欣。雨。: PolkaDotPigs themed shoot

Sometime back, the piggies did a themed photoshoot with Melissa. A themed shoot for the first time ever! Wrote this draft on 27 May...and I only finished it now...

The piggies wanted to give customers a fresh perspective this time round, so they came up with a occupation-themed shoot. There was a whooping 9 occupations they deemed able to emulate for the shoot!

Brother Piggy spent some time picking up the poses for the model & coming up with names for the clothes (named after the famous person in that occupation!), by researching online.

Next up was the selection of props. It was kinda hilarious. Most props were modified from whatever was available at home. The parents had a whole bomb shelter worth of antiques (or vintage-collectibles, sounds better?).

The model & photographer were all roped in to help provide some props too! Here's some photos that you might not see on the piggies' website!

This is the driving picture for the shoot, with the model imagining about one day she take on different roles for a day.

Job #1 - Professional tennis player. Clothing named after Sharapova, a former World No. 1 Russian professional tennis player. For these tennis shots, the piggies originally wanted a picture of Melissa returning a serve, with a real tennis ball.

"Okay, Mel has gotten the ball! Let's try a serve!"

"Er, the ball is too low. Can't hit. Let's try throwing a ball higher!"

"Eh, the ball leh? Where did it go?!" Crew looked up, looked down, looked left & looked right. Haha!

After several tries, the piggies admitted defeat to a tennis ball who just couldn't follow instructions, so they settled for posed shots instead.

Job #2 - Next on the list is Beauty Queen! The piggies got Melissa to bring her tiara & sash that she won when she was crowned Queen of Queens in 2009! Her poise is really befitting of a beauty queen, isn't it? What a beautiful tiara she has there! The piggies had the idea of this occupation when they realised Melissa was indeed a beauty queen in real life, which means she would have the 'props'! I still think they should have named this dress Melissa. It would be so apt!

Job #3 - One occupation that's really interesting is singer-songwriter, with the dress named after Yamagata, an American singer-songwriter!

en.wikipedia.org

Actually, the boys had a small light blue toy guitar bought from a night market. That was supposed to be the prop. But the photographer laughed and instead lent the piggies her husband's electric guitar. Gosh, it was damn funky!

I am looking at the photo & wondering why the electric guitar does not have any strings. Are such guitars different from the normal guitars? Pardon my ignorance...maybe next time I go ask the piggies.

In true rocker style, the piggies wanted to attempt jump shots. Melissa was real sporting. She did the jumps in those precarious high heels, not needing to change into flats! The boys labelled the jump as dangerous. =P

Ready,

Jump!!

It baffles me how Mel can land so precisely in those heels and with shampoo-ad-worthy hair to boot. It took about 5-6 tries to capture the jump shots the piggies have in mind.

Tough to be a model nowadays, isn't it? Brownie points for Mel's professionalism!

Job #4: Photographer!

A camera prop, courtesy of the photographer. The top here was named after Dorothea Lange, an American photographer famous for her Depression-era work.

One of Dorothea's quotes that I really like is: "The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."

How true. So many times we get all smitten by a photograph, and fail to realise that the objects in it are probably all around us.

Job #5 - Baker!

The piggies had to improvise on the baker's hat and their mummy managed to find a costume hat which when turned over is white. Just nice for a baker's hat! Lol.

I think the rolling pin & baking tray are from home too. The cakes stood in to help before being demolished by the crew afterwards. Haha!

Job #6 - Makeup artist!

Job #7 - Writer!

Love the suitcase! So rustic!

This shot didn't make it to the site's photos but somehow, I just like the 4 blue pencils in this picture. Reminds me of my Art lessons in secondary school. I've 2-4 of such pencils - HB, B, 2B or something like that. I don't enjoy pencil sharpening though. I'm very prone to breaking the lead while sharpening and the brown wooden part would be lopsided. Frustrating. Not good at it even after all these years.

Job #8 - I can't remember what the piggies told me this is, but I figure that it should be Librarian!

Have you heard the saying about an apple?

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away."
"If the doctor is handsome, throw the apple away!" =DD

Job #9 - Dancer

This occupation was supposed to be a Cheerleader, with pompoms courtesy of the model. But the night before the shoot, the piggies were informed that no pompoms is available and Big Brother was warning the piggies not to attempt to DIY pompoms in the middle of the night. Haha! So dancer, it became.

There was one time with another model where we were trying to create a 1-leg-tiptoe-and-spin kind of shot, but the model was totally unable to keep her balance despite many tries. So I was looking at the shots and thought to myself that for Mel to have such balance, she must have had dancing background. True enough, I found out later that she is trained in ballet. =D

It was a mad rush to squeeze all the shots in within the time frame but the piggies & the crew had a fun time creating them! It injected a very energetic vibe into the photos, I feel.

I might have mentioned this before but here's doing another plug for the piggies!

They now have their first rack space at KissJane, at Bugis Junction #03-13A. For this new project, PolkaDotPigs created a retail label, named RiverVale.

I have not been down to KissJane yet, but looking at the exterior of the shop brings to my mind of a whimsical wonderland where beautiful clothing grow in abundance on trees and you can harvest them all year round! Haha!

The above photo is taken from Fann Wen Qing's blog, because the piggies' photos are not as sharp as hers. =P You can view her blog entry on RiverVale here.

Clothing at RiverVale are mostly not available at Polkadotpigs.com and limited to 1-2 pieces per design. The piggies restock every week. To stay in touch with RiverVale updates, check out their Facebook page!

When I see the photo on the left, all I can think of : "Oh, the Ipad. Ipad!". But I totally adore the interesting background picture too! The purple dress has such a scenic big field background that I somehow expect to see little sheep jumping over the fences! Must go & ask the piggies how they do it. =DD

I love the way the piggies do the pictures above! How brillant to match the outfits to approriate occasion kind of backgrounds! Beautiful! Makes my blog look pretty too!

I like the peacock maxi with that background. As if it's the home of the model and she's just lounging around in a expensive dress at her biggggg home, like some young tai-tai!

On a personal note, seeing the piggies come so far since their beginning days, I really can empathise with the ups & downs of keeping a business in momentum. Not easy at all, even if you think, "Oh, it's just a blogshop, isn't it?". It's a business that the piggies have really put in a lot of effort to grow & keep it going, during their darkest times. I wrote a bit about it before here. I have my fair share of darkest times too, working on TFL. One of them is now working full time on PDP so you can really see the transformation that their web store went through the past few months. It has been 2 months for them at KissJane and I'm really happy for them that things are great!

Do make time to pop by www.polkadotpigs.com or RiverVale@KissJane for great retail therapy!

Here's more reasons to tempt you!