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.
