Black & White Fashion in Colour Redux..

I loved this this fashion story 'The Girls Who Fell to Earth' when I first published it in 'Black and White' here on my blog back in 2009. It was a tricky shoot to pull off on the day; we were running about and hour or so behind schedule having added a second model to the shoot extending the time in hair & make-up; being late December the sun was already high in the sky as we began and that by itself was enough to make the shooting more difficult. But bright, very bright coastal Sydney light was not all we had to contend with, the wind was blowing at gale force strength! Blowing so strong that after the first shot I was seriously contemplating packing the shoot in and rescheduling for a more weather friendly day. But we were on location with about 10 fabulous high fashion frocks from the top graduating designers at Sydney TAFE, Christmas was fast approaching and time really was running out. We had to shoot, we had to make the best of a very bright, crazy windy day!


The whole story was shoot as black and white in-camera which is the way I shoot black and white (B&W). I just set the cameras setting to B&W so as I review the shots I am not seduced by the colour of the scene. Its the closest digital equivalent you can get to loading a camera with  B&W film. Of course the 'miracle' of digital is that if you shoot RAW you can always get the colour back. First time round I worked on this shoot exclusively in B&W to maintain my vision for a B&W shoot. But as I went through the shots I did see a few of the RAW files 'POP' into colour in Adobe Bridge and off-and-on ever since I have wondered if a 'colour lunar landscape' version of this story might not work just as well albeit in a different way to the original B&W.

Last week I gave into my curiosity, going through the whole shoot again and making a completely new selection of shoots and working them up from scratch as the new colour edit. Only Elizabeth Di Marco's purple dress made the cut to both the B&W and colour version with a couple of frocks not making the transition to colour at all; they just did not work as colour on this shoot. However I now have two 'new' outfits appearing for the first time, the tan hooped dress and the bold B&W striped jacket and skirt.
















Hair & Make Up, Kathleen Hendry.
Stylist, Lucinda Petroeschevsky - Mayer.
Assisted by Melinda Johns.
Models, Sarah Crawford & Anna Hill @ Platform.
Photography by Kent Johnson, 0433 796 863
Assisted by, Harry Perlich.
Shot on Location at Kurnell National Park Sydney Australia.
December 14 2008. Colour Redux, June 2012.


View the B&W horizontal scroll version here.


Fashion Designers
Elizabeth Di Marco
Sarah Starkey
Melinda Johns
louise Maniscalco
Lisa Catanea, Bianca Linton
Christopher Morro
Sarah Starkey; Ryoko Watanabe
Kathryn Beeson
Bianca Linton, Melinda Johns