River Runs Scarlet - Zosia West's shoot

A couple times over the past week, my friend Zosia West of River Runs Scarlet has come by to do a three-part photoshoot.  If you know anything about my photography, you probably know that RRS is a band I photograph quite frequently, even going to California with them in July to document them recording their EP.  Anyway, Zosia's in this magazine thing (not sure if I'm allowed to give details!) and needed three looks, two of which had to be a girl-next-door kinda look and a sexy look.

The first shoot happened on Thursday and Zosia brought a male model friend, Joe Costa, along with her.  We're both huge TrueBlood fans so wanted to do a vampire theme, with poor, clean-cut Joe as her victim.  He's such a good sport.  Didn't even have any problems with me applying coats of liquid latex to his neck - speaking of, I'm really proud of my skin tone matching on that!  I also did a LOT of post on the first image, as the fangs Zosia ordered managed to not be in yet.  Had a good time (really!) in PhotoShop copying and rotating bits of teeth of create a fang for her.

I had work Thursday night though, so we finished up the more "normal" parts of the shoot on Saturday. Not that vampires aren't normal, they certainly are for us!  First we did a cute, girl-next-door kinda thing.  Jeans and tank top.  The black and whites are my favorite, but I wanted to show you guys a color one too.

Aww, ain't she adorable and totally metal?  Of course, as all girls-next-door do, she gotta have a sexy side!  We tried a couple different things, but my favorite is probably the hair metal picture.  You'll see.

I wanted to keep consistent with the black background, but all the black in her outfit kept getting lost, so we switched to white to make her pop.  It looks super dark on the blogspot thing, the background isn't AS gray in the actual image.  Maybe it could be a little brighter, but geeze this looks dark!  Huh.  So yeah, anyway, hair metal picture = WIN.  Which do you guys like?

Zombie Prom!

Saturday night (May 29, 2010) at The Fallout Shelter was the first show I ever booked.  I mean, I had some help in the form of JJ Ulizio, who got me The Wakening, and Kevin Eaton, who ended up not actually booking anyone but was my sister's co-model for the flier and is generally a helpful guy.

The night started around 6pm, when Skeet, my co-bartender for the night, showed up so I could do his makeup.  He's bald so I gave him an open head wound with some brains hanging out.  This is him hanging out later in the night.

Mandy and Nate came by to get their makeup done as well.  Mandy is allergic to latex, so I could only use the grease paint on her, but Nate got the wound Kevin made the night before.  I set up my bloody backdrop so that I could squirt blood on people with the nozzle I put on my quart of blood.  No exciting lighting here, just my on-camera flash.

My own makeup took awhile, but not too long because I used a couple wounds I premade the night before on my collarbone (don't think I have a picture of that) and my ankle.  After a quick trip downstairs, I broke a pencil to stick in the ankle wound as an Evil Dead homage.

Kevin also went pretty crazy with his makeup.

I started work about quarter to nine and the first band was Fullmoon Renegades, from Ohio.  They play metal and were here for our Halloween show.  When I started looking for bands to play Zombie Prom, they had just messaged us saying they'd like to play again, so it worked out wonderfully!

Second on the lineup was Children of October, our "house punk band."  Sal (formerly of Modern Habit) wore his new white-out contacts!  I liked the red ones he used to have, but white is creepy too.

Having Skeet as a co-bartender worked really well because I could occasionally leave the bar and go take pictures.  We had a pretty good crowd, and while not everyone dressed as zombies, some did.  Some went pretty all-out with it and we even had a couple zombie hunters (JJ's friend Richie, Justin who actually might have been a zombie with a sword but I'm not entirely certain and DM who came with his girlfriend Kyna and a couple others from the Dethlehem crowd.  Look up Dethlehem, they're D&D metal at its finest.)

The third and fourth bands were Dead City Dealers, from New Castle, and The Black Marias, from England.  New Castle as in a town 40-or-so minutes from Aliquippa (where the Shelter is) and England as in the country.  Yes, The Black Marias were The Fallout Shelter's very first international band!!  And at MY Zombie Prom.  I was so ridiculously thrilled.

Yeah, The Black Marias are so old school punk it's amazing.   A lot of people left at their set though, which sucks for them, because the last band of the night was The Wakening, and they are AWESOME (thank you, JJ!).  Zombie surf, yeahhh.  I took way too many pictures of them and, with the help of Kevin, they designated a prom "queen" and king - Don (who was dressed as his alter ego Dawn) was the "queen" and one of their friends the king.

 

I consider it a successful night.  Next year we're going to make it even bigger, even better, even more prom-like and more zombie-like.  I wanted the Savini School to come do makeup, but was unable to get in touch with them, so next year will try harder.  It was SO much fun though, a great time.  We need more theme nights.

Oh!  Here's me.  You can't see my collarbone finger-holes wound or anything, just my face, but my eyes look good in this, so I'm pleased, even if it is a pretty lame self-portrait.