>>Taken From the SNICHOVAULT<< Behind every good woman is a stand holding her up.

Here's another batch of oldies from my beginning days of making photography. Todays entry will be of my beloved towel holding companion, who over the years has successfully freaked out many house guests. I received this fiberglass friend one year for Christmas from a coworker who felt it reminded him of his ex-wife too much, and figured I could make use of it as a student photographer. He was right, it did remind me of his ex-wife.


That shot up there was taken in the bathroom of my very first apartment, which these images are stirring memories of presently. The apartment was too big for me to live alone in, but too small for making the silly photos I wanted to make at the time. At least there was room for a mannequin to be out of mind, so as not to be afraid of it coming to life and murdering me at any moment.

Luckily that has yet to happen, in the meantime it has served well:

When you are a student in photography and simply want to practice, but don't know how or what you're doing, having a mannequin is probably one of the best tools one could have. Shooting a friend can be nice, but it can be frustrating dealing with their needs, their boredom, and the fact that they have to move and breathe. Using a mannequin like this one definitely gave my photo 1 and 2 pictures an edge over the other students soft and blurry images of people who have no business being photographed.

Here was an early silhouette study:

I think I did this by backlighting a huge glass tabletop which was set on its side and draping a white sheet over it. Truly a wasteful and dangerous way to achieve a silhouette, but it turned out nice. I think I used a mirror to spill back some of the light to catch some of the front details.

And one last pic of my most trusted lady before wrapping up:

There you go kiddies, another useful tip! Find a mannequin! If you can't find one, I guess steal one cause they cost too much to be worth buying. All that matters is that we all as a society stop taking pictures of frumpy friends, because that is just depressing.