judyonthenet

Previously: The Pre-Shoot Consultation

The day of the shoot started bright and early for us; we showed up at Sophia Ritz a little before the schedule 8AM time slot. The prior night, our sales rep (who we had to call even though she said she’d call us) told me beforehand to bring silver heels, shave appropriate areas, and make sure Kelvin brings white socks and white briefs. The first floor was completely barren, and the doors were locked. A Sophia Ritz worker arrived a little before us though, so she unlocked the doors and let us in. We were led up to the third floor, which is the makeup floor. A couple brides were already there getting their makeup done. We waited in the third floor lobby area until a young lady came to get me. She asked if I had brought a “NuBra”, which freaked me out a little since nobody had told me I needed any sort of special bra. I didn’t realize a NuBra is a brand of strapless breast enhancers popular with the not-so-well-endowed.

I forget her English name… it wasn’t Jean, but it was something like that so I’ll call her that. Jean, my dressing assistant person, lead me into a private, little dressing room whose walls were all lockers. She took the key from one of the lockers and handed it to me, saying the locker was mine to keep my stuff. I had to strip down to my panties again, and I shoved all my clothes in the said locker. She opened up a different locker that had a giant thing of foundation and started powdering everything from my chest and above. It was still pretty early, so it was cold getting powdered.

Jean put me in a robe and sat me down in front of a makeup station, where I got to meet my makeup artist, Helga. (I think that’s what her name was. That or Hilga. Or Hilda.) She immediately went to work on my face, while Jean worked on brushing and sectioning my hair. Helga did the most drastic change first: trimming the eyebrows. She used a razor to shape my eyebrows, along with shaving a bit off length on the hairs she left behind. Half of my eyebrows were gone, and though it’s not something I’m used to, she did a decent job. Last time I did studio pictures (yes, I’ve done studio pictures before… no one will EVER see them), I got a lame makeup artist who had no idea what to do with my uneven eyebrows, and she even thought about trying to draw them symmetrically. Ugh. I was worried Helga might have the same mindset and actually deform my eyebrows by shaving them. Luckily, Helga knows what she’s doing, so it looked fine, and now I’m thinking of maintaining some of the shape through plucking. I wasn’t the only one who had some eyebrow shaping done; Kelvin also got a bit of his trimmed by Jean.

After the eyebrow trimming, Helga went to work on my face with her makeup kit. Before applying more foundation, she commented that my skin is pretty dry, and she asked if I wanted to use some extra-special moisturizing foundation (or something… I didn’t really understand her) for extra cost. Of course, I said no, since I don’t regularly wear makeup or have a skin regiment. It did affirm my suspicion that extra charges await me around every corner, though this sort of thing only happened again once. She had no problem with me rejecting the extra skin care stuff, and she matted my face with the regular foundation. Helga chatted with me in my limited Chinese as she did the rest of my makeup and hair. She takes a lot of care in her makeup application, and she does these cute head tilts as she applies makeup that kinda reminds me of a marionette. She seemed quite skilled at the fake eyelash application. She mentioned that it probably looks like I have a ton of heavy makeup on (especially since I don’t wear makeup regularly), but it’ll look more natural in the photos. I wear glasses, and I didn’t think to bring my contacts to Taiwan, so I sat through most of the makeup experience staring at my fuzzy reflection in mirror.

Around this time, the nail lady was coming around. Nails apparently aren’t part of the makeup package, and I forgot to buy nail polish the day before. Nail polish lady, an older, gossipy woman, was offering to trim nails for a little extra and put on nail polish for a little more extra. I can’t remember the exact cost, but I believe it was around a couple hundred NT (a few bucks) for the whole shebang. It’s nothing fancy like a manicure (just filing and nail polish), and the service was only offered for fingernails, since they felt toenails were unnecessary since most shots you wouldn’t see your toes anyway. Sure, I could spend the same amount of NT and get a whole bottle of nail polish. But I didn’t buy any nail polish (plus if I did, my applications are always very sloppy anyway), and there would no doubt be shots with hands. So I agreed to tack on the fee to the bill, and nail lady went to work on my nails and talked my ear off as Helga was still doing my makeup. Nail lady filed my nails to be nice and round, and she very neatly applied nail polish to the filed nails. She also made all sorts of weird assumptions about my family situation and talked about how my mother was so brave to take me to America for a better life at the cost of her marriage in Taiwan. (This is not the case at all.) My nails looked a lot more presentable after she was done, but of course, I got something on the nail of my engagement ring finger as the polish was drying. As a result, there was a thin line going down lengthwise. Thankfully, because of its direction, it didn’t show in any of the photos.

Helga decided to keep my hair down, but bundled to the side. Most of my real hair was used for bangs, and then she added curly extensions for the rest of the look. After hair and makeup, Jean took me to another dressing room, where I got to put on the evening gown I chose. Apparently, it was still a little too big, so Jean took the dress and ran off to get it altered. I waited in the dressing room, and after a few minutes, she came back with a fitted dress. Like the dressing consultant, she helped me put on the dress and shoved my boobs into the cups in the dress. (I think she added another set of padding for good measure :P ) She took me back to the makeup chair, where we decided on accessories. Kelvin got dressed in his G2000 suit in the guys’ dressing room on the fourth floor. He was looking very Conan O’Brien-ish, as he had a nice suit on and was incredibly pale and pasty from foundation. Jean also tried her best to get Kelvin’s uncooperative hair into some sort of wave-thing. We waited in the lobby until the lighting guy (his name is Ah-Shin and he didn’t have an English name… we later named him Ash. Funny thing, his name “Shin” is actually the same kanji as Kelvin’s middle name, so they basically have the same name. Ash sports one of those Asian mullets popular in Taiwan right now. Ugh, why??) came and took us to our first shoot.

Our first shoot was on the first floor. Behind all the tables and the stairway to the second floor is a small studio. This set is modern looking with classy furniture and a black, wooden-barred wall that looks through to the customer area. If you look at Sophia Ritz portfolios, the pictures that have a dark, contemporary feel (often taken with evening gowns) are probably taken in this studio or the hallway right outside it. Our photographer, John, started the shoot with us sitting on this leather sofa in the room. We did all sorts of configurations: sitting next to each other, by ourselves, me lying on the couch with my head in his lap, my head on his shoulder. These weird positions were causing us to get all sorts of powder all over each other clothes, which John and Ash said would not be an issue after photoshopping. Aside from setting up the lighting and holding the flash, Ash was in charge of getting the details right between each shot, like making sure my skirt was spread out all romantic-light, my hair wasn’t blocking my face… stuff like that. He was pretty much like a personal assistant. We repeated this process in the hallway.

Working with John and Ash was… interesting, given the language barrier. He’d give us instructions in Chinese and occasionally some basic English, but often times we needed him or Ash (who seemed to have a better grasp of English) to explain further. I apparently had a lot of issues with chin placement, and for some reason after an entire day of him telling me how to move my chin, I STILL don’t remember how to say chin in Chinese. Ash must have thought I was retarded because I kept asking him ALL DAY what he was saying when he said “chin” in Chinese. If words didn’t convey the message, Ash would often come over and would either pantomime it or physically move whatever needed to be moved (i.e. chins). John’s instructions were very specific; we had to move exact body parts into exact positions and hold the position and smile until he could get his shot. For example, a set of instructions would be like “chin up, chin out, more out, more out, chest up, butt out, touch husband’s face, bend leg, look at Ash, hold it, SWEET SMILE”. This took a great deal of effort, and I often found myself straining and getting tired holding poses. The language barrier also made it difficult for shots involving spontaneous movement, like dropping a skirt train or looking at falling flower petals. We’d often lose the “spontaneous” moment because we’d be trying to figure out what to do. There were a few shots that involved Kelvin spontaneously kissing my cheek or something; their main instruction for this was “gogogo!”. Unfortunately, there were a couple times they said this for something else, and Kelvin would be kissing my face when that’s not what they intended, leaving John and Ash giggling and Kelvin really confused. Yeah, Kelvin was very confused through most of this shoot. Despite our retardedness, John and Ash were very patient and good-natured with us the entire time. At least I think they were :P To make us smile, John and Ash would say silly things. John would encourage us in Chinese, English, and for some reason Japanese (Yoshi! Ganbatte!). Ash would say goofy things like “Oh yeah!” and “Oh baby!” and “Oh no!”. They were a cute duo.

After the evening gown shoot, I was sent back upstairs for a dress change, makeup touchups, and a new hairdo. Our next two shoots were outdoor shoots, so I was put into my outdoors wedding dress and given instructions by Jean on how to wear the Chinese outfit. Helga gave me a more traditional updo with a tiara and stuck a poofy veil in the bun. The mobility of the dress and poofy veil made me want to roll around on the ground and sing “Like a Virgin”, but I behaved. Kelvin changed into his white tux, mentioning that the jacket was a little big. We sat around again, waiting for John to show up. I think the traditional Chinese outfits aren’t used very often, because the makeup girls and Ash were playing around with the hats and getting a real kick out of them. Since we were about to go outside all day, my mom made a McDonald’s run so we wouldn’t starve to death. Also, we saw another couple taking pictures with their digital camera, so we took this as our cue to start breaking Sophia’s no-cameras rule ourselves. Our taxi (which was a Wish van) showed up around noon, and John and Ash packed all our stuff into the van. This included the Chinese outfits and bunch of props such as fake bouquets, along with some of our own personal items, like my heels and our cameras. My mom was also tagging along to observe the whole process and take candid pictures (all the pictures in this post are taken by her). Kelvin and I tried to nap during the 20 minutes it took to get to Yang Ming Mountain Park. It would have taken longer, but our frighteningly skilled taxi driver was efficient at navigating through traffic by doing things like driving in the shoulder (and not driving us off a mountain ledge).

The taxi parked in a gas station next to the park entrance we were using. Up the park path, I could see other couples taking their wedding pictures. There was this side path covered by trees that seemed to be a popular place to take photos, as I remember seeing this location in sample albums. Flowers from the trees were strewn all over the ground, which was hard but surprisingly not that dirty. The trees were pretty low, so our pictures were taken sitting down. Another side path was lined with flowered bushes, and we took several standing shots here. The park had a lot of color, considering it was winter. Another side path had this cool tree with several low branches going over the actual path. The photographer actually made Kelvin sit in the tree… and then he made me stand next to Kelvin sitting in the tree. Weird. Then he let Kelvin get down and took pictures of Kelvin and me talking to each other through the branches. (We actually picked this picture; the tree was just too cool looking.)

Moving down the main path, John would see spots he liked off the path and make us walk through bushes and leaves to get to whatever spot. The next spot was in the middle of a grove of trees, so there were dead leaves all over the ground. As we took pictures, bugs (including my least favorite kind) would be crawling up my dress, and Kelvin would constantly sweep them off, trying to explain to the John and Ash that I’m afraid of them. Luckily, without my glasses, it was hard for me to notice, so it didn’t bother me too much since Kelvin was handling them so well. After this, we headed back to the main path to go back to the park entrance. I was told to switch from my sneakers to my heels (which all-of-a-sudden became too small for me and was very tight on my feet). Then John ran far in front of us and told us to walk and talk towards him as he took pictures. So Kelvin and I walked and talked, mainly about how strange this whole picture-taking experience is. John spontaneously told us to look up, and Kelvin quickly looked over his head with a “Huh?” expression his face. John and Ash snickered as John clarified, “No, like, far off. To your future.” As in, for a walking-toward-and-looking-forward-to-eternity-together shot. I don’t think this one turned out too well, as we never got to see the “Look up.” photo in our final selection. Darn. Before moving on to the next site, John took us off path again by some bushes. He made us touch a leaf together and “talk about the leaf”. Yeah, we didn’t take this too seriously, so no surprise we didn’t see these in the final selection. Ash’s attempt at spontaneity by tossing petals in our face didn’t work either.

I thought we were done with Yang Ming Mountain, but when we got in the taxi, it kept taking us up and up and up the mountain. When we got to the top, we were on this road that had forest on one side, field on the other, and fog all over the place. It was pretty atmospheric, aside from the open sewage drains and at least five other couples also there taking pictures. They took pictures of us next to the forest edge, which had us standing over one of the sewage drains. There were people in the trees behind us taking photos, but John of course didn’t get them in the picture. Next, John made us go to the other side of the road where the field was. We had to jump over a much wider and deeper sewage drain to get to the field, and that was quite precarious considering my attire. The ground was soft and muddy, and I almost slipped on my butt a few times.

We got back into the taxi and thought we were REALLY done with Yang Ming Mountain, but no, there was one last stop. The taxi stopped next to a fence that had one section torn down, and John and Ash led us through this opening, down a muddy hillside, over a pile of old wood and rusty nails, along a narrow slippery path to an open field of flower bush things. It looked like a crop of flower bushes, and I didn’t know if we were on private property or what. The place looked pretty nice though. John made us take some couple-y poses, including an incredibly corny one involving us swinging our arms together. In the end, despite the effort to get to the field and the lovely scenery, we never picked any pictures from this set. There was one that I liked where it’s me and Kelvin looking off into the bright blue sky together, but it looked a little too chinese-communist-propaganda-poster to me.

After what seemed like a long ride (I passed out and probably drooled on the veil), we finally got to Lin-An Tai Historical Home, a park that’s open to the public at no cost, to take photos of the traditional Chinese wedding attire. We changed into our costumes at the public restrooms. Jean had given me very specific instructions on how to put it on, but apparently they were wrong. She had told me to put one shirt on top of another shirt, but it turned out I only needed one shirt. There were multiple shirts, and I had put the one with crappy seams on the sleeve edges on the bottom, expecting it to be covered by the upper layer. But they took the upper layer away from me cuz it didn’t belong there, so I was stuck we these annoyingly crappy sleeves. The inside, cheap-o white cotton lining would constantly stick out of the red sleeve, and because of the color, it stood out quite a bit. I kept trying to hide it during the shoot, but it was really driving my anal-retentive self totally insane, even if nobody else noticed or cared. Thankfully, it’s not noticeable in the pictures unless you know about it, but I know about it, so it will probably drive me mad for all eternity. Yeah, if there was one thing I could change about the entire shoot, it would be to change that stupid shirt. Stupid Jean.

Despite the elaborate costumes that vomited color and Kelvin’s initial hesitation to wearing his goofy hat, this shoot turned out to be a lot of fun. It was also quite productive, as we chose several from this set. It was around 5PM by now, so it was close to sunset, making for very nice lighting. I still had the same hair from the previous shoot, but I guess Helga planned well, as it worked for this shoot as well. The phoenix crown, though kinda cheap-looking in person, was pretty heavy and looked neat in pictures. Kelvin’s hat actually clamped onto his head. The costumes had these ridiculous hula-hoop like belts that serve no purpose, and we had to hold them half the time. John had us sit and stand at various spot around the historical building, mainly at doorsteps and in doorways. If I was by myself in the photo, they’d often tell me to look at wherever Kelvin was standing, and he’d do a little dance in his funny outfit to make me crack up. We also took photos next to antique items, including a wedding carriage on display that had a “Do not touch” sign I needed to block with my body. Tourists checking out the park got a kick out of our outfits; a few stopped to stare and/or take photos of us. (Same thing happened at Yang Ming Moutain, too. Wedding photo shoots are always pretty neat to watch.) When this shoot ended, I was glad to take the heavy hat off, though it left marks on my forehead.

Done with the outdoor shoots, the taxi took us back to the studio, and we bid farewell to our loyal and skilled taxi driver. The cost to use a taxi is outside the package costs, but the taxi driver didn’t ask for any additional fees, which surprised us. Our sales agent told us that we would have to pay extra for bringing an extra person (my mom) outside of the standard five (couple, photographer, lighting guy, and driver) and any extra time outside of our allotted five hours (we were over a half hour over). We were also told we would have to pay for the photographer and lighting guy’s meals, but they never asked us to do so either. So I don’t know if the guys we got were nice, unaware, or if our sales agent doesn’t know what she’s talking about. (My mother, who had to do all this bargaining with the sales agent, is under the assumption the sales agent was just trying to take more of our money.) I was pretty glad though, as the only additional costs I had accumulated so far were for the nails, which wasn’t much.

The fourth shoot was the Japanese attire. The kimono was a fake, costume kimono. There weren’t actually any sashes or wrapping; everything buttons together or clips on. Kinda silly, really. Helga touched up my makeup and did my hair in this wacky updo. I know she was into experimenting looks between each shoot, which I have no problem with. In hindsight though, I should have asked for something cleaner and more traditional. The hairdo she gave me, while interesting, made me look kinda old, and it looked horrible at certain angles. We had a short shoot for the Japanese outfits, since it was in the studio, and there isn’t much to work with for these outfits. As a result, there were hardly any photos from this shoot to choose from. Anyway, while we waited for John to show up again, I made sure to take a picture with Helga and Jean while they were still around.

The Japanese shoot, along with the final wedding shoot, was done on the fourth floor of Sophia Ritz. The fourth floor is all small studio rooms that have changeable fake backgrounds and props all over the place. The backgrounds are large screens that are rolled up and pulled down like giant window shades. These backgrounds are often times also the floor for the picture. For the Japanese shoot, we started off with an orange-brownish background. Then it was rolled up, and they pulled down a giant picture of an archway surrounded by trees in autumn. John and Ash would bring in random props at their discretion.

The final shoot was the extravagantly huge wedding dress shoot. Helga, making sure I had a different look from the first wedding dress, gave me a flapper kind of look, giving me a large side bang, wrapping my head with lace and pinning a long veil to my hair. I liked the different look, though my mother and Kelvin preferred my updo from the first time. I realized while getting touched up for the Japanese shoot that they hadn’t really done anything with Kelvin’s hair. Jean had thought Kelvin liked the wave look, as that’s how it was when he got there. (Little does she know that Kelvin actually has no control over his hair.) Jean disappeared during the last touchup, so I made sure that some lady spiked up his hair for the final shoot. I liked his new spikey hair, though my mom didn’t like it much. Kelvin said it reminded him of his brother in his wedding pictures. He had also changed into his black tux, which he complained the jacket was too small and smelled like BO. We waited a bit for John again (what does he do during all this in-between time? Loud pictures? Eat a quick meal? I’m so curious).

We went back to the fourth floor, but to a different studio room. It was 7PM at this point, and we were really tired. However, since this shoot was considered the more traditional wedding shoot and had the ginormous wedding gown, there were a lot of different dress configurations and poses and props to go through. We went through three different colored backgrounds, and they used poses that emphasized the detail and size of the train on the dress. This included standing on boxes to make us taller so the train would spread on the floor better. In one of the pictures, Kelvin is like a foot taller than me because he’s standing on the box. We used a bunch of bouquets in this one, including a couple made of fresh roses. (Those smelled nice.) Because we were exhausted, we kept hoping each picture would be the last one, but there would always be more. And John would keep lying to us and telling us the next one is the last one. (I doubt he gets paid extra to take more photos, and we’re too stingy to buy extra photos, so kudos to him for his dedication.) Eventually, we finished though. I asked John and Ash to take pictures with us, and even though they’d been stuck with us for 12 hours already, they were more than happy to take pictures with us. They even set up the lighting equipment so it’d turn out good. After we took a couple photos, they seemed to want to do more (and of course more pictures would have been cool), but we were dying.

I went back down to the third floor to get changed and get the stuff out of my hair. Helga had already left, so two other girls worked on taking my hair apart. They left my hair in a ponytail and left some pins in my head to keep my hair slightly styled still. Even though we were done, Kelvin and I still had to wait around, as someone was taking a long time in the dressing room that had the locker with all our stuff. Eventually, they got out, and we were able to get changed. Our sales rep reappeared and gave me instructions on hair care (condition it three times before washing) and makeup removal (wipe up down, not left right, to not mess up your fake eyelashes). She arranged for us to come back the next day at noon to choose our photos, and we finally got to leave Sophia Ritz around 9PM. We stopped by a noodle place on the way to the metro since we were starving, and then we went home, where I got rid of all the crap on my head (fake eyelashes and all) and immediately passed out.

Next: The Selection

New thing I should learn today: Chin in chinese is 下巴 (xià ba).

Related posts:

1. Sophia Ritz: A Taiwanese wedding photo experience – Pre-Shoot Consultation
2. Sophia Ritz: A Taiwanese wedding photo experience – The Selection
3. Sophia Ritz: A Taiwanese wedding photo experience – The Photoshopping
4. My first threading experience at The Image
5. Engagement photo session gallery