Fundoshi in Black and White

Back as promised with lots of new items. First off, I am back to gauze...specifically Island Breeze black cotton gauze. I had a ton of fun creating some new designs and tweaking some older ones. 

For the first outing, I decided to keep it simple with some large circles. As you can see, this gauze goes to white during the discharge process. I didn’t realize this until the rinsing process. During the application of the bleach, the fabric actually turned a bronze color. The bronze was a lovely contrast to the black, but I think I like the stark nature of the white. 

For the template to create the circles, I actually used a salad plate. I placed it onto the fabric, then used a brush to apply the discharge solution. The technique worked quite well. The only issue is that the edge of the plate retained some discharge liquid which dripped a couple of times in unwanted places. This is how you know my fundoshi designs are handmade and one-of-a-kind....they all have human flaws!

I actually hadn’t planned on doing a shoot of myself when I did these. A friend wanted me to take some photos of her during her seventh month of pregnancy. Because of this, I moved the backdrop and lights into my living room where I had more space to play with. After lugging all the furniture out, this left a large amount of room to have fun with. I got some great shots (standard and ‘boudoir’) of my friend and we went out to lunch. Getting back home, I was going to put my living room back, but thought - why waste this? Grab a glass of champagne and do a shoot....

What the larger space did was give me more options. I could move the camera farther back, avoiding some proportion distortions that happen if the camera is too close. It also allowed me to place the lights a bit differently. 

There are many, many, many photos in this shoot, so they will be presented in the next three blogs. For today, since the fundoshi is black and white, we have the first in a black and white series (which you probably guessed based on the photo above). I think I may need to state it is a complete coincidence that drinking and black and white are showing up in my blog as well as Ryan's at  Fundoshi 4 All! this week.....

And now....the shoot.....

I processed some with a harsher contrast.......

Next time on fundoshi, fabric and photos: Fundoshi in Black and White Part Two - Now in Living Color