Vamp it up

I love Halloween, and always did. Being a non english or american citizen doesn't stop me for enjoying the tradition and what it means. Living close to american folks from the military gave me a wide cultural experience, like trick-or-treating, for instance. I miss those times. American candy was and still is a treat from heaven.

So I couldn't pass the month of October without a Halloween inspired portrait. It's not meant to be pretty, it's meant to be scary and uncomfortable. It was also inspired on one of my favorite shows, "The Vampire Diaries" new promo shots. I got so impressed and astonished on how cool it looks that I wanted to try to re-make them in my own way, and I think I did pretty good.

Here are some examples of the amazing promo shots for the season.

Black background, 1.5€ dark navy tule ordered on ebay, unlimited time on doing the makeup and great music to provide the mood - that's what it takes to come up with the shoot.

From the start until the end, including the time for makeup, putting the props together, fix the lightning, test shooting, post-processing, editing... 9 long hours, no joke. I think this was the most challenging self shot I ever did, because I was obsessed about creating the perfect mood with this vampire/halloween themed portrait.

Enough of talking. Here's the B/A shots. The "Before" was already processed with color dodge and burn, did some highlights on the face, darkened the makeup and made the eyes stand out more. 

On the "After" shoot I gave the mouth the awkwardness of the vampire teeth and it's not perfect and it's not supposed to be, because vampires are not gods. They are gorgeous, but at the same time they are not human and not at all gifted with goodness and kindness. Keep that in mind, ok? (Man, reading "Dracula" really makes me look into vampire culture in a totally different way hehe).

Continuing: I added more tule texture, a little vintage old paper texture also, just to give a smoky mood into it. Darkened the image, but kept the light on my face, so it could stand out a lot more and create that spooky outcome of an evil creature, being, whatever. You get the point.

I hope you like it!