As you may well know, Alison – or Aly as she calls herself on air when she’s doing the 10 A.M. to 1 P.M. show on RedFM – was one of the contestants on Malaysia’s first online reality show, Malaysian Dreamgirl. The young lady has recently been quite busy marketing herself and getting herself invited to various events in order to be able to rub shoulders with the who’s who in the “industry” and I was privileged enough to be hired by her to do her make-up for her model portfolio. The whole photo-shoot ended up being an interesting 4 hour experience.
Now, I have to say, she’s quite brave because she hired me purely on blind faith. I had never had a chance to even do a trial make-up session on her and when I asked her why she had so much faith in me, she said that from the little time she had with me while I was training her in the studio, she could see what a perfectionist I was and she believed it would carry into when I do makeup. I have to say I’m quite pleased with that statement!
So, I was up bright and early this Sunday morning in order to be at the venue, Riana Green, by 8 A.M. to meet up with Aly and her photographer of choice, Benny, who resided there. He was someone who’s been doing photography for the past 20 years and was introduced to Aly during the Malaysian Dreamgirl contest through a mutual friend.
I don’t know how she managed it but Aly brought stacks of clothes with her, complete with shoes and accessories. Including a hair-dryer. My own make-up bag weighed a ton and it wasn’t easy trying to carry a thermos of kopi-o and a smaller bag of make-up at the same time, either.
Riana Green is a great place to have your pictures taken with its swimming pools and greenery. So many different settings to choose from in that one area and, Benny chose one of the swimming pool sections. The blue of the water made for a great backdrop. Plus, there were nearby changing rooms for men and women which made it quite convenient for both Aly and I to get the make-up done and for her to change into her outfits.
That particular day, I gave her a variety of looks starting from a clean, fresh looking one right up to a sultry, smoky-eyed look as the finale. She wanted me to play up her eyes more and tone down on the lips so I did, complete with fake eyelashes. And she has great eyes to make up – I love doing eyes. They take forever sometimes to perfect but they make the most difference. Also, Aly has next to perfect skin so that also made my job that much easier. The only problem that day was with her hair, so the hairdryer came in handy and so did my hair serum and mousse which I luckily brought along
with me as an after-thought.
It was just our luck though that after the first photo session, it decided to rain. So we all had to relocate to another venue which turned out to be a sort of outdoor lobby area. Benny apparently was quite happy with the natural lighting. So even when it stopped drizzling, the new location actually managed to work out quite well for all of us despite the lack of changing rooms. Poor Aly had to go and do her outfit changes in the mail room! But Benny’s girlfriend, Christine, was on hand to be both his assistant and to make sure nobody entered the mail room while Aly was getting dressed.
I have to say, from what I’ve seen in Benny’s camera so far, both Aly and I are eagerly waiting for him to provide her with the CD of pictures which I simply can’t wait to post up here. In the meantime, though, here are just a few that I took with Big Buddy’s digital camera. It can’t compare to Benny’s amazing and expensive equipment so… pictures may not turn out as great…
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