A tissue...

As a challenge for a personal still life project I wanted to take something inherently ordinary and uninteresting and make it look beautiful and interesting...kleenex! I bought a bunch of boxes of these boring little white squares and went to work. Unfortunately I did such a good job on the flowers (thanks to some instructions I found online and modified) that the one in this image almost looks real...maybe not if you see a larger version of the picture, which you can do at hollinrake.com in Portfolio 2, where you can see a few other kleenex transformations as well.

Even more in this case than with the Letters shoot mentioned in my previous post, I got to do what I love: create something really pretty out of not much.

Letters

Each year for the past few years I have worked with Martin Finesilver and Mark Smith of Finesilver Design, and Stewart Miller of Ideal Printing to produce a mini-calendar for self-promotional purposes. I am so excited about the images we have created for our 2014 edition that I couldn't wait to share one of my favourites. 

We had thought of using antique letter press wooden block type some time ago, and Martin and I finally found ourselves with just enough time to meet at The Prop Room and see what they had. Really, to use an old and so over-used cliché, we were like kids in a candy store. We hand-picked our own set of the pieces whose texture, coloration, and form stood out to us in particular: little pieces of art-in-waiting. I couldn't wait to get them back to the studio to compose them, and 'dramatize' them on some of my antique wooden surfaces.

The shoot was one of those experiences that really reminded me of why I chose this career in the first place. I love the art we got out of a pile of letters. Sometime in the next couple of months the design and printing will be completed, we'll do the assembly, and pop them into their little organza pouches and I'll get to give them out! Yeah!

Fatal Attraction

I was thinking of calling this one "I just boiled your bunny," but that's just so nasty. Nevertheless, that sentiment pretty much constituted the intended essence of this shot. Probably the hardest part of this shoot was getting the lovely, happy, sweet, real-life couple to look like theirs was more of a fatal attraction than the loving, enthusiastic and positive nicest-people-you-coud-ever-meet one that it actually is. Jason and Elizabeth own and run Artists' Play Dance studio in Leslieville. Their professionalism and energy was fantastic: after working all day running summer camp courses for young dancers, they spent a long night with us enduring my relentless direction to get just the expressions I wanted from them, which they managed with aplomb.

I had the help of a fabulous and dedicated team once again: Christine Cho of Cho Beauty (Hair and Make-up), Keva Legault of Plutino Group (Wardrobe), Marilyn Karamaritis (Art Director), Sara Shirley (Assistant), as well as my team driver and general helper my beautiful husband Ken, all of whom worked into the early morning hours to make this happen. A big thank-you again to super nice guy Tim who let us take over his funky loft for a whole night.