Les Coquettes Academy

As part of my ongoing work with Les Coquettes, I was recently assigned to shoot some images for Les Coquettes Academy. The Academy is burlesque university, essentially — a six-week course on performing, creating characters, and costume design. I shot four girls in forty minutes with three lights, which was a challenge. We were pressed for time, and the four students weren’t exactly professional models. Lilli Bubalotovich, their instructor, helped out tremendously by suggesting poses unique to their characters, while I quickly snapped away.

These and many others were all shot on white seamless paper, which gave me the flexibility to change the background colour in post production, since there wasn’t enough time during the shoot to switch up coloured gels. Zack Arias, photographer extraordinaire, has a great video tutorial on this technique.