batskeets | Girls on the run

Man, I don't use this icon enough. Of course, that's probably an indicator that bad things aren't happening such that it'd warrant me using the icon.

Yesterday was a rad, rad, rad fashion shoot. The designer punched me up a month or two ago and we hatched plans to tell a story of fabulous ladies who ran away from their high-profile lives, and took a trip through the run-down pockets of the city. I love shoots that tell a story, so I was totally pumped to do this one.

We went to a crappy motel on Interstate Ave. for the first bit, and god, scouting out the place was a bitch. I went to several dive motels the day before, and every time I got to talk to the manager of a given motel, said manager was a cranky East Indian dude who tried to squeeze every penny he could out of us. I'm convinced that dive motels are the new Kwik-E-Mart. (yeah, that's a stereotype, but dude, I've noticed a definite trend over the past year or two)

The shots we did after the motel were a trip, though: we went up to a laundromat on Lombard, and started doing some shots outside the place. The manager came out to see what we were doing, and he was TOTALLY into it. XD He let us go inside and basically have our run of the place, and all he asked in return was that we take a picture of him with the models in front of the shop:

And he wasn't even a lech about it! What an awesomely nice guy.

There are a ton of shots that I haven't even begun to sort through yet, seeing as there were ten outfits, but I did crank out these two group shots:

I went for a more aged look with the edit--kind of like old photos from the '70s--to go with the more run-down and dive-y locations. (I even thought about adding grain, but decided against it) I also used harder light, and both the designer and I liked the raw look it gave to the shots.

I also had my reservations about the cropping on the motel shot at first, but I actually like it better than I thought I would, and it shows the bloomers, which was the whole point of the shot. :) I have to remember that I can actually crop out parts of a model for fashion stuff, as long as it shows the clothes and works compositionally.

Speaking of, there are rumblings of potentially exciting news for me and my fashion editorial flailings... not sharing until I have concrete details, though, but if all pans out, yeee!

As for the other parts of the weekend, I wushu-ed (naturally) and we also caught Iron Man at the beer theater! The movie certainly lived up to y'alls praises; I'm no Iron Man fangirl by any stretch, but I really enjoyed the ride. :)

In other news, I weight trained earlier, for the first time in forever! They added a new gym to the building here at The Job, and it's got just enough equipment that I can actually go and do a nice 30-45 minute session during lunch, instead of wanking around on YouTube or something. ;) I hope the results turn out as expected.