Valentines Pin Ups

What a month it has been! 
I set about coming up with an alternative sexy shoot theme to pass onto the Pearman Photography  clients for the romantic month of February.  I personally HATE boudoir photography.  For me it evokes notions of oiled up women doing tacky poses, in bad lighting, throughout the 80's & 90’s. 

  










As I'm always aiming to be innovative, I simply had to evolve the theme.
The age of 50’s Rockabilly chic is pretty established as an aspect of fashion.  The big hair, the winged eyes, and trashy vibe entered into a mainstream in fashion with the rise and fall of the legend Miss Winehouse.   Although I love this style, I didn’t want to be too safe and obvious.

I wanted to give my February Valentines shoot’s something a bit different.  Over Christmas I watched the entire Band of Brothers box-set.  I loved the accuracy of the interpretation of the 1940’s and this began to formulate my idea further.  The Pin up was an art form that boomed in WW2.  Soldiers painted beautiful women on the sides of their planes for luck, and the art-form was an indulgence for soldiers missing their women at home.

Recently with Burlesque trends, this vibe has come back into the forefront of styling.  What I love the most about this style is that the whole thing was based around women who were not at all real.  They were illustrated.  Their proportions defy science, similar to all of our magazines on the shelves today.  Instead of using a pencil to draw out our ideal woman, we use Photoshop!

So by taking inspiration from the 1940’s illustrated women, I wanted to offer today’s Newcastle ladies the chance to come and have a photo-shoot, where they had the opportunity to style it in line with who they are.  We’d then work together to add the more fantastical appeal by playing around with technology of air-brushing and retouching.  Before I started shouting about this for Valentines day, I had to test it.  So I invited some bloggers along.   



Amy Lord from Ten Penny Dreams has a great blog, she is an aspiring writer, and uses her blog to document her route to becoming a full time writer.  She attended the Blogcademy down in London recently hosted by famous bloggers Kat Williams, Gala Darling and Shauna Haider.  After chatting with Amy I was impressed that she is very disciplined in her blogging.  At 4 times a week, she puts my monthly posts to shame.  Amy wanted to do something more along the lines of housewife chic with her shoot.  Here is a small selection of what we created together.

You can subscribe to Amy’s blog, and follow her on twitter @tenpennydreams and @AmyWritesStuff 
Next up was Sandra Tang.  I met Sandra at The House of Seduction Fashion show event I covered this month at Newcastle’s Fat Buddha.  You can see their blog about my work on this night here.  Not only does Sandra live and breathe fashion, she organizes Newcastle’s Fashion Week.  Sandra naturally brought a much more fashionista take to the brief of 1940’s pin up.  Her first “piece” to wear was a fabulous suit that a friend of her’s had kept aside especially for her at a house clearance.  These are obviously the people you need to know to get your hands on the authentic items! Sandra blogs about all things fashion every couple of days.  Here is her blog about coming to the studio.

You can subscribe to Sandra’s blog and follow her on twitter @sandiebeach. With these two already very different takes on my brief, I knew that this could evolve into something more along the lines of a long-term project.  So I have decided to keep it in the mix as something available from the studio on an ongoing basis.  In the next few weeks I’ll be welcoming a pin up cyclist to the studio, a pin up medium and even a pin up with a pet puppy!  I can’t wait. There is a long-term offer now featured to the people of Newcastle through NE1 offers (thanks to Sandra).  You can get this by going here.