with multiple colors, various lengths and ten times more hair than ever grew naturally out of my head, and all gorgeous and high quality.
Although I expected to leave the shoot with a full head of extensions, I was surprised to discover that this was not to be this time! The shoot was for a feature in Modern Salon, a major hair publication, and they wanted to do something really unconventional. So Vicki, the amazing artist with whom I mainly work for Hairtalk, had created a wig the same color as my hair and about the same length, but with several long extensions in the front. She hand painted beautiful Henna designs into these pieces, and placed the whole thing on my head before cutting it into an asymmetrical bob without ever touching my actual hair, which was great for me! The cut wouldn’t have worked for every day wear and the Henna would have been hard to get out so I was very relieved that it was a wig!
Vicki did my makeup as well, hand painting Henna inspired swirls on my right eyelid with black eyeliner. The other eye actually got no makeup at all because of the way the hair fell, and the whole thing looked rather funny until it all came together.
The final touch, they brought in Farah, a professional Henna artist, and she was able to create a stunning work of art on my hand that drew inspiration from the painting in the hair and really brought everything together. She used older Henna so that I would be able to remove it quicker as I knew I had another shoot coming up and the results were beautiful.
The first part of the shoot was video, showing Vicki placing the wig on my head and cutting it to fit my face. For that, I kept my expression neutral, as the attention should not be on the model at all during this time except as a human mannequin head so to speak.
The second part, the photoshoot, was a challenge. I always struggle with hair shoots as I usually move quite a bit while shooting, but that tends to mess up the hair so it is discouraged. This was even more extreme, as I needed to offer a variety of poses and looks but was very limited as the design in the hair only showed well from certain angles. I did small movements to create a genuine feeling without disturbing the perfectly style locks- slow tilts and turns of the head in a limited range, eye opening and closing, and eye contact with the camera and slightly off camera, hand moving across the face, especially over the chin and mouth. I added shifts of the shoulders to create different postures, and allowed the hair to shift to cover more and less of my face. As much as I wanted my face to show, I knew I needed to provide options that showed only the hair, as that was what the shoot was about and sometimes a company prefers it.
For me, motion keeps genuine feeling in my expression and lends confidence to my pose, so I made sure to move, even though the motions were only very slight. I wanted to portray regality, mystery, intensity and a hint of sensuality, and I kept my eyes narrowed, lips ever so slightly parted, facial muscles mostly relaxed, and thought about those words and what they meant, putting myself in a mood to project them through my eyes as much as possible, reaching out to the viewer of the final image and providing them with something interesting to see in the eye.
Shoot for: Hairtalk: http://hairtalkusa.com/
Published in Modern Salon: https://www.modernsalon.com/
Hair by Vicki: https://www.vickicasciola.com/
Hand Henna by Farah: https://www.farahsmehndi.com/
Photography by Vanessa: http://www.vanessaandjohnny.com/
Booking Agency MegaFlash Models: https://megaflashmodels.com/
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