Posts Tagged les coquettes
Les Coquettes Academy
Posted by Ryan in On Location, Pretty Girls on April 12, 2010
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.
Les Coquettes Present: Love Story
Posted by Ryan in In Studio, Time Lapse Videos on January 23, 2010
The 2010 Les Coquettes season is underway with their February production of Love Story. I once again photographed the poster art/ad campaign.
Photo: Ryan Visima (moi); Layout and Design: Jake; Models: Georgie Gates (Dana Bondy), The Carpenter (Dave Lapsley); Makeup: Angela McQueen
The goal was a Harlequin romance novel level of cheesiness, and I think we hit it big time. Check out the lighting setup:
Dana and Dave are on a dark grey seamless backdrop. The main light was an Alien Bees 1600 in a 24×36 softbox. The rim light was a Nikon SB-900 at full power, with a warm orange gel, to simulate Dana and Dave being lit up by the romantic fire that rages behind them. The reflector in the bottom right corner actually wasn’t to reflect any light at all — we used it as an impromptu wind machine. La Minouche (Catherine Skinner) waved it furiously for the better part of half an hour! The image was also flipped on the horizontal axis in post, which is why the diagram doesn’t match up with the light sources in the photo.
Back to Les Coquettes… It’s an exciting season for a couple reasons. First up is a new venue, the Lower Ossington Theatre. The shot above was produced in one of the rehearsal facilities at the LOT.
I recently got a new camera (Nikon D300s), so my old Nikon D200 has been relegated to backup status. That makes it perfect for things like time lapse videos, so I made a little behind-the-scenes magic for your enjoyment. It stops just short of where we actually started shooting the poster content. The camera’s intervalometer was set to 4 second intervals and I took 1,486 shots between 8:00pm and 9:40pm. It’s being played back at 24fps.
The second exciting reason is a new venture in tiered ticket prices and fundraising. The layout of the venue provides some flexibility in terms of seating, so there’s three different price levels — proceeds from the upper price tier are going towards the Toronto Youth Theatre.
Best of all, Love Story is being presented twice in one night — each show being slightly different from the other. Want to see a bawdy night of burlesque and then have a romantic Valentine’s dinner after the show? Go for it — the first show is at 7pm. Prefer to eat first and be entertained later? That’s cool too, because the late show starts at 9:30.
This is awesome for me, the photographer, who usually can’t enjoy the full spectrum of the show when seeing it through my viewfinder. So I’ll get to watch one show and photograph the other.
The show is three weeks away, but tickets are already selling out. See you there!
Les Coquettes Present: Dark Places
Posted by Ryan in On Location on October 6, 2009
The next Les Coquettes production is in full swing and coming to Revival on October 25th! Last week, we shot the poster image with three of the loveliest Coquettes: Billie Black, La Minouche, and Charity Dawn. And let’s not forget The Carpenter!
Photo: Ryan Visima (moi); Art Direction/Styling: Catherine Skinner, James Smith, Sarah Jamal; Makeup: Angela McQueen; Layout and Design: James Smith
Buy tickets online here or click the image above. And for more Les Coquettes goodness, check out:
- photos from the last show on Flickr
- videos on the YouTube channel
- Facebook group
Lighting for this was pretty simple… sticking to my one-light-is-more-than-enough ethic, I only used an Alien Bees 400 strobe with a 40° grid. The camera’s white balance was set intentionally cool for the pale vampire effect.
Les Coquettes @ Bread & Circus
Posted by Ryan in Events & Performances on August 16, 2009
My favourite gal-pals (and a few boy-pals) from Les Coquettes did a little three-day run of a show titled The Long, Hot, Summer.
Illustration by James Smith, based on photos by moi. L-R: Charity Dawn, Dante Inferno.
Bread & Circus was the venue — a tiny little 80-seat venue in Toronto’s Kensington Market neighbourhood. It’s much smaller than we were all used to — “backstage” was more of a hallway than anything else, the spotlights were dim, and shooting in such a cramped environment was challenging to say the least.
The upshot was that I had three days to get it right, so I was able to plant myself in a different spot every night to get a variety of shots from all angles.
See the whole set on Flickr!
Les Coquettes Strikes Again
Posted by Ryan in Uncategorized on May 29, 2009
My pals from Les Coquettes are at it again, presenting a revised and updated version of The Beautiful and The Damned this Sunday. Lo and behold, Toronto Life magazine thought the event was worthy enough to grace the front page of their website… and they featured my photo! Check out The Weekender article as well with my photo credit. Here’s a screencap of the front page in case it’s gone by the time you get there:
Photo: Ryan Visima (moi), Models: Georgie Gates and Dew Lily, Makeup: Larissa Palaszczuk, Wardrobe Styling: Matthew Stokes, Art Direction: Catherine Skinner.
Les Coquettes (Again)
Posted by Ryan in Uncategorized on March 4, 2009
I’ve blogged twice before about Toronto’s Les Coquettes, and wanted to share with you images from their latest production, The Beautiful and the Damned.
If you missed the show, there’s good news: they’re doing it all over again on March 29th May 31st! Check out the details of the second run of The Beautiful and the Damned on the Facebook event page, and buy your tickets here. Perhaps they should switch the name to The Damned and the Beautiful?
I’ve had a great time covering these performances and was quite proud to see the Toronto Star ran my photo to promote the last show.
The Beautiful and the Damned
Posted by Ryan in Uncategorized on February 5, 2009
Photo: Ryan Visima (moi), Models: Georgie Gates and Dew Lily, Makeup: Larissa Palaszczuk, Wardrobe Styling: Matthew Stokes, Art Direction: Catherine Skinner
February 22nd is fast approaching, and that means it’s time for another performance from Les Coquettes! Last I blogged about these gals, I had just finished shooting their fabulous holiday-themed show, A Winter’s Tail. They liked me so much that I was enlisted to shoot the promo images for their upcoming show, The Beautiful and the Damned, once again hosted by Revival in Toronto’s west-end. (Everything west of Yonge St. is “west-end” to me.)
Join the Facebook Event page for more info and to see more photos from the shoot!
Les Coquettes
Posted by Ryan in Uncategorized on December 18, 2008
On Sunday night, I had the distinct pleasure of photographing the latest event/show/extravaganza from Toronto’s premier nouveau burlesque troupe, Les Coquettes.
My first introduction into the world of burlesque came during Toronto’s 2007 Luminato festival, with a presentation called the Spiegelshow (see slideshow on Flickr) — so good that I saw it three times during the course of its run.
My gorgeous new friend Catherine, one of the troupe’s founding members, invited me to photograph their holiday presentation, A Winter’s Tail, at the Revival in Toronto’s Little Italy. Built on the grounds of an old Baptist church, it seemed like the perfect place for a bit of bawdry Sunday night fun!
Check out a review of the show here, and join the Les Coquettes Facebook group! The next show is February 22nd, and I expect all of you to be there!