Chroma Kinetics

For the first time in my photography career, I walked into a collaborative photo shoot completely clueless. No tearsheets, no mood board, no pre-lighting, just a strong team and a small studio.

Fashion photography requires a lot of pre-production; wardrobe, hair, makeup, concept, lighting and composition. Sometime ago, I was approached by a close friend and model, Casey Neel, whom had just given birth to a beautiful baby girl. She had spent a few weeks in the gym to get back in the game and wanted to schedule a test shoot. I had been buried in commercial client work, but I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate. With that said, I contacted my friend and Project Runway alumni, Gunnar Deatherage, who was also itching to create. I also reached out to Casey Ritchie, a fantastic Mid-West makeup artist to round out the team. Collectively, we came up with a few ideas, but nothing seemed to click. I was frustrated and felt a hint of anxiety as I showed up to shoot. I didn’t know what I was going to do, nor did I know what the end result would look like.

While the model was being primped in hair and makeup, I was breaking a sweat, racking my brain back and forth for nearly 2 hours, switching backgrounds and swapping lighting scenarios. I felt dead in the water; I didn’t have a clue how I was going to light the set and didn’t have any solid direction. I was on my own. Soon enough, hair and makeup was complete and Casey changed into her clothing that Gunnar had so graciously prepared. It was a combination of high fashion sportswear and a lose-fitting ethnic garb. I loved it, but now all eyes were on me. I felt like a souped-up car that just needed some gas and an address.

I had settled on a blank, dramatic Studio Gray seamless in the hopes of potentially going black and white. I broke out of my normal setup and eventually settled for a Profoto Softlight Beauty Dish, something I rarely pull out of the closet. First shot was an absolute dud and I knew it wasn’t right. So, I pulled the plug. 

Just when you thought a sinking ship couldn’t get any more dredged with water, buried in the stack of seamless paper backgrounds I happen to notice a bright blue color that was gleaming through the pile like a piece of shining silver. Miraculously, it perfectly matched the color of the headband and purse that the model was wearing. I had only used the Blue Jay seamless once, but it just seemed fitting. I asked Casey to take a quick breather and I changed the background. Burning up a second sweat, I then positioned the beauty dish accordingly and took a quick test shot… right out of the gate; we had our image. I didn’t know exactly which direction this was heading, but I liked it and I dug deeper. I worked with Casey on jumping, lunges and a slew of motions that could bring out the flare in the color and clothing. We worked, worked and worked some more. Nearly 30 minutes later we had the shot and moved onto the second look. Along with the motion shots, we captured some experimental products shots. I played with a new toy I had built several days prior; a 3-way mirrored prism. I thought it might be a great companion to the regular shots and add a more “advertising” finesse to everything.

I took down the blue seamless paper backdrop and by default rigged my hand-painted Oliphant canvas. It was the easy and comfortable move, I knew what the results would look like and I knew I could pull off a good image. But truthfully, I really didn’t know what to do next. Once our model Casey was ready to go in her second look I snapped a few shots and once again had that feeling of disappointment. This shoot needed to have the feel of an editorial. So took a step away and re-collected, then once again looked to the growing pile of seamless paper and grabbed theDeep Yellow roll. A few minutes later we were back at it and I was seeing smiles from all across the board. Everything felt right and it was the perfect accompaniment to the previous look. Once I had the shot there was no reason to continue; it was a wrap. I took a deep breath and scanned through the day’s images with a giant smile on my face. No planning, no preparation and somehow we came up with a shining set of imagery, all due to the bright colored Savage seamless paper. That was the piece of the puzzle that made it a picture.

The lesson here is that you can’t be afraid to step outside the box and experiment. When something doesn’t feel right, change it. When a lighting scenario just isn’t working, change it. When the backdrop isn’t right, change it. It took me nearly 6 seamless backgrounds and a dozen lighting setups to find the right course of action. Set yourself up for failure and you just never know what result might come of it.

ONE HOT LIGHT

When I first saw Theresa’s face, I knew I had to capture it. Fast forward to a week later and she was sitting in my studio. That Friday was a long day, I had shot for 8 hours for Louisville Magazine and raced to my studio to find Theresa and my team, consisting of makeup artist Casey Ritchie and stylist Jamie Hubbard, ready to rock. The hard work of the day was well worth it. The concept concentrated on androgyny, blending the lines of male and female fashion. I won’t dive into the logistics of the shoot or any pre-production, but rather the technical aspects. 

The first set, I lit Theresa with one stobe pulled back 10 feet and raised 12 feet to mimic hard sunlight. The lighting diagram can be seen below and is explained in this Fstoppers post here.

The second set, we got creative. I wanted to do something very dramatic with my new Oliphant backdrop, but I also wanted to shoot at a very shallow depth of field, almost like a celebrity portrait. I fired off strobes and tried several lighting techniques, but I just wasn’t getting what I wanted, I made a quick executive decision to lock in my 50mm prime lens and open up my aperture to f/1.2. Then, I proceeded to only use the modeling light on the strobe. The light was harder than I wanted, so I clamped a Westcott Diffusion Panel to the Paul C Buff Octobox and what came of it was a beautiful triple diffused light source. White balance was though to lock in, but once I had it, the results floored me.

A first time for everything; it was the first time I had done anything like that in the studio and it was all a big experimentation, but an experimentation that paid off.

QUITE THE COMPOSITE

As you may know, I had the amazing invite to join the Fstoppers team as a official staff writer. With that comes a lot of writing and potentially less personal posts. However, I plan to do my absolute best to save some of the more creative, unique content for this space. I’ve received a lot of amazing comments and feedback on some of my more recent work “Let Them Eat Wedding Cake” a feature editorial for February’s issue of NFocus Louisville Magazine. Much of that feedback was about the lighting and the entire aesthetic of the shoot. The entire concept was a play off “Marie Antoinette” and the whimsical vintage world of that age. It required a lot of planning, but was well worth the pre-production.

But, it was the post-production that truley played a integral piece to the entire puzzle. Getting everything right in camera is an important part of photography, but processing and grading is what can really breathe a totally new life into an image.

On the first set, I was tasked with shooting all 3 models in a dark corner, there was some ambient light flowing in through windows camera right, but I realized that my lighting just wasn’t right. I made an executive decision to composite everything. Just like that, my mind set had totally changed for the shoot. The rest of the day was comprised of shooting all for the compsoite. Gaining the proper background images and making sure I had everything I needed to tackle some pretty detailed post-processing. 

Compositing; It’s a pretty simple process. Lighting and capturing each individual model, then snagging a couple of background images all on a tripod, all the same frame. Then, taking those images, combining them all in Adobe Photoshop and blending everything together. Perhaps easier said then done, but once you do if a few times, it turns into a pretty seamless workflow. I dive a little bit more into the technique in this video here. With strong deadlines, I usually have to farm out the initial masking and layering to my friend Chris Miske, who can usually knock them out in a day or two. Then I’ll take on the re-touching and color grading. 

Our last frame consisted of a beautiful tile wall that screamed “Antoinette”. We wanted the background, but unfortunately there was a giant mirror attached to the wall with massive bolts. It was throwing light everywhere, so to keep things clean and easier and post, I hung my Westcott Scrim Jim over the mirror and made sure to get a shot of a clean tile wall which was adjacent to the mirror.

“I enjoy the challenge of creating a single image from a series of photos. With this image the lighting from each image was blended to create a stark contrast of the foreground and background composing a faint silhouette around the subjects. On every project a challenge with this image the most difficult element of the photograph was replacing the decorative plaster moldings. It took several attempts with many different types of techniques finally ending upon the one seen in the photograph.” - Chris Miske

It’s never easy to look at the RAW images and gain a vision of the final image, many think “behind the scenes” but the RAW image is very much the birth of something greater. That final photograph is always in my head and when compositing it’s post processing that makes everything come to life. When the light just isn’t working and you’re up for the challenge, give it a shot. It’s well worth the process.

LIGHTING LUCY

For whatever reason, January has been plagued with cancelled and re-scheduled shoots. However, the silver lining; it has given me a grand opportunity to experiment and really test my skills in the studio. In other words, do something on my own terms for me and my portfolio. I’ve wanted to shoot Lucy for quite sometime and always had the vision in my head, when a commercial job decided to re-schedule I jumped at the chance and got a team together in less than 30 minutes. What I was so exciting was that the majority of the team had never worked together. It would be a melting pot of talent that had never been on the same set and I knew it would be a winning combination. With a strong vision of mod styling fused with retro art, I brought together Raina Trimble and her bold artistry with Jamie Hubbard’s commercial styling. And with Lucy’s gorgeous look, I knew we would walk away with some images we could all be proud of.

I won’t dive into details, but rather focus on the technical aspects of this image. I wasn’t sure how I would execute the style of lighting I wanted, all I knew it that I wanted dramatic, moody and… fog. We started with the basics, one soft key and one background light. The key light was modified with a Photek Softlighter II and the background light was modified with a 30° grid and several CTO gels for a strong warmth. From there we built. I needed the legs and hands lit, so we placed a soft box with a grid under the key light just for that pop and fill. Finally adding a low powered speedlight with a red gel to accent Lucy’s jacket. Once the lighting was locked we unleashed the fog and I started snapping the shutter. Right out of the gate I was extremely pleased with the lighting and the mood.

It all may seem overkill for a portrait like this, but I felt it was much needed for the results I wanted right out of camera. Some lights just play a small role, but without them the image may lose interest. Next time you have some creative time in the studio, start small and build, you never know what unique light you may find beyond “the key”.