Hair & make-up: Nighat Misbah @ Depilex

Photography: Rizwan Ul Haq

Model: Neera Mansoor

Art direction: Light & Shade

This was a shoot that spanned over four days simply because each make-up set took around three to four hours to do. According to Nighat Misbah, the inspiration for the shoot came from a yearning to do something other than the norm, and along the lines of hair and make-up shoots by foreign artistes.

For this shoot, we also wanted to feature somebody who hadn’t been photographed very much before and owing to her beautiful, graceful bone structure as well, Neera Mansoor seemed like a viable model. “We also wanted to feature her in a way that she hasn’t been featured before,” added Nighat about the model.

“For the hair and make-up we literally treated the face as a blank canvas and used the make-up to paint over it,” she said, adding, “and because attention was paid to every single detail, the make-up took several hours and by the end of it, I was exhausted. I couldn’t do another set the same day which is why Neera had to come over several days in a row.”

The hair and make-up coupled with the shoot wasn’t a one-man show as Nighat clearly pointed out that “this isn’t the kind of work one can do on their own. Normally, when you do shoots like these, the hair and make-up can come out looking very bad if the light and shade along with the angles at which the photograph is taken isn’t taken care of. Rizwan has done an amazing job at that. Also, I am grateful to Kamran Khairi who constantly guided us with the concept of the shoot.”