Red Dress Vampiress Countess and Garrus

It’s Halloween week, which brings back memories of spooky sessions. This pre-Distant-Era 2018 session yielded some of my favorite pictures I’d done up to that point. I was learning a lot, at the end of my first year experimenting with flash. That 2018 session had a skilled model, Mary-Kate Bullaro, in peak vampiric countess form.

It it also had this guy.

Scene Stealing 101

This guy, aka Garrus the Cat, aka studio assistant number two, aka the scene stealer. He’s the guy who always wants to be the star of the show, stealing scenes right, left, and center. Here’s his stealing-the-scene-from-the-right move.

Like a true pro, he’s slipping in just as the lights are about to pop.

Here he is stealing a scene from the left. Note the clever use of the tail curling up from behind the reflector, as if to say, “Don’t mind me, I’m not really here. But guess what: yeah I am, losers!”

Right and left technique are mere warmups for central scene theft method, which is quite alarming, and which we present here, with due content and trigger warnings for victims of scene theft; a spoiler alert; and an MPAA rating of G.

We got it eventually.

What Scene Stealers Want

Everyone wants to be loved, and scene stealers are no different. Render unto scene stealers that which is the stealer’s. To whit, the scene. And maybe a little scratch under the chin or behind the ears.

The following year, we did another shoot for MK’s Fantasy Is Reality project, in which she played Lady Macbeth. She wore a red dress and carried a dagger. She set down a bowl to prepare for the line “Will these hands never be clean?”

We prep the camera and the lights, and then…