Star Trek Aliens

I don't recall exactly what prompted me to do this, but here it is.

It wasn't as much work as it might seem. I expected to be doing makeup for most of the day, but I think overall it only took about 2 and a half hours for everyone - admittedly it was rushed and I did a lot of "I can fix it in photoshop" over certain things. I'm not so anal about what I do that would never admit that I do rely on photoshop to fix things, mostly my laziness or my unwillingness to spend hours on a makeup for an hour long photo shoot.

I don't really care for the idea of doing group shoots, unless there's some perfect theme or idea that just lends itself to the idea. Mainly my issue is that it's almost always going to feel posed, in this case I relied heavily on that and just let that be the case. It had been a long morning and it felt like there was already so much going on that I wasn't allowing myself to just take it all in and do something a little more elaborate with the staging of the shots.

There's always the issue of how do you feature every makeup properly in every shot, and I was more fixated on that - in hindsight I have a few ideas that wouldn't have work with that in mind, but would've yielded some potentially really cool shots. Ah well, too late now.

Regardless of seeing the missed opportunities, I think it was well worth it. I'm happy with how it all turned out - really impressed that the Ferengi makeup worked as well as it did, I was expecting a bit of a trainwreck with it.

They Live Demons.

This shoot was a long time coming, it was suggested to me last fall after my Demon Ash vs Evil Dead shoot. The biggest stumbling block were the damned alien masks and finding the time to make them. I knew I did want to deal with makeup on several people that might limit their vision and kill my back in the application process. I wanted to keep it quick and simple.

It ended up not exactly being quick or simple. The lateness of the season meant the weather turned a little sour and it's been raining, we had to move inside - which wasn't an issue for the most part, other than it was really warm and anyone who's ever worn a latex mask knows they're not exactly air conditioned.

In order to keep the aliens from smothering to death in the masks, we had to suss out all out shots ahead of time and keep things moving while it mostly worked, it did hinder any spontaneity, so while I was going over the pictures I kept seeing other angles that would have worked, but it's too late now and I'm happy with how it turned out.

The masks themselves worked decently, I did a little fiddling with some clear plastic to make the eyes, again to facilitate everyone being able to see what was going on.

It was tricky doing "action" shots since I wanted the makeup and the masks to be clearly visible, so it limited angles and all that crap. Overall I think we were successful in doing something silly and campy.