SPC: Glam, Week 1 - Classic Black and White

The theme for November's Self-Portrait Challenge is Glam: "Lets ditch those imperfections and go all out GLAM. Yes lets glam it up with some disco, diamonds and glitter. I suggest some gorgeous shots - really over do it on the posing and makeup and dressups and show us the extrovert you." I've been finding this challenge both a lot of fun and also really, well...challenging! I love the part about playing dress-up with fancy clothes and jewelry, and glomming on the make-up. I enjoyed looking for props and back-drops that might be interesting. But I found it was a little tricky to end up with something that I thought said "glam" instead of "aging drag queen." Ahem. Because I've always been a fan of old movies, that's my inspiration this month - classic Hollywood. Each of the portraits I'm doing is inspired in some way by old Hollywood publicity shots or pin-ups. This first week, I'm sharing one that's inspired by an old style of publicity shot that was popular in the 1920's and 1930's. It's one where the subject of the portrait was dressed in black and posed against a black backdrop and the photo was shot in high contrast so that the body virtually disappears into the background and only the face and (sometimes) hands are featured. Check out the examples below of (clockwise from upper left): Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Louise Brooks, and Greta Garbo. This technique turned out to be harder to pull off than I thought it would be, but in the end I came up with one I liked. So here is my first Glam SPC: "Self-Portrait in Classic Black and White" (clickable if you want to see it larger in a new window)