In the hunt for a photographer for the long-planned wedding, I've kept an eye on Skin Two magazine which regularly features the best in fetish photographers and artists. One name that has been behind both great cover work and enthusiastic coverage of fetish events is Doralba Picerno. Unlike some photographers, Doralba has made herself accessible, by welcoming commissions from normal human beings who want to get a record of what they do. She enjoys the fetish scene and fully understands that little thought that niggles at the back of your mind when you've just spent two hours getting dressed up, "I wish I could get a good picture of this".
You only have to visit her site to see that her definition of 'good picture' is a little more demanding than not cropping off the top of your head. Working in music, fashion and fetish photography, she has a great eye for form, texture and colour and cares about the details that make a photograph work. Having seen what she has done for other commissions, I was very keen to see what we could achieve in a test shoot. If that went well, then the problem of finding a wedding photographer who could cope with our little plans would be neatly solved.
It certainly went well. Really well. Amazingly well.
It could have been a disaster. Unlike genetic girls I am capable of far worse than merely bad hair days. I can have bad body, face and hair days where I look exactly like a bloke in a badly fitting dress. Some visitors to this site have said very flattering things about the pictures of me (and some, who won't be reading this, just ask if I have any naked pictures - sigh). What they don't realise is that out of perhaps two or three rolls of film I might get no more than a couple of really usable images. Sometimes two or three rolls of film won't produce a single photograph I'd be willing to show my friends, never mind the world.
So you can imagine how big a smile I had for the week after Doralba showed me the result of our test - and of two rolls of film there wasn't a single bad picture. Just good ones and even better ones. By the time this article is online, I expect that I'll have posted about twelve of my favourite images to go with it - which says a lot about the skill of both Charlene, who did my makeup and Doralba who brought it all together.
The shoot itself was very straightforward - once I'd helped the taxi driver find the correct street and unloaded two big bags of my favourite clothes, undies and accessories. Charlene arrived shortly after with an enormous case of makeup and the fun began. We decided that four outfits would be the limit for the time we had, and that we would try two different makeup looks allowing me to wear both the blonde wig and a couple of darker wigs in a shade of red that inexplicably goes perfectly with my colouring. I slipped into a cute pair of 'hippy chick' jeans and glittery heels and let Charlene do her work. She applied carefully shaded foundation and cleverly blended out my eyebrows with some liquid latex so that it looked like I had a reasonably fashionable thin arch rather than a hedge above my eyes. She then completed my eyes and lips, each with a handful of shades blended together giving a stunning effect (and explaining the need for such a huge bag of makeup).
Once my face was complete, I could sort out my bra and top and my blonde wig which is getting a bit tired but still does OK. By this time (probably a good hour later) any worries about being tense had gone as the gentle chat had given me long enough to sit back and calm down for the job at hand. The first few pictures are less relaxed than the later ones (in the red wigs), but with Doralba's prompting I still found it fairly easy to find a pose and remember to smile. With two sets of critical eyes on me as I posed, I could be sure that stray bits of hair and odd looking positions could be sorted out before Doralba took any pictures with two separate cameras to achieve different effects. After a few pictures I swapped into the blue-print dress and Charlene added darker shades to my makeup to match my darker curly red hair.
I'm usually rather cautious of tight fitting dresses, because they rely the most on having someone else's figure. Luckily, the combination of waist clincher, girdle, and padding seems to have a pretty good effect, and the photos of that outfit are my favourite from the shoot. The almost school uniform followed (actually two Junior Gaultier items from Retro Woman that I picked up on a shopping trip) and then with some major engineering the rubber dress. That features Lori Larkin's kleavage kit which gives an amazing impression of having a real cleavage despite being totally flat chested.. (grin). The waist clincher on top makes the whole thing a bit more interesting as well - it's a bit like the Pompidou (??spelling) centre in Paris with all the working bits on the outside, hehe.
Despite the hours of makeup and not so quick costume changes, the shoot finished far too soon for me and I had to spend another age scraping off all the makeup again. Then it was time to go home and hold my breath for a couple of weeks until Doralba could develop the photos and we could meet again. Two weeks later you could have found me sitting opposite Doralba, a pack of photos and a contact sheet in front of me and a very big grin plastered across my face. I've put some of the photos on the site. The contact sheet was for the second roll of film which was cross-processed (no, I still don't know what it means). The results, when printed up are A4 prints of bright, colourful high contrast which look absolutely fantastic. In the end, the shoot achieved everything I'd wanted and more. I'll be meeting Doralba again before too long as I keep on getting more ideas for the next photo shoot, and the next.. and the next..
You can contact Doralba for commissions through her web site which has some great pictures from her portfolio. Before you all start hassling her however, remember that she is very scene aware, but as a professional photographer she's not a charity or a dressing service.