Here we are again, another week has gone. This last week has been full of just about every different aspect of photography that you could imagine… almost. Probably the most stressful part of the week gone was the fashion shoot that we held at our Perth based photography studio, here in Kelmscott.
Overall I am pretty happy with the images and the client was over the moon – so that’s good. A very brief collection of images are shown above.
As you saw in the previous blog posts, I was very eager to try out the new parabolic umbrella that I had just received from the wonderful folks at Paul C. Buff in the Nashville USA. In the days preceding the shoot I had tried a few different scenarios – moving the umbrella from one side of the studio to the other, focussing the beam, this angle and that and I have to say I was a little worried that it wasn’t going to live up to the very large expectations that I had heard of it.
This all went away though once Chloe from Chadwick Models stepped in front of the lens. I remember looking through my somewhat extensive catalogue of fashion magazines; which I often do for inspiration and to nick the odd pose or three, and wondering how the photographers were able to achieve a gorgeously soft full length light that encapsulated the model and at the same time left basically no shadows behind the models except by their feet. I for a long time thought it was achieved by using a strip softbox, so I went a bought one to try it out. It was close, but there was way too much shadow behind the models. Hmmm. Then I saw a video about a fashion shoot and the photographer was using one of the Profoto Parabolic Umbrellas. Problem solved!
After a little bit of finessing I was able to get the light positioned just were I wanted it to produce a lovely full length light. It was amazing too, that despite it’s 7 foot span, it was actually focussing the light so much that I was getting quite a bit of fall off along the top of the backdrop!
I was listening to one of my favourite photography podcasts the other day and I remember the photographer saying that his followers wanted to hear less of the “how” and more of the “why”. So, here goes. Why did I use the parabolic umbrella? Well if you want to produce beautifully even wrapping light with minimal shadow this is the puppy for you. Why do I like the umbrella? Despite its size it is not overpowering. I love the catch lights it gives in the subjects eyes. I love how soft it is. I love how the light wraps around my subject.
On this shoot I also used my beloved beauty dish with its grid attachment. It gives a very similar light on the subjects face to the parabolic umbrella but it falls off quite quickly. I really like the way the light from it totally falls off towards the edges of the backdrop. From the images above – you can tell that the ones on the left are from the parabolic umbrella and the ones on the right are from the gridded beauty dish.
Finally – why did I give the images a green cross-processed and de-saturated finish? Well the client and I decided that this finish really suited the same green-and-grey colours in the fabric of her designer garments. I ended up doing a couple of other different sets of tonal effects on the images but these were my favourites. If your looking at an un-calibrated monitor right now you are probably missing the whole effect and are just seeing a grey and green mess... its a shame really, they do look great I assure you!
And to finish; this afternoon I had a really great artistic nude shoot with a local model. It was a little bit different as the theme of the shoot was “anonymity”. Hence in almost every image you can see the models head but it is turned away or in shadow so you can’t really tell who it is. I was inspired by the work of Pascal Baetens and wanted to try and interpret his ideas - which I think we ended up doing fairly well… stay tuned for those images in the coming week or so.
Take care everyone. Bye… for now.
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