Ever wondered what happened when you mix a burlesque performer known for her zombie antics with a Christmas shoot – you get this! Tragedy struck during editing though and my computer decided to die (this has been dubbed “The Great Crash of 2012″ by Bridget) and I lost everything except these few shots that were posted online. Definitely reshooting this in Winter though, when it’s more acceptable weather for the costume. Mrs Santa outfits just weren’t made for Australian summers!

Had a 2nd round of xmas mini-shoots down at Waikiki on the 10th. Ended up with 3 out of 5 kids to shoot, and probably just as well. First 2 kids went fairly easy, 1yr olds you just need to stop from crawling away otherwise they just sit there looking cute. Older kids I’ve found aren’t too hard to handle except they are a little fussy on either wanting to be in every photo or wanting to do silly things that their parents probably don’t like so much…but #3 was definitely my challenge of the day! With the exception of my nephew I’ve mostly worked with babies, toddlers are a whole different scenario, sometimes they are nice and camera happy, other times it’s like their possessed and you wonder what planet they fell from. Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids myself but I do find it all funny. But I do enjoy a challenge and you can’t expect a child to want their photo taken just because everyone says so, so despite his not giving a crap about a Christmas tree or decorations I tried to make the most of the car he was all excited about. Half way through one of the mum’s decided to tie the tree to the car to make it xmassy. What I learned from this shoot though: don’t remove the toy keeping the child amused! I thought if we moved the car to a different room we might be able to get some shots with just the tree. I felt terrible for causing his mum massive grief having to deal with the outburst. I was so worried about not being able to deliver decent shots but my fav shot of the day is him pulling a grumpy face at me. It’s so cute!!

I decided to run the xmas mini-shoots again last year after not doing them last year, with the aim being itty bitty babies and pin-up sessions and this year with the exception of one person it was ALL kids bookings. Kids that talk. I’ve never understood why kids liked me (I know now though, they like my stuff!). Kids will just start talking to me about absolutely anything. I went to a shoot once for one girl and I’d barely put my bag down and next thing had a 4yr old asking if I want to see her room and ran off to show me her new shoes.  I decided lollies were the answer and bought candy canes. What better way to bribe children into smiling right? But I should have bought a 2nd box for myself..

All things aside, these were two very gorgeous Christmas fairies who had no objections to playing with stuffed Elves, chomping candy canes and pulling faces and were extremely patient (being a big kid and owning toys keeps them distracted I found) while I worked out where I was going wrong lighting one shot!

Wednesday I had a shoot with Caitlin (aka Miss Kitty de Vos) for our Day of the Dead theme. Like most days I was having a freak out leaving the house convinced I’d forgotten something, half way there I realised I forgot the Sugar Skull shaped chocolates!! Considering the weather though I decided they were much safer in the fridge where I left them.

We met up at the cemetery where we were shooting, I sat around while Iskra from Vixen Express did her thing (and we found out Caitlin is in the finals for Miss Alternative 2012) then we ended up having more of a mini tour of the cemetery than shooting and despite being in a cemetery, only a handful of shots actually show any graves. One section of the cemetery is very deceiving. It’s beautiful, nice green, great lighting…and has the BIGGEST MUTANT MOSQUITOES EVER!!! We did get lucky that the heat dropped off enough for when we started shooting that no one died of heat stroke but I apparently need a golf buggy for Iskra haha

Sunday night was the final ever Burlesque Ball at the Fremantle Town Hall and as a sponsor for this leg of the tour it meant myself and my friend got to glam it up for the night.

This was where we sat!

It can be summed up like this… FANTASTIC performances! GORGEOUS costumes! and MC Tigger! was bat shit crazy!! We LOVED him!! and by the grand finale my +1 Amy was crying from joy and wants to take up Burlesque herself…it would seem I’m a bad influence! But overall it was just an awesome night and so nice to be able to hang out with Duchess Silk without it being work related.

There was a long queue for the toilet during intermission. I took this while a lady was trying to take a photo with her iPhone :p

Even the audience put in a lot of effort into their outfits. One guy was dressed as the Mad Hatter, one girl was a Unicorn – seriously that was the best idea EVER, another girl (pictured above) had lights and watering cans in her hair! The best costume award was clearly a tough one and not to be biased but my 2 fav’s (local burlesque starlets) got in the finals with their brightly coloured creations and half of the people on the stage were sitting in our general area too. Clearly we had the beautiful people up in the balcony But again, as Jac Bowie got onstage and announced it was a clear winner – but congratulations again to Alissa Lovering for winning Best Outfit and winning all the amazing prizes from the sponsors.

End of the night I went all fangirl when I stopped to look for someone and realised I was standing next to Rita Fontaine. I believe it went like this *turn around “OMG CAN I HAVE MY PHOTO TAKEN WITH YOU?” shove camera at Amy* Then I realised the camera was still in film mode and had to change it to snap happy for the photo. By the way, I’m sorry Rita! I’d stick the photo up…but I have this *omg I’m so embarrassed* thing going on right now.

I do have some incredibly awful video footage that was taken on my hot pink pocket camera. So far I’ve only stuck one up on Youtube but as soon as I can the rest are going up! Sound quality isn’t great, but you can understand half of the talking bits. For now though feel free to check out Lola the Vamp’s controversial routine!