Tag: cape town photography

PolaroidWomen 2014

I started shooting PolaroidWomen in October 2014, I still had one pack left of original Polaroid film hanging-out in the depths of our fridge which I’d bought in 2009 (expired 2007) and went and emptied a big portion of my bank account on another stack of Impossible film (the miraculous company that have managed to re-produce instant film for Polaroid after Polaroid stopped manufacturing film in 2008).

The-Begining-of-the-PolaroidWomen-project-by-Leah-Hawker-2014

I picked up my snap-shot Polaroid camera at Orms in 2006 I think and had only ever passed about 8-9 packs of film through it by 2013. I planned to use the project for OpenStudios 2014, one of the first few creative and art based projects I’ve re-involved with for the last 6 years (!).

The project resulted in a selected series of 35 framed instant images for the exhibition,- the images take a voyeuristic peek into a fantasy world of women in dreamy, nondescript natural spaces…..tiny portholes to a place where the ethereal is momentarily a reality.
Below are some snaps from the OpenStudios event:

Some of the images from the series below:

PolaroidWomen-9 Instant Images of Nudes by Leah Hawker Cape Town Photographer

PolaroidWomen-8 Instant Images of Nudes by Leah Hawker Cape Town Photographer

PolaroidWomen-7 Instant Images of Nudes by Leah Hawker Cape Town Photographer

PolaroidWomen-6 Instant Images of Nudes by Leah Hawker Cape Town Photographer

I aimed to approach the image taking process differently to my norm. Where I usually control and stage my work quite particularly, here I asked my models to be natural, carefree, awkward, real and just playful. I guided some more than others, depending on the location and woman I was working with.

I shot in about six different locations for the series, ranging from swimming pools in Franschoek, orchids, rivers, shooting ranges, forests and beaches,- all with a sort of anonymous composition which leaves the environment and the women to be anyone, anywhere, a slice of time, a dream.

I plan to continue the series into 2015. For now the remaining framed pieces left over after the Open Studios show are hanging at Exposure Gallery in the Old Biscuit Mill, Woodstock.

Tags cape town photographer, cape town photography, Cape Town Polaroid, Exposure Gallery, Impossible project, impossible project instant images, leah hawker, Leah Hawker cape town photographer, Leah Hawker photography, nudes, open studios 2014, open studios cape town, original polaroids, polaroid, Polaroid exhibition, polaroid nude series, Polaroid photographs, polaroid project, PolaroidWomen

A Collection of Female Attire

The Collection: Stockings & Socks
#31- #33

Post author By Leah
Post date April 25, 2015
No Comments on The Collection: Stockings & Socks
#31- #33

(Please note: This is the “archive” of the collection of shoot props (generally lingerie/womens attire somehow) that I have gathered over the last 11 years of my career.
They are catalogued by number, and description for now as well as any other relevant information about their individual histories- how I came to have the items, what shoots they might have been used for, etc.
The style in which I document an item may vary according to the type of garment/object it is).

#31 – Knee-high socks
Knee-high cotton blend mens sports socks, sprayed green. I think I eventually found these at SportsUnlimited in Canal Walk after a mammoth search for any sock-style knee highs.
I was doing the pre-production for my first (!) Playboy Playmate shoot. The shoot was Rugby World Cup themed (all gold and green) and planned to be published in the September 2011 issue.

I found white socks a day before the shoot and asked the friend who was assisting me at the stadium to spray paint them green. I wouldn’t recommend this technique as they’re totally patchy- but it was the best solution at the time. Included is one of the published images from the locker rooms in the Cape Town stadium where we shot with Jade Fairbrother as Miss September.

#32 – Stockings
Thigh-high, black fishnet stockings, one size fits all. There’s this term “one size fits all” which would typically get attached to a mass-produced product like this and all it does in most cases (where the item doesn’t fit you) is leave women feeling inadequate I always think.

#33 – Knee-high stockings
Stripped semi-opaque and transparent, red knee high stockings. I bought two pairs in red and two pairs in fuchsia pink from a stocking factory shop in Woodstock years back.

Tags a collection of female attire, a collection of underwear, black fishnet stockings, cape town photography, feet, jade fairbrother, leah hawker, Leah Hawker cape town photographer, Leah Hawker photography, legs, one size fits all, playboy south africa, playboysouthafrica, Playmate shoot, red knee high stockings, rugby world cup 2011

Projects Women I've Shot

The Pinup Series, 2012
Part 2

Post author By Leah
Post date April 23, 2015
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Part 2

This is the second half of the shoot I did for the Pinup Series which was broken over two days in August 2012. On the second shoot date I worked with South African Playboy Playmates Wendy Du Toit, Kate Lovemore and Jade Fairbrother. Samantha Brownell did hair and makeup.

Catalogued here are a number of behind-the-scenes type shots from the shoot as well as the final images for each of the three Playmates.

Wendy Du Toit (pictured in the above images) was flown down from the Northern Cape for the day for this shoot. We met on the morning for a brief interview on MuthaFM before going straight into the shoot. Wendy is definitely the traditional “girl next door” but as far as the Playboy history goes she fits into the early 60’s with her look.

Kate was great to meet and shoot. She’s totally self-assured, enthusiastic and natural. Her partner, Twiggy or Grant “Twiggy” Baker, an SA champ surfer and all round cool guy, joined us to shoot some behind the scenes footage of Kate.

Of each of the Playmates I shot a semi-nude (for exhibition as part of the Nostalgia Now exhibition which I curated in 2012 at Exposure Gallery) and a nude which went on to be featured in a pictorial about the Playmates in a follow-on issue of the Playboy South Africa print mag.

The make-up references were reasonably straight forward but the hair was definitely quite a challenge. I spent a fair amount of time trying to re-style some areas in post-production,- a lesson learned about preparation and research before shooting if there ever was one…

Lastly of the six Playmates I shot Jade Fairbrother who was also the first Playmate I ever shot for Playboy SA and went on to Playmate of the Year (which we later shot in beautiful Zambia).

The exhibition “Nostalgia Now” was the 3rd in a series of 4 small group shows I curated at Exposure Gallery during the last 5 years. It was tied in with the Cape Town Month of Photography and invited emerging and professional photographic talent to participate by submitting images for exhibition that related to the body and that reflected nostalgia in the now via a rendered nostalgic format be it homographic, hipstamatic, polaroid, cynotype, tintype, faded out, bleached etc etc. The concept was correlated to that of the main festival and asked the viewer to reminisce about the now.

Below is the invite and a shot from the end of the opening evening.

Tags behind the scenes photoshoot, cape town photography, jade fairbrother, Kate Lovemore, leah hawker, Leah Hawker cape town photographer, Leah Hawker Photographer Cape Town, Leah Hawker photography, nudes, pinup nudes, Pinup Project with Playmates, Pinup shoot, Playboy Playmates, Samantha Brownell, South African Playmates Pinup, Wendy Du Toit

Women I've Shot

“The Housewives”, Private Commissions:
This is Amy

Post author By Leah
Post date April 19, 2015
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This is Amy

(Note: “The Housewives” was a term I fondly coined in 2006 after I started getting shoot requests from private, individual women who became my clients. Many of the women who contacted me were married and in their mid 30’s and were doing the shoots as gifts to their husbands. The folder in my archives is still called this and so I’ve stuck to it, in part just for the irony: most of these women are not “housewives” at all, but strong independent and forward thinking women who I have had the honour of documenting.

All are private commissions and the demographic has changed substantially over the years. Some I’m still in contact with, others I’ve totally lost contact with, some have become friends, some may wish not to have their real names used, others don’t mind, some may have their faces obscured for privacy reasons, others have generously shared their experiences of being photographed.)

This is Amy. I photographed her at Roodebloem Studios in 2008. We shot quite a few different looks during her 2 hour shoot, ranging from more conceptual, to more traditional nudes, vintage inspired boudoir-style images and series which had a harder more domiatrix type feel to it which incorporated the rope I had used the previous year to shoot the rope-bound girls for the Alan Walt Architects & Associates’ client end of year greeting card.

Amy’s shoot came at a time when I was really utilising the props I had already collected during my first 6 years in photography. I was also still quite connected to many of my initial references which I’d been incorporating into my ideas during my graduate body of work and so many of the themes seem prevalent in this shoot.

Amy was easy going and fun during the shoot as far as I remember, and with the usual touch of anxiety about parts of her body which she may have felt self-conscious about.
In all the years I’ve been working this closely with women there have been very few times that I’ve come across someone who is outright confident about the way their bodies look…

Since the time of this shoot Amy has been very open and happy for me to use the images in connection with other projects,- this fact (one I’ve found strangely common with my clients) is, I feel, like a vote of confidence for how such images can lend themselves to being empowering about ones self image.

Tags B&W nude, cape town boudoir, cape town nude photography, cape town photography, commercial nude photography, leah hawker, Leah Hawker cape town photographer, Leah Hawker photography, nude studio shoot cape town, The Housewives