This shoot is definitely my favourite of the Christmas series. Technically it was also the hardest one to pull off and really pushed my skills as a photographer. I turned the lights way down, brought out lots of warm lighting and turned on the Christmas decorations to achieve that warm ambient glow. It also meant a lot of testing on the camera to see how the light was being picked up by the lens and then if it translated well into an image. I won’t bore you with the technical details too much, but it took a long time to achieve, and even longer to do post-production on these images.
But let’s go back to the outfit and the overall styling. My hubby has been pushing me to be more experimental in my make-up, so here’s my first hesitant step into that with this blue lip paint. It ended up working really well with the midnight blue velvet dress from ASOS. I just love the detailing on the dress itself, from the eighties sleeve, the low cut, the tulip skirt and the star print. It doesn’t look that amazing when you first look at it, but it really seemed to come into its own in the shoot. I teamed them up with an old pair of black over-the-knee boots and so much gold and rose gold jewellery in the form of bracelets, that my arms felt heavy from all the metal. 🙂
The final thing worth pointing out is all the Christmas lights and decorations. I just pulled a whole load of decorations out from storage for this shoot, and I really wanted to capture as many points of light as I could. Whether it was the string of Christmas lights around my body to lit present boxes, to lanterns and tea lights, the more soft points of light the better.
Velvet star low-cut dress: ASOS, found here – Black over-the-knee boots: New Look, found similar ones found here – Yellow gold bracelets Gold clover bracelet: Van Cleef & Arpels Alhambra gold and carnelian bracelet, found here – Gold white enamel bracelet: Hermes Clic H bracelet, found here – Gold nail bracelet: Cartier Juste un Clou bracelet, found here – Gold link bracelet: Tommy Hilfiger, old Rose gold bracelets Rose gold clover bracelet: Van Cleef & Arpels Vintage Alhambra Bracelet – T square rose gold bracelet: Tiffany & Co, found here – Rose gold roman numerals bracelet: unknown gift
