Today’s Post of Joe Farace
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”— William Shakespeare
I really don’t know how many women that I’ve photographed in my life. Is it one hundred? I dunno, maybe it’s more than that. Is it 200? If we add the number of brides I’ve photographed, I might have to multiply that number by ten. Maybe that’s it but to tell the truth I don’t really know. One thing that I do know is that every now and then I would photograph several women who had the same first name—take Ashley for example.
Here, as Rod Serling would often say, “presented for your approval” is some of my reminiscences, not in chronological or any kind of order, is my impressions of four different Ashleys or maybe just a few as you will see…
Ashley Rae was the first Ashley I ever photographed. She was an artist or figure model and over the years I’ve found that these kinds of model’s background make the best glamour models. I think it’s because they’re used to posing and also used to posing wearing little or nothing and have good attitudes about the process. Ashley Rae was an lovely model to photograph and had a distinctive posing style. You’ve seen her portraits here in many posts such as this and this. It turned out her real name wasn’t Ashley Rae and although I know her real name, she is and was always Ashley Rae to me.
The next Ashley was a six foot blonde—I seem to have an affinity for tall models—who was an ecdysiast (look it up) who needed photographs of herself for promotional purposes, including her website as well as something to send the various venues where she would be performing. It turns out that “Ashley” was her stage name; her real name was Zoe. But she was very clear in telling me that Ashley and Zoe were two completely different people and during that first shoot, I got to photograph Ashley. For our subsequent two shoots, I photographed Zoe and you can see one of those images here.
By contrast, this next Ashley was petite and had the body and posing moves of a ballet dancer. She was lovely in both face and figure and it was immediately apparent to me during our one and only shoot together that she was clearly destined for bigger and better things in the modeling world and she did as I like to say “went on to fame and fortune.” I think her middle name was Ashley and as she became more famous in the modeling world, she changed her name and wasn’t any kind of Ashley any more. One of our photographs from the first and only session is today’s featured images. Would I like to photograph her again? You bet!
The final Ashley was a mature model, who was also tall and had the demeanor of a grande dame about her. A grande dame is someone who is socially prominent, respected, and experienced, although this particular Ashley was not photographically experienced and like a lot of “one and done” models I photographed, I only got to photograph her once before she accumulated lots more experience, refined her style and then went to, in her own way, to fame and fortune in the modeling game. And yes, she changed her name too. Would I like to photograph her again? I’ve asked…
How I Made this Portrait: I photographed Ashley in my 11×15-foot home studio. The backdrop was a 5×7-foot Photo Grey Savage Infinity vinyl background.hung from JTL background stands. Lighting used was a Paul C. Buff DigiBee with Plume Ltd Wafer softbox as main light and placed at camera right, an Alien Bee with a 16 x 30-inch Westcott Apollo Strip soft box was at camera left with another Digibee with the 48-inch Dynalite Quad Square black/silver umbrella located in the back of my studio. My camera was a Panasonic Lumix GH4 with G Vario 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens at 45mm and an exposure of 1/125 sec and f/5.6 and ISO 200.
To be continued…
I am still casting models, or aspiring models or any woman (21-49 years old) who would like to be my new muse. f you have a friend, relative or maybe yourself who would like to be my new muse, please contact me through the Contact page or send me an e-mail at joefarace at gmail dot com. We can schedule an interview or test shoot, whichever is more convenient.
If you’re interested in learning how I shoot portraits and how I use cameras, lenses and lighting in my in-home studio and on location, please pick up a copy of Studio Lighting Anywhere which is available new from Amazon.com with for $22.99 and starting around sixteen bucks used, as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.