Surrey Now Article Feb. 2010
Photog's 'pinup' work would make Hugh Hefner proud
Tom Zillich, Surrey Now
Published: Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Taboo Sex Show Abbotsford March 26, 27, 28th 2010

Second Annual Morgan Creek Wedding Gala - January 28th 2010

Taboo Naughty but Nice Sex Show
@ Vancouver Convention Centre
Nov 5-8th 2009

Vancouver Sun April 2009

From Betty Grable, whose gams graced more than a few G.I. lockers in the Second World War, to Farrah Fawcett, the '70s sex kitten in cascading blond curls and fetching red one-piece, there have always been pinup girls. They are the unabashed calendar girls whose searing sensuality and bold bawdiness not only set to racing the hearts of ordinary men, but pique the curiosity of women who want to look just like them. For Nadia Landstad, one of the ultimate icons of glamour was the late Bettie Page, the '50s pinup girl with the trademark bangs who was one part baby doll and one part fetishist, renowned not only for her beauty but for her dominatrix bent and skimpy underpinnings. Landstad, who is 28 and the single mom of a 10-year-old daughter, says Page was not only "pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie, but there's so much mystery to her. I'm obsessed with her, and Marilyn Monroe, too." So obsessed that, when Landstad was trying on clothes in a vintage store's changing room, and saw what she called "cheesecake genre" shots hanging on the wall, she thought: "I've always wanted to do a photo shoot like that." So one day she logged on to Google, typed in "pinup" and up popped Shimona. That would be Shimona Henry, a 32-year-old special education teacher's assistant by day and, by night (and weekend), a busy pinup photographer transforming women who yearn, if only for a brief moment in time, to be a glamour puss. It started a few years back as a hobby for Henry, who, after college and film school and makeup school, decided to combine her passions for photography and for glamour. "I was doing pinup makeup and decade makeup for my portfolio and I was shooting friends and people would see it and say, 'I want that.'" With more and more women asking her to shoot them as pinups, it wasn't long before she had a thriving sideline business - called Pinup Perfection - working out of her White Rock studio and on location all over Metro Vancouver, charging from $350 to $600 per pinup package, which includes hair, makeup, costumes (or bring your own) and a selection of photos, on prints and disc, chosen by the client. Henry says her pinup clients are diverse, from housewives to burlesque performers, from college girls to the 70-year-old woman who called recently to arrange a session involving feather boas. "My goal was that it be for everyone. I've shot big women, I've shot women who never would have thought they'd be in my studio." Most of her clients, she says, are doing it for themselves, but some do it to surprise a mate, many of whom then get the pinups made into tattoos. Landstad, who has a bookkeeping business, was a little nervous before her shoot, which she did last Christmas as "a present to myself. "I'm very self-conscious, but Shimona makes you feel so comfortable and then you look in the mirror and you're instantly transformed into the '40s, the '50s, another era." Kelly Murray, who's 28 and heading to Mexico next month to get married, had never heard of pinup photography until her twin sister Devon suggested the bride-to-be and eight of her best friends try it as part of her stagette this past weekend. "It was completely new to all of us. I was a little bit nervous, but Shimona tells you what to do, she tells you to stick out your butt, to suck your tummy in. It was so much fun, and she was fabulous." Murray says her fiance Andy hasn't seen any of the photos (until now), saying only that it was okay by him "if you're comfortable with it . . .'" And more and more people are. Burlesque and striptease have suddenly slipped back into the mainstream, with acts like the Pussycat Dolls and Dita Von Teese now part of the pop culture landscape - the Dolls are touring with Britney Spears and Teese announced last week that she's designing lingerie for Wonderbra. And rockabilly has taken on a whole new meaning, having nothing to do with Carl Perkins and everything to do with young hip women meshing their love of '40s glam with tattoos and piercings. Henry, too, cites Bettie Page as inspiration, as well as revered pinup artist Gil Elvgren, who produced hundreds of illustrations and paintings from the 1930s through the '70s, his work renowned for its sexy detail and innocent charm. Henry and her clients will tell you that being a pinup is about fun, and about empowerment. "And glamour, and confidence, and sexuality, and beauty, and femininity," she adds. "I make women really happy. To make someone feel good about themselves, that's what's important to me."
sfralic@vancouversun.com
Related Event
Vancouver International Burlesque Festival, May 1-10 at various venues, features performances, workshops, fashion shows, film screenings, theatrical productions, art shows, and lectures by members of Vancouvers burlesque scene. More information at www.vanburlesquefest.com © Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Peace Arch News - The scene

Published: November 13, 2008 4:00 PM
Updated: November 13, 2008 7:29 PM
Rock ‘n’ Roll Burlesque
Photographer-entrepreneur Shimona Henry’s Bringing Burlesque Into The Burbs will present a new show – Rock ‘n’ Roll Burlesque – tonight (Nov. 14), 10 p.m., at the Ocean Beach Club & Grill (14995 Marine Dr.) 
Adding a genuine rock ‘n’ roll beat will be a live performance by popular Peninsula band Mary’s Gunns; the show will also feature headline dancers, Miss Cherry On Top and Crystal Precious (both of Sweet Soul Burlesque), April O’Peel and White Rock’s own Fawna Fawntaine.
- Doors for the show are at 8 p.m.
- Tickets ($10) will be available at the door.

Shimona was recently featured in the Peace Arch news! By Alex Browne - Peace Arch News
Published: September 27, 2008 10:00 AM
Updated: September 28, 2008 6:55 PM

Mention pin-up and glamour photography – and the performance art known as burlesque – and some people shy away.
These are people who don’t recognize that something can be sexy without being sleazy, or that a glamourous – and fun – celebration of femininity is not necessarily exploitative.They should speak to photographer and makeup artist Shimona Henry, 23, founder of White Rock-based Pin Up Perfection. Her business, operated out of mom Eve’s E.E. Henry Photographic Arts studio on Vidal Street, specializes in making women look, and feel, good with tasteful, retro-style portraits.It’s work that evokes the sassy, but somehow more innocent, world of such ’50s icons as Marilyn Monroe and Bettie Page and the brightly-coloured calendars of such pin-up artists and illustrators as Gil Elvgren.
Henry is currently at work on a couple of classic glamour-style calendars she hopes to sell partly as fundraisers for charities, including the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. And she’s a champion of burlesque, the form currently spearheaded internationally by performers like Dita Von Teese, in which dancers create their own characters and personas in a theatrical manner, with storyline, humour and novelty prevailing over the tired, show-all contortions of strip club pole dancers.
“Burlesque is not stripping,” she said.
“There’s nothing nitty-gritty or dirty about it; no complete nudity.” As a keen follower and photographer of Vancouver’s burgeoning old-school burlesque scene, she’s becoming something of a promoter herself, starting a move to bring “burlesque to the ’burbs” with a recent show at the Ocean Beach Hotel that brought out famed Vancouver dancer Cecilia Bravo and five other performers.
As a learning experience – and to better understand the idiom and the subjects – she’s even taking a burlesque dancing course herself.
But by day, she’s a special-education teaching assistant for Surrey School District. On call, she moves from site to site working with students from Kindergarten to Grade 12 with a wide variety of disabilities. “It’s all about finding the right balance,” she said. “I come home and feel good about what I do with the kids, and then, with my photography, I can feel good about what I do for women’s self-esteem.” Henry, who graduated from Semiahmoo Secondary in 2003, spent two years studying to be a community support worker at Kwantlen College. But having been raised in a very arts-conscious household she found she was missing the arts in her life. “I found I was spending a lot of time caregiving, but I wasn’t fulfilling my creative side.”She remedied this by going to Vancouver Film School, where she specialized in makeup artistry, graduating with honours in 2006. Those makeup skills have proven very useful in her subsequent photographic career and she has become proficient in styling her shots – including hairstyling – to create a classic retro look. Taking pictures digitally, using manual-control Nikon cameras, and utilizing Photoshop software has also become a crucial part of achieving the glamourized look she wants. And while she began taking photographs on film, she’s not snobbish about using digital technology.“I find that for time and cost, digital is totally the way to go. I have a really fast turnaround. I can take the pictures at the studio, come home in the evening and retouch them, burn them to disc and get them to the client the next day,” she said. It’s been a learn as you go process, she said. “I’m a self-taught photographer, like my mom, and I take pride in that,” she said. “I’ve taught myself more and more in Photoshop. I’ve seen myself getting better and better as I go on.”
Henry gives a lot of credit to her mom for inspiring her career.“My mom has been a big influence on what I’ve become,” she said.
“I really look up to her, as an artist and a photographer. For me, it was just finding that niche – and she’s helped nurture that. Without her I wouldn’t be where I am now.” Henry said that Elvgren was one of the first artists to inspire her in her glamour and pin-up photography, even though his idealized paintings are a hard act to follow. “He would take photographs for reference and elongate everything and change things around,” she said. "I can’t do everything with a photograph that he would do, but I have found creative ways of posing the models to help get the effect.”She has enjoyed photographing, and getting to know, such personalities of the Vancouver burlesque scene as former Radio City Music Hall Rockette Burgundy Brixx – “she’s brought a little bit of New York City to Vancouver” – but she emphasizes pin-up and glamour photography isn’t just for burlesque dancers or models.“I’m trying to make glamour accessible to everyone,” she said, adding that she does everything she can to make her photography a fun, non-threatening experience for her clients. “A lot of my clients are women over 30 who are doing portraits as gifts for their husbands or boyfriends, or for themselves as a feel-good thing,” she added.
For more information on Pin Up Perfection, visit shimonahenry.com

July 31st - Aug 1st 2010 Spirit of the Sea Fes tival on White Rock Beach! Drop by and pick up a pin-up postcard!

July 9-11th 2010 - Come and visit us at the Langley Events Centre for the West Coast Tattoo and Culture Show...enter in the pin-up pageant, prizes courtesy of Vancouver's own Pin-up Perfection Photography!

Socialite Nails Boudoir Photo Event January 31st 2010

West Coast Women's Show @ Tradex Abbotsford Oct 23-25th 2009

Socialite Nails Glamour Event Nov 22nd 2009

The Bachelor Plan and Shimona Henry have teamed up to create a 2009 PIN UP CALENDAR for charity!
Now available at Beautilicious Beauty Emporium
Unit #3 - 3268 King George Hwy
South Surrey, BC

Shimona will be representing Pin-up Perfection Photography and Bringing Burlesque into the 'Burbs at the Taboo Naughty but Nice Sex Show
January 15th - 18th 2009

Shimona Henry will be on SHAW TV for their Naughty but Nice Christmas Special!!!

Join host Johanna Ward for Vancouver’s only completely on location program. The Express is a lifestyle magazine program that brings you an in-depth look at the fascinating people, events, recreation and attractions from Greater Vancouver and the Fraser Valley

Dec. 12th, 14th and 15th
Friday at 6pm, 6:30pm,8pm,10:30pm
Sunday at 12:30am, 2am, 11:30am
Monday at 12:30am, 2am, 11:30am, 2pm, 3pm

I HEART ROCK N'ROLL!! Group Art Show Art Opening 9pm!

at the Grease N Grind with PEP TORRES
Still Creek Brothers and Thee Boss Monsters!!
DJ The Creeper
Saturday Nov. 29 - Pat's Pub-403 E .Hastings
Starring.... 12 Midnite • Andrea Baeza • Ken Gerberick • Goldfinger • Kelly Haigh • Shimona Henry • Cowboy Mike • Megz Majewski • Rheanna Fancypants • Bob Scott • Nicole Steen • Colin Upton • Heather Watts

And the Indie I Do wedding show