I met Milan last January when I was in Los Angeles shooting editorial. I had three shoots I had to cast for and while she wasn’t the right fit for the jobs I was shooting for, I knew I HAD to shoot her at some point. When I returned to LA three months later to teach at my LA Workshop I revisited the idea of working with her. I didn’t have a magazine assignment, though. But no worries, I decided I would test with Milan! And I’m really glad I got the opportunity to because she was amazing in front of the camera! In fact, I loved her so much, I just shot her again last month for Jimon Magazine. So look out for that shoot soon as I think the magazine is going to hit the newsstands shortly.
Milan is 5’9 1/2″ and has the most incredible body! She’s very toned and I wanted to show that banging body of hers, so I lit her with a white beauty dish only. I didn’t diffuse or grid the dish, I really wanted to see a hard line of light right on her skin. Anabel DeHaven from Artists by Timothy Priano did the make up and shined Milan’s skin up making it a nice reflective surface so the light would shine! Jonathan Mason, also from Artists by Timothy Priano, who styled Milan’s hair, simply slicked it back so we could use different head pieces on her. And of course, my dearest friend and one of my favorite stylists, Rodney Burns, pulled the looks together.
The beauty dish was placed just camera right of Milan, casting a shadow on the backdrop. I used some antique lights in the background mainly for atmosphere. I brought the images back to NYC and had them retouched in NYC. Two months later, while I was Europe, I was honored with an exhibition in Amsterdam displaying some of my fashion work. Since my shoot with Milan had never found a home in a magazine, I thought that she would be great as part of the exhibition. So we printed huge prints of her from this shoot and they were presented in July in Amsterdam. You can read about the show here!
And oddly enough, this past December, Advance Magazine from Amsterdam wrote me and asked me if I had a story that hadn’t been published that they could run. I showed them Milan and they loved it so they ran her in their January issue! So in the end, Milan found an editorial and now Holland really knows about Milan!