lucima
The Latest
9AM
At 8AM, direct light streams into the back wall of the studio and creates a great frame from the window. At 9AM, the sun starts to rise higher into the sky and push the shadow of the window lower and onto the floor.
Why is this important? Because in order for Katherine to be lit by direct sunlight she could not stand up. If she stood up, her upper body would be in the shadows and her legs would be under direct sunlight. It would have been challenging to reconcile in post and certainly not a look I was after that day.
So all her poses above were from the ground. But she made it work and made it work well.
As I mentioned in the previous post Wallflower, our recently painted grey wall came out still a touch blue. That might really be just a function of my editing as opposed to my ability to pick paint. I trust my eyes. But then again I was picking from an off the shelf color so you never know!
Feral
5′10.5″ and all personality. Oh yeah, legs too. Kristen was very nice and very easy to shoot.
Since the building’s maintenance crew took the curtains to the dry cleaners on Monday, the studio has been blindingly bright. In fact, I had to use the 4′x8′ faux walls I’d built to shield my workstation from the light. I literally could not see my monitor.
How much light you ask? The last shot in the series above was shot 1/500th f/4.0 ISO160. One of the benefits of being in a corner loft on the 7th floor. I’m still trying to figure out when and how to best use the light that streams in through the windows. I usually get in around 7:30-8:00 and already there’s some fun light. I just need to roll my shoots back a little earlier to take advantage of it.
Wallflower
After moving into the new place I decided to paint our 3 faux walls grey. Picking out the right shade of grey was interesting. The last time I tried grey was at the previous studio and it turned out darker, shinier, and with a tint of blue. This time I walked into Home Depot with a grey card (albeit on my phone) and tried to match greys.
This mostly worked.
Luminosity is really important. More or less than 50% yields a drastically different result. Not all greys are created equally!
And I still somehow wound up with a bit of blue in the paint.
And I’m still in love with B&W. Toning B&W with spectral response and tonal response is so interpretive. Sometimes I think there’s more interpretation in B&W than there is with color. After all, no one sees in B&W so there’s no right or wrong with B&W. Every time you see something in B&W, someone had to make some decisions (even if it’s done automatically in software) regarding how those colors (and light) were translated into shades of grey.
With these images of Katherine I really wanted to push the tonality of her skin. Then I wanted to add contrast to pull out the shades of grey in her skin and the wall behind her.
Speaking of those walls. I need more. 3x 4′x8′ really doesn’t cover enough of her. Which meant I spent way too much time in Photoshop filling in the areas behind her that the walls didn’t quite cover. I’m still testing these walls so maybe I just need to change my working distance a little!
Feral
5′10.5″ and all personality. Oh yeah, legs too. Kristen was very nice and very easy to shoot.
Since the building’s maintenance crew took the curtains to the dry cleaners on Monday, the studio has been blindingly bright. In fact, I had to use the 4′x8′ faux walls I’d built to shield my workstation from the light. I literally could not see my monitor.
How much light you ask? The last shot in the series above was shot 1/500th f/4.0 ISO160. One of the benefits of being in a corner loft on the 7th floor. I’m still trying to figure out when and how to best use the light that streams in through the windows. I usually get in around 7:30-8:00 and already there’s some fun light. I just need to roll my shoots back a little earlier to take advantage of it.
Hello
Khrys has the second largest collection of Hello Kitty paraphernalia. The number one collection belongs to Sanrio :)
As insight into my image selection process, I selected 31 images from this set and after 4 passes finally whittled it down to 6. There were no challenges here, I got enough variety to tell a story with good flow. The only challenge was getting down to a practical number where the edits weren’t redundant.
I feel like I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again.
Redundancy is a huge problem. Photographers often shoot redundant poses, camera angles, crop and composition, background, lighting, etc. only to find out later that they don’t have enough variety to tell a story. Whether you’re a photographer, makeup artist, model, agent, or editor there’s never a need for duplicate images. Even if they’re not identical, images that are too similar don’t add value and therefore don’t propel the story.
The other things is flow. The layout of these images isn’t arbitrary. It’s the same way I learned to edit video. The images/clips have to guide the eyes and propel the story. When they’re laid out side-by-side (back-to-back) they should have some contrast and also some consistency. Fortunately they’re all of the same set and all in B&W so consistency is easy. I generate contrast here by juxtaposing shots of different crops and camera angles to create more impact. For example, I try to avoid putting two shots next to each other where the model is laying down. Instead, I will put a shot of her laying down next to a close up of her face or of her sitting up. That way I am propelling the story.