After a very rough 2021, I was really set on starting 2022 in a good place. I always like to use the Pantone Colour of the year as a starting place for my first meaningful piece of work each year.
I had arranged to work on this again with the queen of hair colour, Saffy Burton in Aylesbury. Her colours are always so vibrant and interestingly applied it was a no brainer. I had also enlisted super makeup artist Olivia Todd to bring her skills into the fold.
This years announcement was made in early December as always and this years colour is Very Peri. Pantone describes this as: “a dynamic periwinkle blue hue with a vivifying violet red undertone blends the faithfulness and constancy of blue with the energy and excitement of red. A new Pantone colour whose dynamic novel presence encourages personal inventiveness and creativity”
Initially I wasn’t very excited by the colour announcement as it was similar to the Ultraviolet tone from 2018. I had shot something for that colour so I wanted something different to those images. I experimented with three different looks and selected a couple of shots from each look.
The first look was just using a simple neutral backdrop and let the hair colour do the talking. However once I started shooting I felt it lacked something. So I switched to a longer exposure and used a moving coloured constant light source to add something different. I also added a little camera movement to bring in some coloured ghosting.
The second and third looks were using a purple backdrop which I lit at different powers to created a different hue. The team changed up the looks on the models to give some different range in the images.
From what started as a colour I wasn’t very inspired by, it turned into some dynamic work of which I am proud of.
Credits
Hair: Safy Burton
Assisted by: Sophie
Makeup: Olivia Todd
Models: Robyn Balnaves & Beth Bingle