Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day in Western superstition, if that’s your jam. It’s not mine. In order for a month to have a Friday the 13th, the first day of the month must be on a Sunday aka June 1, 2025. According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute, 17–21 million people in the America have Paraskevidekatriaphobia (fear of Friday the 13th.) To me, it’s just another day and one in which today’s post is an excuse to have a little fun.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“Friday the 13th is still better than Monday the whatever.” — unknown
The legendary digital photography guru Kai Krause was fond of saying that there were thousands of images hidden inside each of your photographs just waiting to be unleashed and I think that might just be true.
Unlike Ansel Adams who previsualized how a print would look before he captured an image, I’ve found that sometimes my glamour photography images are only fully realized after I start working on them in Photoshop. For instance:
How I Made this Photograph: The image at right is a composite photograph that uses a technique described in my post, Cut and Paste Portraiture. In this case, this photograph combines an indoor studio image that I made of Kelsie in my home studio (at the time) with one made outdoors in an outdoor shopping mall, although the mannequin itself was indoors behind the shop window’s glass. Both images were made using with the same camera but with two different lenses at two different times and in two different locations.
The original shot of a mannequin in a lingerie shop’s window was little more than a grab shot. I photographed Kelsie when I was testing a Flashpoint monolight when writing a review for the former print edition of Shutterbug magazine. The linked post features an image showing how basic—not much more that rocks and bear claws—my old home studio was. The camera used for both images was a Canon EOS 5D Mark I with EF 85mm f/1.8 lens, The studio exposure of Kelsie as 1/60 sec at f/8 and ISO 100. I only worked with her once and as has happened so many times before that I’ve lost track, she went on to fame and (I hope) fortune in the modeling world.
How it Happened: It wasn’t until I was looking at the mannequin shot one day that I thought of combining it with a real world image and went looking for a portrait that would easily blend with it. After opening both files in Photoshop, I used the Lasso tool to circle Kelsie’s face in the top layer and copied and pasted it onto the mannequin layer. After closing the Kelsie file, I resized and rotated the “face” layer to match the (remaining) mannequin layer’s size and orientation. Next, the Eraser tool was used to blend the now top (face) layer with the bottom (mannequin) layer and after that I flattened the layers to create the finished image.
The combined image was converted to black and white from its original color elements using Silver Efex’s Neutral presets to produce a dramatic effect and avoid dealing with skin tone incompatibilities between a real life woman and a mannequin. But maybe it was because…
I’m a fan of the 1985 movie Mannequin starring Kim Cattrall about a mannequin that comes to life but decided to interpret this image more as a homage to the 1948 film One Touch of Venus that has a similar theme about a statue of a goddess coming to life staring the incredibly beautiful Ava Gardner, Maybe that’s why I converted the photograph to black and white.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy me a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), click here. And if you do, thank so very much.
You can see more of Kelsie Leigh on the cover of my book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography. and inside its page. The book is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour photography and includes information on the cameras used as well as the complete lighting and exposure data for each image. The book is available used from Amazon for around ten bucks. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.