Anna Akana

exclusive: contact sheets & a "fix it in post" moment

Added 2024-09-09 16:00:05 +0000 UTC

howdy!! I had the pleasure of shooting with the amazing Becca Need-Meaner again in London.

we initially scheduled a shoot to create a tour poster for my Aus, NZ & Asia tour dates. I had this image in my head of me with a noose braid.

for some reason "it gets darker" hasn't been enough of a hint to people that the stand up show is indeed quite dark, so though there's no complaints necessarily, I've received quite a few "WHOA okay that DID get darker than I thought!" comments - so I figured for the next leg of tour it would be great to have an image that communicated that sentiment beforehand

unfortunately the braid was a disaster. instead of rigging it prior to the shoot, we worked on braiding it on set. the braid was then uneven, the color didn't match (i have patches of leftover blonde on the tips from when I last dyed my hair) and the extensions lacked a gloss that made it obviously fake

not to mention there was simply not ENOUGH hair to have the braid hanging far down my back enough, and the wire kept getting bent out of shape and not looking noose like enough for what we were going for

luckily, Becca is a wizard. she constructed the braid almost completely in post, utilizing sections of my hair from the contact sheets, to create the final image you see pictured last in this set (which will also be the tour poster! yay!)

goes to show that sometimes you have an idea in your head but the execution of it is way more difficult than you'd imagine. luckily, there's always photoshop x