Just few days ago I had a chance to work with great Yana Marlow. The main idea was to do a bit of Evening Wear as well as some beauty. This time I had an assistant (Alistair Hooper) who did some behind the scenes shots. This time we did not have a makeup artist or hair stylist (feel free to contact me if you would like to work with us on some future projects) but Yana knew what had to be done and she did outstanding job. I must say that in the past I’ve worked with quite a lot of models and non of them were as confident and relaxed as Yana, she was just like a professional(even though she is not), every time the shutter was pressed she would change her pose just by slight movement without me telling her to do so.
As always I was shooting tethered to Lightroom 4, I was using my trusty 50D with Grip and 70-200mm f2.8 which is just’ wow’, seriously, note that I don’t work with big lenses everyday but when I do, I make sure I book it few days before the shoot so that I can try it out and see where is its limit.
While I was setting up the lighting with Alistair Hooper (Assistant) Yana was doing her hair and make up, as mentioned before we did not have a makeup artist this time but Yana had done many self portraits and she knew what sort of makeup will be suitable for the shoot. Throughout the whole post I will be showing some Behind the scenes shots:
Shooting with D 1 Profoto lights is just a pure pleasure, they are quick, responsive and very reliable. But what I love the the most about them is the easy use of them. Putting a light modifier could not be any easier. I have worked with Bowens lights perviously and there were time that I have struggled to put something on especially large softboxes e.g. Bowens Wafer 140 Soft Box or 140 Octabox mainly due to the S type fitting which is made of 3 points that go into the light and then twist. On the other hand, normal size softboxes or any other light modifiers are perfectly fine and very easy to set up.
As for out lighting setup, we’ve been using Beauty dish with a grid as well as 2 strip soft boxes and a white reflector to get some slight fill light on the dresses. Also this time I have decided to divide the shoot into 2 sections, for the first 3 hours we did Evening Wear and then for the next 2 hours we did beauty. I will be doing another part on this shoot where I will be covering the editing/retouching side.
The biggest problem that I have come across during the shoot was the lack of different colour backgrounds the black and white is just boring now, next time I would like to try some location photography e.g. some forest at early morning with some fresh, subtle light which would give us the fairly tale like look or perhaps some old styled hotel.
More to come in Part 2 where I will be covering selection as well as retouching part of the shoot, I will be going in more details on how to retouch skin (not airbrush!!) as well as some other small but useful tips. If you have any questions that you would like me to answer during part 2 or some techniques, feel free to ask and I will do my best to cover all parts.
Very nice approach!
Thanks!