From another shoot before Christmas in 2009 I did an early afternoon test shoot with a new (to me) London model called: Kuba James. I found Kuba while networking and searching on Model Mayhem (MM for those who refer to it often). Looking for people in London, MM is my go to site for finding fresh faces and new models to work with.

The short 2 hour duration photography test shoot in my London flat involved only two or three looks. This was a simple test shoot to find out James range in modelling and practice my own skills in making a model comfortable. I’ve less experience in working with male models, so find that direction and my own height problems caused a few hiccups.

The start of the shoot was a warm up and goofing around, laughing and swapping stories. Kuba was interested in one of my lenses called a Lensbaby 2.0. So I popped it on and took a few photos with it to show how it captures the world. It’s also a favourite quirky lens for me, it frees me up from being technically perfect and instead enjoy where I put the ‘sweet spot’ focus and get it as close to focused as possible. I’ve always loved how this lens blurs everything at the edges depending on just how far you bend the bendy concertina focus on it.

Afterwards I asked if he’d mind stripping from the waist up as I wanted to capture some more artistic style shots and I find skin is condusive towards this! *ahem*

I was inspired by the swan lake theatre make up done for the all male cast edition showing in the ballet world. So I took that memory from years ago and created the make up you see here. Simple black eye shadow applied with a make up brush and fingers. Kuba’s eyes are a piercing crystal blue and I was drawn to capture them. Which further brought out strong feeling of vampirism when I looked at these!

I liked the make up emphasis so much that I asked for a few more ;)

To wrap up the shoot and capture the last of the dying suns rays in the very early london winter afternoon, I asked him to move nearer to my venetian blinds and hoped to capture a stripy light and shadow look, but alas alak .. we were a few minutes too late. The sun had just dipped behind the horizon.

Still I think the soft light captures were great and the faded colours go well in having a faint faded look. Nostalgic and whistful.

I think Kuba James will make a great commercial model for fashion and the more beatnic couture and quirky high fashion make up ranges of artwork. But… that could just be my own creative bent speaking here!

Good luck to you Kuba in your adventures and hope to work with you again one day.

– CathieGraphy, a London Photographer.