The Gatsby Project

A colleague of mine, Alexandra, approached me about a concept that she had: Just how far can you stretch someone’s personality in a day?

The practical meaning? How many haircuts, color, makeup, outfit changes can one person (and a stylist) go through in as short of a time frame as possible. Well the answer as it turns out was 23!

We started at 8am. Alexandra had long blonde hair and a full face of makeup. The “avatar” that she presents to the world.

From there the stylist, Samina, cut and colored her hair.

Alexandra changed the color of her contacts and played around with different makeup looks.

Changed up her outfit. And the dogs even got involved!

Until….

This was the look we described as the blank slate. Your starting point for creating your avatar. What if creating your own look was as easy as creating a character in a video game?

This shoot was anything but easy, 12 hours of shooting, styling, makeup, haircuts and color. Oh and did I mention we shot this in Alexandras living room?

The low ceilings and overall limited space made for a bit of a challenging work environment. I wanted the lighting to be visually simple. I started with a beauty dish then added two lights with reflectors in for a subtle rim lights, just so we didn’t lose the edges of the body or hair. The test shots showed that to be a bit too dark so I added a bare bulb firing into the back wall and a reflector pointing at the ceiling for a subtle overall fill. Thanks to the LED modeling lights we were able to capture short clips of each look for a video.

To date, this has been the most interesting project I worked on. Lots of planning, shooting and editing but an experience that was second to none for me.

The Gatsby Project was on display at Funky Buddha Hot Yoga Studio in downtown Grand Rapids for ArtPrize 2021.