Tagged: richard symons
We Shot Salasai
Eden, Ozz & Penny. Photos by Adam Bryce assisted by myself
So I have been working with Adam Bryce a lot recently. And one of the many many highlights of this was being a part of a mini lookbook shoot held back stage at Salasai’s which he shot. I was assigned to beauty shots, which i shot in a very similar fashion (quick, dirty and raw). I would recommend everybody be a part of a 2 person team tasked with shooting essentially 2 lookbooks, behind the scenes and a runway show all within the space of a couple of hours. It is both fun and stressful, especially when the lookbook images needed to be processed and graded within an hour of the show finishing for distribution purposes. Mac was on makeup, keyed by Amber D. Stephen Marr was on hair and styling by Dan Ahwa.
The un-retouched beauty of Tia
Kelvin, Ngahuia & Lauren
Sam, Tia & Natalia
Gisele, Lydia & Felix
Also can we just take a moment to appreciate those jewels. So rad
Lookbook photos by Adam Bryce, Close-ups by Richard Symons
Beauty: Aurum
Check that azure accent
My thoughts behind this weeks look was gold, if you have ever studied my photography (you haven’t, no one has ever) then you may have noticed that I hate photographing gold. I prefer my images to look like they were shot in the depths of winter, even if there is flare flying around, and bokeh coming out the ying-yangs my images tend to always look a bit cold. I think its because i prefer the way blue tones come across on film (or on digital I guess). So with this week I wanted to challenge myself a bit, and shoot a considerable amount of gold. I shot with yet another familiar face, dancer, poet, artist, queen and bad a$$, Jahra. I’ve worked with Jahra numerous times before, on my personal instillation project “Genesis”, her performance art project “Murdered Many” and filming spoken word down at 1885. She is needless to say one of my favourite people on earth just because she is so cool. Like actually if you haven’t met Jahra you probably think she is real cool, and if you have met Jahra you probably think she is real cool. She also happens to have a very strong sense of personal style, to the point where she has looks that are difinitively her… She is like Madonna, Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga rolled into one in terms of personal iconography. She also happens to be super open to my ideas, and interpretations of her look which excites me a lot.
OH ALSO YEAH SHE IS REALLY BEAUTIFUL I’M GOING TO STOP GUSHING NOW (THERE ARE PHOTOS AFTER THE READ-MORE)
Beauty: DeMonica
Sometimes, I experiment with makeup and I hate it. Sometimes I experiment with makeup and I really like it.
I was really bored today, so I did the usual looking up of recipes online, playing of video games and listening to music for like 10 minutes before becoming bored. I’ve been toying with the idea of this look for a while now just in the back of my mind ever since (now I’m gonna go all gay and obscure on you for a bit) drag performance artist Raja (also known as famous makeup artist Sutan Amrull) released the artwork for her latest single Zubi Zubi Zubi (image below) and it made me think about how when someone just paints their face (insert colour here) for Halloween or whatever they usually go out and buy the cheapest crappiest $2 face paint from the variety store (I say variety store now because i feel “one of those cheap Asian shops” is maybe a bit racist?), they slap it on haphazardly leaving gaps in places and blah blah blah, its effective I guess but it normally looks like absolute shit. What I initially wanted out of this look was to use really nice skin-like products i.e cream makeup, but a combination of budget and “I don’t wanna wait to get paid, then go to bodyfx and find out that they don’t have it or its not quite the shade of (insert colour here) that I want, wow disillusioned now, send to back of brain cabinet” forced me into doing this a lot sooner and a lot less polished than I had anticipated. Back to Raja and Zubi Zubi Zubi, the reason I was so inspired to this by that image (which is below by the way, I haven’t forgotten, I’m getting there) is because it veers so far away from that super matte, flat, patchy gross Halloween skin and ends up looking smooth and beautiful and creamy and like real skin.
Raja – Zubi Zubi Zubi
So I quickly had to change my aesthetic from this super polished, alternate version of Raja’s Zubi face to a dressed up Halloween face. Not necessarily looking like real skin, but at least looking anything but flat and boring.
Beauty: Cedric
Cedric’s Natural state
I’ve done a bit of makeup work with Cedric before. But its previously been either keeping everything super natural and really just a bit of minor adjustments (contours, highlights you know the deal) or flirting into the feminine, drag world (drag used used in the purely acronymic sense of D.R.A.G – “Dressed as Resembling A Girl” and less in the show girl, drag queen sense). This time around i wanted to stop flirting with the idea of the female persona and actually do a transformation on Cedric. I have strangely enough only ever done one full-on male to female transformaion on a man other than myself and it was the first time I had ever done one on anybody, myself included and I was only doing it because I had to (yay beauty school), needless to say it was not great.I did manage to avoid using glitter though, go me! So for me I guess this shoot with Cedric was really an experiment of my own skills and of what I could do with Cedrics face with the… well, limited supplies I own (I also don’t own any typical “drag makeup” or theatre makeup).
Beauty (as in makeup, not inner beauty, wtf?)
Weird as stock photo
Its kind of a weird concept when you strip it all back. We put these various combinations of chemicals, oils and colours on our faces and bodies in order to change our faces so that they are somewhat closer to this idea of perfection. But of course beauty is subjective isn’t it? That’s what our parents and friends tell us. Of course *brooding music plays* “THE MEDIA” wants us to think otherwise. You may now be thinking that I’m going to go into the battle of subjective beauty and conventional beauty and well I’m not going to so shame. Personally I think that conversation is one of the most tiring and pointless one can possibly enter in. Continue reading
Cori for New Face No Agent
Meet Cori,
I’ve known Cori for a few months now (if you remember that “Spirit” shoot then you would have seen him before) and I kind of just remembered a couple of weeks ago that he is amazing.
Well he is amazing
I worked with one of my besties, Ana Van Schie De Pont on styling/creative direction and got in an assistant (Lei Lei Kung) which is totally weird because normally on my shoots its just me and the model, and Angela if I am shooting NFNA stuff.
Also his photos were uploaded last night to facebook and interest was shown within 20 minutes which is pretty insane.
Enjoy all the amazing images after the jump
Cosmetics Haul/Review
via @princessrichardx on instagram
So I got a whole bunch of cosmetics products ( around $1k) so I am gradually going throught he products coming up with looks and reviewing the individual elements of each look. Please bare in mind that I did not pay anything for these products but I did do a bit of research and find out the approximate prices. I reviewed all the following products on tumblr last night, but it was very rushed and very informal. So I am goign to rewrite here and provide you with a bit more information
P.s if you would like any information on how to purchase any of the below products, swatches of the products or any tips or tricks leave a comment and I will holla on ya
Goddess//Mab’s Room
So tonight is the openning night of Godess & Mabs Room: A Double Bill, a dear friend of mine, Sam Brooks wrote both of these plays and right now is totally stressing out about everything. But yeah you should go, I went and saw Goddess last year and it was super good. I shot the posters for Goddess and Mab’s room, the original photo’s you can see below but anyway thats not the point because YOU SHOULD GO! I am going on saturday night (come see me, whatevs, u know u wanna). To book tickets you can fly on over to iTicket and score yourself a sweet deal because it is only $20 to see 2 plays, thats $10 a play. WAIT… IF YOUR A STUDENT ITS ONLY $15 CRAZAAAAAAAY also you can click attending or whatnot on the facebook event page .
Go see it ok.
Marr Factory / The Week that was
Zambesi x Marr Factory
So all of the past week I have essentially been camping out in Ponsonby, mainly due to the week long Marr Factory group of shows starting last Sunday and ending on the Thursday that has just been. In that time we were treated to 5 nights of alcohol free ice cream, babes and some top notch current season collections. I also shot my first model for talent scouting website thingy New Face No Agent. Fun trivia fact about NFNA, you may (read: better) have seen the recent shoot I did with Cedric @ N Model Management, well if you crawl on over to NFNA’s website and scroll down a bit you will find that it was indeed New Face No Agent who initially scouted and got Cedric signed (You can basically tell that me and Angela from NFNA just spent a good half an hour gushing over how amazing he is right?). ANYWAY the girl I shot for NFNA is a total babe. Also me and my friend ANA (stylist, tammie brown impersonator, dutch girl, art student, etc) sometimes like to take photos of.. her (okay sometimes I like to take photos of her and she does it because she loves me), and one night pre Marr Factory we walked through Grey Lynn Park to see that they had left the field lights on (SO NATURALLY WE HAD TO TAKE SAUCY PHOTOS). Well thats enough rambling from me, enjoy the following photos :) Continue reading
You wish you were me
You cant handle this
HEY GUYS! LOOK AT WHAT ME AND CEDRIC AND ANA AND BEVERLY DID ON SATURDAY!
I’ve known Cedric for a couple of years now and I have been pushing him to get signed for like…. ages so naturally when I heard he got snapped up by N Model Management I was super excited. We’d been sitting on the idea of this shoot for a while now and one of my besties Ana DePont VanSchie (spawn of fashion royalty Doris DePont ) kind of has the best taste in everything crazy and 90’s so we decided to just put all of that together and push out a baby that was somewhere between a 90’s wannabe and Andrej Pejic. I really am ecstatic that Cedric has been signed with an agency that is passionate about him and that really want to work with his skills (and also an agency that actually WANTS him to do mens and womenswear). Cedric really has something special, there aren’t really many male models in NZ that can bring femininity and androgyny to the table. If you follow me on tumblr (if you don’t you should) then you would have seen the teaser gifs for this shoot which I am pretty stoked with (WARNING: They are SUPER tacky and SUPER 90’s). Anyway I am gonna let these images speak for them selves and there is a lot of images. Continue reading
Lifestyles of The Richard Famous 