Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“For me, lingerie isn’t about seduction, it’s about being a woman..”― Dita Von Teese
If you’re interested in glamour photography you might want to follow Dita Von Teese (@ditavonteese) on Instagram because of the inspiration that her images will provide you. On Mondays one of her IG fan sites publishes glamour portraits of La Teese wearing corsets, so I thought I’d give Corset Monday a try here.
Some time ago I went through a phase where I tried to include a portrait of every model I photographed wearing a corset including the series of lighting equipment reviews that I wrote for the former print edition of Shutterbug. You may, or maybe not, be surprised to learn that the editor, managing editor and art director never published a single one of these photographs in the magazine. Since they, for their own reasons, wouldn’t let you see these images, I’m going to try to publish them—including some new photographs— for the next several months.
Some of the models that will be featured in this series have either never appeared or may be under represented on this blog for several reasons, including the number of shoots that I did with them. Other models, like today’s portrait of the incredible Erin Valakari, have appeared on this site many times and this portrait was from a recent session was both flashback and flashforward. It was a flashback to our last photographic session in November of 2018. You can see a short video made during that shoot on my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos by clicking here.
Erin is an artist, model and cosplayer, originally from Texas and now living in Colorado. She is a sweet and lovely model who is totally professional in her work ethic. What’s more, her hard working style is combined with attitude that compliments a model who is stylish, talented and sexy. You can follow her on Instagram at @valatheartist. And this session was a flashforward to what, I hope, will be our next portrait session together that will be short entirely on film!
I created a short (three-minute) behind-the-scenes video for my YouTube channel, Joe Farace’s Videos, that’s based on my next photo session with Erin where I created an upcoming Corset Monday post. The direct link to this 18+ Age Restricted video is here.
How I made this portrait: I photographed Erin in my home studio using a Paul C. Buff DigiBee with Plume Ltd Wafer softbox that was placed at camera right. Another DigiBee with a 18-inch OMNI reflector attached and placed behind a 42 x72-inch Scrim Jim with a white cover that, during the session, alternated from being used as a large diffusion scrim with the DigiBee turned on and as a reflector with the DigiBee turned off. In the back (camera left) of my studio was a Paul C Buff Alien Bee with 16 x 30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip soft box being used, sort-off, as fill. Background was a 5×7-foot Photo Grey Savage Infinity vinyl background.
The camera was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with a (used) Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 lens with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/8 and ISO 200. I had planed to shoot part of the session with my Panasonic Lumix G9 but circumstances prevented that from happening. Look for a post about that topi this coming Thursday.