An Arabian Foray

I've known Abby Coalcliff of Devilish Cupcake since her very first days in the virtual fashion world - our fates coincided because her clothes were the first I ever blogged, back in the days of Style Disorder, and, on the flipside, I was the first person to blog her clothes. Things like this tend to help you bond.

She's still one of my favourite designers and seems to have a knack of inspiring my creative juices with her funky, colourful designs - such as with the picture above, which was one of my first forays into flickr arty goodness.

Talking of which, I've been complaining for years that I have no way to get the pictures in my head out as anything other than really crap stick men, so fiddling around with Photoshop, as amateur and bull-in-a-china-shop as I may be, is wish-fulfillment for me.
I said at the beginning of the year that I wanted to learn photography: post-processing is, of course, a big part of this, so improving my Photoshop skills has a practical side, too.

Abby sent me a message recently, asking if I'd do a teaser shot for the dress she was making. I believe I may have squealed - at work, of course, as these things wouldn't be mortifying in private - and said a very big yes, and these pictures are the result. The dress reminded me of Arabia, so I went for that as a theme.

I can't work out which I like best, because in a couple I played with lighting effects to hide the dress slightly, in the interests of keeping it teaser-y, but the prettiest seem to be those with full, bright colour.

The shots were taken in a strange little Arabian-themed club in which noobs in system skin kept wandering up and going into appearance mode right next to me. Like ants, they are: if you don't stamp on the first one, the lot of them come to investigate.

Now be nice about them, everyone, as I have the fragile ego of an artist now, and also the emo tendencies.

They all look rather better when viewed bigger, by the by, so I recommend clicking on the pictures for a closer look. In fact, I positively demand it.