I started by working in color and sent a few emails to Crombie for some guidance as to the appropriate sort of images to select. Turns out I kind of had it wrong at first, thinking that a series of images of the cut would be useful.
For example ... the beginning ... one of the very first images I got, after her wash but before he started doing any serious cutting.
Very early on ...
An hour in or so ...
And he continues ...
I like this shot ...
And this was the last one I processed fully before seeking guidance over email ...
It turned out that the cut was entirely secondary to Ashley himself and his patented scissors. This made perfect sense to me and I restarted my search for images, discarding some I had already processed. I also ran into color problems over and over ... no cyan on his head because of the overhead lights and so on ... after speaking with Crombie on the phone, I went with black and white again.
I first went through the already processed group to find the few that met the new criteria. I felt that these four made the grade ... and note that in these shots the model (Amanda) is supposed to be secondary, although that is sometimes difficult to convey.
And now for the new shots processed only to black and white ...
One thing that Crombie noted to me when he saw these is that Ashley needs to dominate the image, and I found that many of my images were of the work and few were of the man. Something to keep in mind next time.
Some showing his concentration while cutting ... I chose several variations because of the change in Amanda's expression ... the web designer and Ashley may have very specific goals for how they want the mood of his work conveyed ...
Facing the big north window in case they want a brighter backgrop somewhere.
Combing her out with a great big smile ...
And with a more introspective look ...
A detail shot of his hands and body position when working low ...
A shot of his hands pinching the hair for some trimming ... his face slightly out of focus but prominent.
A shot of the scissors in use ...
A nice shot of Ashley himself ...
A nice isolation shot of the scissors ... obviously marred by cutting them off slightly. But since there was no other like this, I thought perhaps the shot would have some value ...
A very promionent placement of the scissors ... clearly showing their unique design ...
A crop from the same image ... I only cropped three times in the entire series ... this is one of them ...
Another image of the scissors in use ...
A superb image of Ashley with the scissors in action ...
And again working with the scissors ...
Nice isolation shot ... I believe that we posed this one (I eventually realized that I needed to find out what his trademark was and that was when I heard about the scissors and the patent ...)
Another shot posed I believe ...
If this was posed, it was the last one ... but I think this is live again ... I really like how Ashley himself frames the scissors ...
Detail shot of scissors in hand with the other punching the hair tightly ...
And when it was all over, I got Amanda to pose for some shots in the window area ... this image best shows the cut, and it's a beauty ... as is the model.
I have hundreds of excellent images form the shoot ... many of Amanda, which I will try to cull later on for a series just on her ... meanwhile, these had a specific purpose in mind and so are not representative of all stages of the cut. But they are a pretty good sampling and I must admit that I like processing both types of images from the compact and the dSLR. But I truly love the way the background goes smoothly out of focus with the dSLR .... there is simply no contest in how the final images look ... to me at least.
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