Shoot with Michelle

Recently I was in Toronto (one of my all-time favorite places on Earth) volunteering my time and photographic assistance for a friend of mine who owns a music promotion company. It was two consecutive nights of live performances, with a little time between the two for rest (my friends always manage to get a few drinks in me). Anyways, Michelle had contacted me a week prior asking if I wanted to work together. Since she's from Toronto, and I was there for 2 days, and I had a friend (Flo) who is an amazing make up artist, I agreed and we all got together over that weekend and had fun creating some imagery. Normally I don't do shoots last minute like this, but I felt good about it this time.

The location was a high-rise condo with a great view of the upscale shopping district. We had access to a comfy suite some 21 floors up with multi-colored rooms and plenty of large windows. I brought one of my Alien Bee B800 strobes with a softbox along with me to keep things on the light side and to not have to worry about having all kinds of money sitting in the trunk of my car when out at the bar for the shows. In my excitement for the weekend I had forgotten my reflector (d'oh!) so I stopped at an art store and picked up a large white foamcore board; cheap and light. I thought about stopping at a photography store and picking up another reflector, but my budget for the weekend was tiny, and I need those extra toonies for parking meters and beverages.

While Flo was applying makeup, I took a look around the place and decided on three rooms for the bulk of the photos; the main room and two of the bedrooms (one with a giant walk-in closet). We started with the main room. It had a large bay window with horizontal blinds and a large, simple ottoman in front of it. I metered the available light with the blinds partly opened and patiently waited for Flo to finish her magic. After Michelle was ready and dressed in her first outfit, I sat her on the ottoman and had Flo hold the foamcore in front to my right. I purposely wanted get a grainy kind of feel to these first photos, so I shot at ISO 800 with a shutter speed of 1/60 and F5.6. This is where IS comes in handy (because as much as everyone swears by tripods, I can't stand using them...*shrug*... I might use one in the future, we'll see). After a few poses we arrived at some nice moody/dreamy shots.

[Click images below to link to their larger sizes]

Next we moved to the first bedroom down the hallway. It had a cool blue color to the walls, large bed, desk, and another large bay window. Since I love bay windows, we did some more against this particular window. This room had a brighter feel to it, and since the blinds were more of a transparent shade, we were able to get Michelle against a totally white background this time.




We had Michelle switch up her outfit, so we went back out into the main room to wait for her and look through some of the photographs so far. When Michelle returned, she was wearing a soft white summer-type shirt/dress. I looked at the large, dark L-shaped couch in the center of the room and the green wall behind it, and immediately decided to shoot her on the couch. I quickly set up the B800, metered, and then dialed in a setting of ISO 200, 1/125 and F8. I positioned the light with just a 7" silver reflector high above and behind the couch to Michelle's right. Flo stood to her left with the reflector close to fill in the deep shadows I knew were going to be present. We had fun trying different positions on the couch; standing, sitting, laying down. I didn't want to use the softbox (which I use extensively in my shoots) this time because I wanted a harder light. Something that would pop off the screen/paper/wall/etc. in a crispier manner more so than most of my imagery. This actually was a major step in a new direction for me, as I'm usually mister keep-it-soft-and-light. This is all about evolution, right?





After reviewing a couple images from the couch, we moved to the other bedroom where the large walk-in closet was located. I just used the light that was on the ceiling for my lighting. Since the walls and closet doors were all white, I knew I'd have plenty of reflected light in the shadows. For a few shots I got close with the reflector, but it wasn't really necessary for the most part. Now, being that the light wasn't extremely bright, I boosted the ISO up to 1600 this time and opened my lens up to F2.8. I again shot at 1/60. We didn't spend too much time in there as I knew there was only a certain look I was going for with it. Later on in post I decided I didn't like the color version and turned the shots into black and whites that really complimented the grainy feel to them.




After we were done we packed up and said our goodbyes to Michelle. Flo drove me back to my car and I went back to my friend's place to get some rest for the long evening ahead of me. Later that night Flo bought me a drink, and when I wasn't photographing the band, we reviewed some of the photos on the LCD of the camera.

All in all a great weekend, and I learned to just let go and experiment with a new style of lighting for me (hard, un-soft-boxed light) and to always keep a reflector in the trunk of my car!

Hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any questions feel free to ask away. Later on I might add some of the post-production steps to these images, but it's 3:10 AM and I need to get up to bring home some bacon in the morning.

Cheers!
JoeyB