25 Apr Catwoman Prowling Tacoma
Whoa, what a busy last couple of months, on both the photo and film sides! Everything from commercial magazine shoots and films created to market business, and then there is the personal side of life with maternity and family photos. Love it, all of it. I feel very fortunate to be able to experience so much of life in a professional setting which I get to create imagery for. I pretty much wake up and learn about something or someone new so that I can effectively capture it and it’s extremely awesome. And as always, I’m constantly pushing my clients (along with myself) to create much more fun and interesting photos than what they came in looking for. It doesn’t really matter what stage of life you are in, you can have fun with photo shoots. A perfect example is the shoot I’m sharing with you today, a Catwoman shoot.
There are many ways to show your sexy side. That’s why I call my sexy shoots exactly that – sexy (rather than boudoir or whatever), because everyone’s sexy is different, and doesn’t necessarily fit into any one particular style of photography. It may be sexy for someone to be wearing their birthday suit, or lingerie, or pose in full clothing. It all depends on the person. And the same goes for Catwoman. She is sexy no matter what the situation, but every portrayal of Catwoman in TV and film has been different as well. I would have to say the most iconic Catwoman role would be Michelle Pfeiffer’s in ‘Batman Returns’. It was the perfect balance of sexy and crazy/goofy. Simply put, when I think of Catwoman, Michelle’s version is the first image in my mind, and that’s when I leaned towards with this shoot.
I put out a call a month or so ago, encouraging those women who would like to embody their favorite sexy character/hero to come in for a shoot. Rebekah, photographed in this series, jumped all over the idea of portraying Catwoman. Sexy – it is built-in. That’s a cool part of taking on a character – they already come pre-packaged with a preceding image, right? Rebekah could be standing there in a Catwoman suit picking her nose and she’d still, somehow, project sexy. Spoiler alert – there will be no nose picking shots in this article, nor have or will I ask a client to do that. I’m just stating a point, this character is a home run in that department. We didn’t have to work on the sexy aspect here, just the making-it-look-cool part of it, so that’s what we set out to do.
Rebekah arrived to the studio with the suit costume we had agreed upon, which was fantastic, but… there was one problem. The suit has this super cheesy cat tail. Like, Pikachu cheesy, looking like a lighting bolt more than a tail. I took a pair of scissors to that thing in quick order ( -7 points on cheese factor, +4 on sexy factor). We completed the more Pfeiffer-esk version look with Alice complimenting the included headpiece with a lower-half-of-the-mask makeup job.
The suit fit great, maybe a little too great. Once in the skin-tight suit, Rebekah moved more like a rusty C3PO than Catwoman. Ok, maybe not that bad, but our first go at having her take a cat-like stance was interesting, and she was nervous. Thankfully we had no “wardrobe malfunctions” and all poses took form without issue.
Starting in-studio, we got warmed up with a few fun shots and then headed out into “Gotham” once the sun started to grow tired in the sky (which is where the real fun was had). We got some great shots in the studio, but I knew the iconic-like shots would be happening out in the real world. We started up on the hill top. Yes, the hill top in Tacoma. If you are from Tacoma or live near Tacoma, you are aware that Tacoma’s hill top is “not the place to be,” even in daylight hours, and definitely not a place you want to be at night. Granted it is getting cleaned up pretty good, it still has a feeling about it which whispers to your more reasonable side that it’d be a good idea to be somewhere else. This is where I took Rebekah right out of the gate. Not to worry, Matty Photography rolls with a built-in security detail (as discussed on a FB photo post HERE).
The location work is where a few of my lighting techniques brought the character to life (and in familiar places to Tacoma folk that may not look too familiar because of the lighting). We used every last bit of light the sun had to offer and then some with Alice holding up a flashlight just so my camera could grab focus. A really fun day of shooting with some fun photos to show for it. If you’d like to take on your favorite hero or movie character, shoot me a message with my contact page and we’ll make it happen! Stay tuned for much, much more!
