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I just realized how inconsistent I can be with my editing styles. Sigh. Let’s just move on to the story:

It was a casual Wednesday evening at the office when I received a phone call from the bestie. She wondered if I could accompany her to a photoshoot in which she was pulled as the model. “Ha?”, was my reaction. (Why do I feel like I’m writing an essay? Ok. Ignore ignore!) Since when did Aly model for other people other than me, I jokingly said to a friend. (Ok.. I’m definitely writing as if this is a kindergarden story book!). Joking yeah… As far as I remembered, she has only modeled once for a magazine article on reducing the chubbiness of a face using makeup.. and that was back in 2006.

I took my time to freshen myself at home and ate dinner before I made my way to the studio owned by Asfar in Wangsa Maju. Not knowing anyone in the room, I made myself comfortable at the reception area with Aly’s hubby and catch up on what both of us has been up to. Well actually it wasn’t really catching up – it was more of us cracking up on Ikram’s outtakes for the 6 degrees project (I had my laptop with me). 30 minutes passed….1 hour passed…2 hour passed. What the heck is taking the make-up artist (MUA) so long?! So after 2 hours I walked in and there I found the MUA taking her own sweet time to curl Aly’s hair with an iron while blow-drying in between. Did  I mention she refused to apply any hair products? Of course the curls won’t stick! Duh! I swore if Aly didn’t give me her disapproval look, I would have just grabbed the hair iron and curled Aly’s hair myself. And just when I thought the hair styling is over, she attempted to fix the already-old-looking Aly make-up look. *smacks forehead* Ok.. see.. this is what you get when you’re bestfriend is a make-up artist – you tend to be a perfectionist. And while I don’t have the skillful hands of Aly, I know well enough that the MUA was making it worse. She had like..what… 4 or 5 brushes in her hands? Even she herself was confused which one was the washer for the eyelids, the highlighter for the brow bone or the blender (blender? lol. a blending brush is what I mean). I think I was more agitated and annoyed than Aly was. Haha.

Finally the shoot began at 10.45pm (!). Aly’s curl, as expected, has been reduced back to her straight hair (no hair products remember) even on the first frame. Wait, I guess I should remind everyone again that I wasn’t the photographer. The task of shooting for the night goes to Nazim Zafri – a fellow photographer whom I first met through Syahrin during a trip to Indonesia in 2007. I was merely on the sidelines, snapping some pictures with the camera set to a high ISO of 800. I didn’t want to disturb the shoot, so shooting with a trigger is not an option. Hmm. If I can recall, we had 2 soft boxes and 1 hair light, though not all were used at the same time.

Sometime during the shoot, I sneaked in a few shots with Aly as Nazim fixes the lighting. Hehe.. Hey. Once I get a good shot or two, that’s good enough for me. Here I present the 3 photos that I’ve picked and edited. The first one was fairly soft (i.e. not sharp) for beauty editing. Hence you will observe a notable difference in the details between the first picture and the last two photos.

I was at Loco studio (thanks Kabir) not as the photographer but the model-wannabe.  Kabir wanted to test out his new lighting set and I came in full force bringing in two dresses and my make-up kit. Under Jay’s direction, it took quite a bit to get the lighting right. I guess that’s the problem that you’ll be faced with when you have the choice of 3 strobes  to play with – the power of each strobe, the position, etc. As for me, I had always been comfortable with just one-umbrella as my setup – simple and easy. It wasn’t until recently did I realize the power of an extra hair-light on a portrait. It gives that extra ooomph – like coffee with low-fat milk? Just nice to drink without the added calories? Gosh I’m bad at explaining.. especially when it is 5 in the morning.

Credits goes to Jay for the shot below.