The Spa Girls

InsuredDisaster

Over the last month or two I've had several opportunities to notice the employees of a spa treatment place on my street. A single picture captures only the bizarrenesss of the sales techniques used when viewed through western eyes. But over time I've gathered up a number of photos, and a bit of a story to share with you. I hope you enjoy. C&C welcome.



A few weeks ago, we started seeing this "troop" of women complete with a big orange flag running around chanting and shouting out cadences. It was pretty bizarre. It was some time before I found out who they were and what they were doing, but once I did, I have to admit, it was a very interesting sales technique.
This is my rifle, this is my gun.


Turns out, there store was being built at the time so for a few weeks they could be seen infront of their future base or running around the area.
In front of their store.


Then one day the store was completed, uniforms were switched and for a week or so the street was overrun by these Ladies of Orange. Now they also all carried baskets ala Dorothy from Oz. Nothing terribly important was in the baskets, usually a bottle of water or maybe a flyer or two. Probably baskets are considerably less threatening than Kalashnikovs. Either way, it was wild. Operating solo or in small fire teams sales groups, they chased every woman down the street. Nobody was safe; even I was run down and offered a flyer for their store. I will believe that for a couple of weeks, they annoyed more people than sold spa treatments.
For two weeks, they were everywhere

The Sell



Recently they changed uniforms and tactics again. You can see them inside their main base standing politely, greeting customers as they come in. It does appear to be some sort of very intense employment. They are always standing at attention as the boss talks to them, either building them up or cutting them down. Not sure. Their spa is very high end I think, with a package of treatments going for around $600US I think. My wife was rather surprised to see such a high price, but then again, with all the cameras I buy, it's good that she is not into spa memberships.
Waiting politely

There you go, a look into the life of my street in Guangzhou, China.

lizzard_nyc

Great dodumentary you have going here. I enjoyed reading through it and looking at your images. Funny how they went from "in-your-face" promoting to the more subdued polite approach.

As a shot on its own, #1 is my favorite but I think you need to work on your processing.
While I think the selective coloring works here because it shows me who are the women working for the spa, I think you kind of did a halfway job on it. The lady who is being stalked is sort of selective colored herself or more like fading as is the man behind her. I think maybe just the dresses would do. Or you could just forgo selective coloring all together as you will just find yourself trying to defend the use of it. I do like the image though and the project itself. I have been longing to do a project myself and have a few ideas--just haven't executed it and I'm very very impatient. I want to get it all done in one day not several days, weeks or months! I know, grow up already right? Thanks for the inspiration.

Juano

Nice series! I agree with Liz on the use of selective color, though. Overall good story!

Richard

Fascinating. I share the general aversion to selective color. Is it really necessary in #1? #4 shows the same dresses, but I do like the aggressive pitch in #1. Maybe you could just crop #1 instead and re-order the pics for context. Just typing out loud...

misterb

Very nice series.. they have a neater formation than most police musters!

InsuredDisaster

Thank you for your comments. I changed the order and coloring of #1 as suggested.

Normally I run out with a D700 or D300 and a lens in the 2.8 range, such a my 24-70 or the 35f2D For some time, my wife had been complaining that her D60 produces images that look like crap. (She mostly sees images shot by a camera a few levels up) Noisy and unclear. I decided to take it out and see what it was like to shoot with the D60 and the 18-200. It was quite an eye opener. On #1 I had to send the ISO to 1600 and even then I was only getting 1/60th of a second at max aperture. The image was somewhat noisy and blurry I felt, as they were walking towards me. The shot tells a story and can't be reshot so I had to run with it. I would have liked to have converted the shot to BW but then you lose the dresses. So I did something in between. Guessing people don't dig it.

As for ongoing projects, I just always have my camera with me, and I am usually on foot so it is very easy to whip out the camera and take a shot. Being China something is always different. I took a shot of the flag runners and figured I'd post it on a blog or email that to someone but never got around to it. Then the ladies went into SELL SELL SELL mode and as I walked through the street every night I could get another couple of pictures. Didn't set out to document anything, just ended up having a collection of these ladies. Then since I'd been shooting all the other pictures I took a picture of the ladies standing politely at their shop when they started doing that.

The challenging part was finding them all again in lightroom. I rarely keyword anything as it would take too long. But I took over 7,000 photos in the 6 weeks that I've been shooting these pics!

Thank you once again for all the comments and suggestions.