Yet again, Dar and I have managed to cause some mischief, this time bringing along two people to frolic with us. 

After our last collaboration, we both decided to do another one before Dar went back to school. The last few years, I’ve been craving for a photo shoot for myself which I have redundantly been doing for other people. This is the typical girl in a dress, sprawling in a field of grass or flowers. I’ve always found those types of shooting to be very enchanting and pretty, and I wanted a similar shoot for myself. However for some reason, I never got the chance to do so. Hey, sometimes I do have my little vain moments but don’t get my wrong, I enjoy being behind the camera more than in front of it…yet sometimes I can’t help but want a couple of good shots of myself, hihi~!

Dar shot a few pictures of me, and in turn I shot a few pictures for her and out friends. Some of the photos were taken with Dar’s camera while the rest were taken with mine. I still wanted to use the power of a 1.8 50mm prime lens for some of my shots like the ones above. But I absolutely fell in love with the pictures Dar took of me! They were exact feel and compositions I wanted. The dreamy and flowery-child vibe is a look that I absolutely adore, and I was happy to have these shots taken since I rarely stay in front of the camera nowadays. (Because I’ve gained a considerable amount of weight </3)

This shot is my absolute favorite~! ♥ It’s currently my profile picture on my facebook. This photo is so pretty~ Dar took this and I did the post-processing :) Don’t you guys think she’s talented?

I know I do :3 

I did my own hair, make-up, styling, and post-processing.

Thanks a lot Dar for all the pretty photos! I love them all~ thanks to Mikko for assisting, and Liac and Lissan for tagging along ♥ Love you guys :”>

Now, here are some photos of Dar that I took~

Isn’t she just pretty? We’ve known each other for a very long time dating waaaaay back when I still into lolita fashion; that was almost three years ago if I’m not mistaken. The two of us met when we joined a lolita enthusiast group, Hinamatsuri, and from there we’ve hit it off quite nicely. I even did her make-up for her debut! She was one of my first ever make-up clients and I was happy to have done a collaboration with her twice this month.

Visit her facebook page if you can! She’s a really good photographer :) 

This is a photo of our two friends who we invited, Lissan and Liac. Same story as Dar, we all met in the same lolita fashion group :) I actually had a shoot with Liac last month as well!

Cuties aren’t they?  ♥

And now, for some behind the scenes photos~!

Mikko! One of our photographers and driver for the day!

We shot until the sun went down, literally. Up to the point where there was little to no light, we kept on shooting. I wasn’t able to take so much shots because I had a wardrobe malfunction in the middle of the shoot so I had to take care of; it took up thirty minutes of the time and I went crazy because of it! Hahaha!

I had a lot of fun though, thanks guys!

Another collaboration happened last week between myself and Dar San Agustin of Hello Miss Dar. This was something the two of us have talked about for a really long time and we were both glad it finally came to life. 

Some of you may know that photography isn’t the only thing I do, but I also do a little bit pf hair and make-up on the side. I even get some small jobs as a make-up artist from time to time. Hair and make-up is something I taught myself in order to support my photography. For example whenever I have a shoot and I need a make-up artist, I wouldn’t need to constantly phone someone to do it for me but instead I could just go on in and do it myself; this way I am able to control the look of my photos even more.

Dar invited me to become the hair and make-up artist for her major photo shoot project. The theme was a about “the seven deadly sins”, and this is a very common theme nonetheless but she decided to portray it in a different way. All the models were submerged in a bathtub one at a time and have these little cute props related to their respective sin scattered everywhere. 

I didn’t do all the models’ make-up, I only did two of the seven sins, which were Lust and Greed. Dar chopped the shoot into three days and got different make-up artists to do each day. Caz a.k.a Amadeobeloved and Dar did the make-up for other models on the other shooting days and they did really good jobs too. 

Introducing Gepit, the first model I made-up during the show. She’s a very sweet and quiet girl and didn’t really say much, but she obediently followed the directions haha!

Dar wanted a very golden/bronzed look for Gepit, something very classy and gave off the vibe of being abundant yet selfish. She allowed me a bit of artistic freedom in the shoot and I did a little tweaking, giving her these crazy golden lips, eye shadow, eye brows, and even giving her a cute teased hairstyle. I won’t go on and on about the entire process, but instead, here’s a photo from the final output of our set.

When the photo came out we were like “Oh my god, Beyonce!” Hahaha! I was very pleased with how I did the hair and make-up. Even I was taken aback by the transformation. Dar’s photography skills did a lot of justice to the theme and the model, it was really lovely.

Second model, Christine, who represented the sin of Lust. I wasn’t able to have a before photo taken of her because it was only the two of us in the room that time and I forgot to take a photo beforehand, haha! So I guess this half-way done make-up will suffice. 

It was funny because I took so much time doing her hair because her hair was extremelyyyy thick! You have to give her props for having really healthy hair, but I think this is the first time I spent more than an hour doing hair for a seemingly simple hairstyle. Well since I am just starting with hair styling I guess I better learn a bit more tips and tricks to hasten and improve. 

Okay, I’m dragging now, here’s a photo from the Lust set!

A few more BTS shots!

I could probably say this shoot was very relaxed and fun, there was no pressure, nobody was running around all stressed an whatnot. This is what I love about collaborations, there’s no pressure about money, about time; you guys are just there laughing and letting out these ideas and the only thing on your mind is to have fun and maybe laugh your heads off while trying to take nice photos.

Thanks Dar for inviting me! <3 

Love you girl! :)

To end this post, here’s a couple more photos from the Greed and Lust set. Check out the rest of the shots on Dar’s facebook page 

So here it is without any further adeiu, our summer project for this year!

The Council of Human Inadequacies is our joint project with two very talented makeup artists – Kristin Cornejo and AmadeoBeloved, and a number of our friends who have been models in our previous works. This is our biggest project to date – spanning three days of shooting, and we can proudly say that we’ve pulled off something that we previously thought was beyond our reach.

Each day at 3pm we’ll feature a member of the council, which can be found here and at our Facebook page here.

It all started with water. Water in a film 71 years ago. Some months back, Dar had a movie assignment in one of her subjects wherein they have to make a report on an old film entitled “The Streetcar Named Desire”. She liked the movie and is struck by its numerous themes – one of which, is the use of water as a representation for “cleansing”. Cleansing, in the sense that one wishes to remove existing flaws in themselves, in the attempt to reach some sort of purity.

This one simple theme was great, but it needs a good launching point. We need a topic that could express this well – one that is relatable and well-known. This eventually led is to our own re-imagination of the seven deadly sins. It was famous enough that people know what it’s about, and very much open to interepretation. Numerous works about it can be found, yet there seem to always be space for another interpretation of it.

Still, we wanted to try to twist it a little bit further – most people would start the idea on “sin” itself and work their way from there. We started a little further back. We asked ourselves: what creates sin? After much thought we came up with this answer that would lay as the foundation of our set’s design: Sin, is a result of human inadequacy. An inadequacy to give in to their desire, at the expense of not doing what’s right and good.

Armed with these two ideas, we went to set everything in motion.

That’s it for now, tune in tomorrow, same time, as we tackle our set design (“like why is everyone in a tub”) Until then!

-HMD