LizzBuenaventura.com

I've had this concept in the works for the past few months, but I needed two girls for it and wasn't able to convince any of my gay friends to pose. (For the uninitiated, my undergraduate thesis back in 2007 was about Homosexual Tolerance in Society, and how my editorial campaign could passive/aggressively brainwash my target market into accepting it.)

Back then, I *also* couldn't find any gay men to pose for my book, print ADs, and myriad of other support media that I designed, so I ended up having to pay 2 semi-pro actors to model for me. In any case, I've been wanting to do the flipside of this AD campaign since last year, this time featuring two women instead of two men.

The challenge was to portray two women in a romantic light, but not in any way that would make it seem pornographic for heterosexual men.

While my thesis' technical thrust was "Utilizing color as the primary vehicle for storytelling in terms of emotional weight and impact", I decided to pursue the next phase of the campaign in total absence of color.



The above shots were the best that I ended up with. We finished with almost a hundred shots, but I thought that these three were the closest we got to the original concept.

I'm not sure if I'm completely happy with it, but I do know that I will never *ever* model for my own concept again. In the middle of trying to direct the photographer (my now-professional FA friend Amiel La Puebla), telling my friend (Bliss Galang) how to pose, and trying to keep a straight face, I was completely exhausted afterwards.

At the end of the day, I'm not sure if I ended up with Art or if I just ripped-off Calvin Klein underwear ADs. Arg.