Photoshoot RECAP: Nicole (pt 1)

Feb 17, 2009 by Bo    2 Comments    Posted under: Lighting Setups, Photoshoot Recap

As mentioned already in a previous post, this past weekend I did a photoshoot with Patricia Lindsay, a hairstylist in Gaithersburg.  Patricia first came to me with the idea of ‘Big Bang Theory’ as she titled it.   The shoot would work with various hair bang/fringe styles.  Sounded fascinating.  Patricia also contacted L’Rai Arthur-Mensah to provide the wardrobe styling for the shoot and Jen for the makeup.  Pat had wanted to work with models of three different skin colours, being black, white and asian.  So for the asian model, I contacted Nicole, who I had been dying to work with for a while.  

These are the first sets of shots from the photoshoot and I absolutely love them.  Not to be all patting everyone-on-the-back, but I am rather proud of these particular ones and I simply love how everything came together.  I have dubbed this series as ‘Grids’ for obvious reasons, more about specifics later on in the post.

   Nicole was a fabulous model who I had thought had only been modelling for a couple years at least.  Imagine my shock when she said she’s only been modelling for a couple months!  She didn’t seem like someone who just started out…simply put…she would fit into the NYC fashion scene any day.  As it turns out Nicole is also doing an MBA…so brains and beauty…not just your average model.

L’rai put together this vintage wardrobe, I love the hat and the way it worked out, there are more shots of this outfit without the grids division, but I’ll save those for another post.

Jen did a great job with the make up as well…she used the right colours, unfortunately these b&w don’t do them justice…more colour stuff later, I promise.

Okay…so now the lighting.  These were shot with the sun as the main light.  I’ve had interesting luck with really bright sunny days with harsh shadows.  I’m still not used to this as England used to have all the clouds acting as nice softboxes.  Anyways, as for the gridding, I had spent an hour, a couple days before, walking up and down the aisles of Home Depot looking for props and various ideas.  I came across this 2ft by 4ft piece of plastic grid which i think is used for floor lining.   After a few tests at home with speedlights, this did the trick and created the lines I wanted.  On the day, I clipped the plastic grid to my lightstand (in fact you can see the handles int he shadows).  Then it was just a matter of playing with the distance and angle to get the right amount of shadow on Nicole.   The grid also provided fair a bit of general shade, so for some shots, I used an SB-900 to just boost the light a bit.

I think I had mentioned in some earlier post that I love hair movement…so I can’t just finish a post with some wind-blown hair.   More to come from this shoot.  A few more looks and another model (Tasha) as well.  Watch this space.  Comments/critiques welcomed as always.

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