Ready. You're going to sit there?
Hi, my name is Corinne Cumming, also known as @capturedbycorinne.
And I shoot here at my studio Hotdog Studios with my sausage dog Cecile.
Today we are shooting with Charity Kase
for the last of her looks for Drag Race season three.
And the first look we're doing is a biker chick, Marge Simpson.
So we're basically recreating the living room from The Simpsons.
We've got the picture that goes above the sofa
and then Charity is going to draw in with Procreate the sofa and the lamp.
Because we want this to be really bright, I'm going to be putting two of these on.
They're just Bowens Gemini 500 Rs
with a soft box either side to light, light up the background,
and then I'm going to have a big octobox to the front.
So let me start with these.
and shoes off when you're walking on the colorama.
My main light is this massive octobox.
I like to shoot it with the light coming from the left hand side.
And I found out that usually
people who read left to right, like when you read your books and stuff.
That's how you prefer to read your lights.
Come slightly towards me.
Take a small step to your right
to show you what that looks like.
It'll be brighter on you, though.
I’m obsessed!
Oh, my God, this is so ridiculous.
I've never studied photography.
I just taught myself everything.
I used my student loan to get, like, my first proper camera.
I got an 1100D.
And I built up to shoot for small online publications.
I then got contacted by a Rocksound,
which is a really big alternative music magazine in the UK.
a magazine that I used to buy when I was a kid.
I used to get the bus home and save up the 50p that my mom would give me
for the train so I could go and buy myself Rocksound.
And then I was shooting for Rock Sound, so that was really cool.
So that was kind of how my music journey started.
But through that, I used to be the inhouse photographer at Dingwalls in Camden,
and someone came to I think it was the Q Awards, had an afterparty there,
and one of my friends came and he brought a date.
And she was like, hey, do you want to come to a drag show down the road?
So I went with her and I just thought it was the best thing I'd ever seen.
From then on, I just got obsessed with shooting drag.
I just thought it was so interesting.
There's just more to it than just shooting a band on stage.
There was just so much artistry.
And from then it kind of set me up for the kind of work I do now, really.
And about four years ago, I had the opportunity to take over this space.
It was the biggest scariest thing I'd ever
done because I'd only ever shot in a studio once before I got this studio.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I just knew that it was something that I wanted to do was to get my own studio.
Whether I knew what I was doing or not, I was like, I'll get it.
I will plough all of my savings into it, and I'll just see what happens.
Okay. So my kit,
I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark IV.
I recently upgraded from the Mark III.
I still use the Mark III, but I use it as kind of like, my backup / second body.
So when I'm shooting live music and events,
I use a black rapid and have a camera on each side with a different lens
on each, mostly just because I'm lazy and it saves time.
But in the studio I just used the one.
I have a 16 to 35.
This is a wide lens as wide as you can get without it being a fisheye.
It's also really good to use if you've got a trigger and like a handheld flash,
then you can have your camera in one hand, a handheld flash up here and you can
trigger it off and it looks really nice with this lens.
In here, my most used lens is the 70-200 F/4.
The reason why I like it is because I can sit on the floor over at the wall and get
exactly the right angle and not have to move it's.
Another really lazy thing is I can be
sitting there shooting and just Zoom in and out and I've got all the angles
that I wanted and all of the crops that I wanted too.
And this is new.
I just got this.
So this is the 24-70 version two.
I'm going to start with the 24 70 because
I always do the 70 to 200 even because I always do.
And then we'll see if I want to shoot this landscape or not.
Okay.
Which one are we doing next, the pumpkin?
So we're about to shoot look two, which is a demon pumpkin.
Yeah, I guess.
It's super fun,
fun and ridiculous and fantastical
and horror, which is Charity's personal brand.
Alexa, this is Halloween.
Wow.
I absolutely love these.
My top tip is to when you have a new
subject in front of you, ask them to kind of pose themselves,
how they feel comfortable and then tweak it from there, because sometimes
people who aren't used to photoshoots, for example,
will come in and someone will just move them and move them with them.
And it might not look right.
I guess so if you start with the basis of,
like, this is how they're comfortable sitting.
This is how they're comfortable standing,
comfortable posing and then tweak it from there.
It can look more natural.
I think with drag Queens, it's a different thing.
Drag performers have themselves as people,
and then there's also their persona, which are not necessarily the same thing.
Sometimes you got performer come and they switch it on.
They're completely different person from when they are.
For example, with someone like Charity,
it's like super easy because she comes correct.
So I don't have to do as much directing.
Sometimes I'm like: move this, do this,
bring your chin down...
But the basis is there, and I just tweak it.
I feel like that's the way that works best for me.
So we are about to shoot the third look of the day, our third and final look.
And it is a toxic witch?
A swamp witch.
And so we're shooting it with rose pink on the backdrop
and we're doing green along the floor for, like, a kind of foresty swampy vibe.
Charity always comes with a sketch of
what she wants everything to look like.
And what I do is I just make what they want in their heads happen.
Smoke machine!
I bought a smoke machine that has
the button so I could press it from here and still shoot.
Switching the softbox.
on this head to a reflector.
And then
Where are my gels?
Green, did you say?
So what I'm doing is taping green
gel over the top.
And if I do it this way, I don't have to cut it.
So it'll last longer.
So I just double it up so that it's, like, an intense enough green.
Let's see what that looks like.
Okay, I think that's fine. You ready?
The more smoke, the better, I think.
Yeah, I love these.
Most people that come to me for drag stuff
comes me to get kind of photos for their posters and for advertising themselves
and especially underrepresented drag performers like drag kings
and, I hate the term, but "assigned female at birth" queens.
They don't have as many opportunities as some of the cis queens do.
So I really like to shoot kind of the underrepresented and people who need
a bit more advertising to get themselves out there.
I feel like that's reflected in my rates as well.
So, for example, with drag queens and drag kings
that aren't on Drag Race, I do everything for a reduced rate so
that everyone who wants to shoot can afford it.