Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I want to remind people of a different kind of glamour, a different look, and breaking the rules of fashion. I wanna break the rules. —Dita von Teese
Every Monday one of Dita Von Teese (@ditavonteese) fan sites publishes glamour portraits a La Teese wearing corsets, so I thought I would give Corset Monday a try here. This is episode number three. Trivia: Having been born on September 28, Dita is a Libra. Her real name is Heather Renée Sweet, which seems like a terrific name to go through life with.
How I Made this Portrait: Zoe is a six foot tall blonde—I seem to have an affinity for photographing tall models—who is an ecdysiast. (I’ll let you look that up.) She wanted some portrait of herself for promotional purposes for her website as well as something she could send the various venues where she performed.
I photographed Zoe three times and this image was made during our second shoot together. As was my habit, I asked her to bring along a corset. When I set up the first shot of her in the dining room of my former home, I asked that she turn the corset around and put it on backwards. She went along with my suggestion even though she thought it was a dumb idea and when I showed her the first image on the LCD screen she just shrugged. I loved the photographs. She was a good sport about it and I finished this portion of our shoot with her still wearing the corset backwards. The camera used was a Canon D60—not a 60D—with my beloved EF 135mm f/2.8 SF lens (at zero soft focus) that so far in this series seems to be my go-to lens for these corset portraits. The fully available light exposure was 1/100 sec at f/6.3 and ISO 400.
The third and last time I photographed Zoe she had dyed her hair and was a brunette and while I photographed her in a corset with her new hair color, I only liked a few of the images that we created during that final session. If anyone wants to see one of Zoe as a brunette wearing a green corset, let me know and maybe I’ll show it during an upcoming #CorsetMonday.
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My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography with new copies available from Amazon for $33.42, as I write this. Used copies start at the hard-to-beat price price starting around nine bucks with the Kindle version available at $19.99 for those who prefer a digital format.