Tuesday...An All Day Job

Got up early for our subway ride into the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn...home to most all of your favorite hip hop artists....Notorious B.I.G., Mos Def, Lil' Kim, and Jay Z...to name a few.  Wish we hadn't left so early. Arrived after a 50 min subway ride (with a change of trains no less!) to completely foreign territory.  In spite of the supposed gentrification of the area...there were no Starbucks to be found.  We walked for a mile trying to locate a safe place to sit and wait for our 9a.m. appointment.  I will say Ms Dehlia's cafe was an oasis.  Enjoyed a scone and tea before we trekked the mile back to the photographer's apartment.  We were the first to arrive, but the photographer was a nice young guy from Alabama.  Soon another model came, as did the hair stylist, make-up artist and the two clothing designers.  They graciously allowed me to stay (Thank goodness! Where on earth would I have gone for 9 1/2 hours???)

Catherine spent two hours getting her make up and hair done...two hours to make her look fresh and un made up!  (Have to admit I like that better than overdone/extreme make-up)  Then she spent the day changing into darling outfits and modeling them in front of a neutral background.  Imagine what you see when you go shopping on line at say, J Crew, and view an item of clothing.

Let me just say, as much as I knew it, it WAS interesting to sit there and watch how the clothes are manipulated to look just right for the shot.  They are steamed, pinned, and clipped.  Then the models are posed "just so" so the clothes wrinkle at just the right place when a knee is bent, and no more.  Of course it helps when the clothes are worn on a 5'10", 120 pound frame, vs. mine!

I stayed in the back hair and make-up room for the first half of the day, trying to stay out of the way.  But when they decided to take my chair and use it as part of the set, I moved to a bench in the hallway and positioned myself so I could see the shots as they appeared on the computer screen wired to the camera.

By 6:30 Catherine was worn out.  Her feet were killing here from wearing various super tall shoes that the designers purchased for the shoot (and then were going to be returned!) And she was just plum tired from getting up early and staying busy all day.  They really don't want the models to sit down when they are wearing the clothes, for fear of wrinkles...but by the end of the day, she was sitting when she got the chance.  While it was great to get this job, the length of time it took meant she was not able to make it to two castings that she really hoped to get to. Perhaps, that, in the end, is what made the day seem so exhausting.  Such is life, always a bit of give and take.

 No subway for us on the way home.  We called a cab and relaxed for 30 minutes back to the apartment.

Couldn't get Cath to move once we got home, so I brought home a little pizza from Duke's and we ate it, then went to bed at 8:30.

Photos below: Ms Dehlia's , Eating lunch while in make up, Photographer in action

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