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Gothic Lolita shoot with Alexa
We spent a weekend shooting Alexa. Time well spent. I absolutely LOVE working with her. She is a great example of what I expect from a model. Pose after pose she gave me slight variations of looks each one a keeper, followed directions to a tee, and just blew my mind. Look at this proof sheet.
How do I even choose? Anyway, enough talking about her, I want to write about the shot. The shot was taken at 12 noon on a bright sunny day. Many people have asked me how to make night out of day. The answer is the brighter your lights, the darker the scene. Add lights to make it darker.
The way it works is that you have to adjust your camera in order to compensate for the bright lights. A higher f-stop makes the whole scene darker, so your lights must be much brighter in order to have the proper exposure. In the image above, the main light is a 1200 watt Elinchrom Ranger in a gridded 2×3 softbox to camera right. My deep octa, which I prefer, is in the shop. The deep octa focuses the light on the subject, but is still soft but crisp. The gridded softbox focuses the light somewhat, but is generally less crisp and I just don’t like it as much.
There is a huge umbrella behind me and I have an Einstein and a ringflash blowing into that thing going almost full power. The two rim lights are gelled blue and have their reflectors pointed toward the model. Full power. Even with all of that light, I had to add a lowly speed light skip bouncing off of a reflector on the ground to give her legs a little light. Edit: It does not appear that the skip worked in this shot. Sometimes those speed lights don’t go off.
Yikes! Complex and on location. Nonetheless, we did it because we cannot bring a big memorial building into a studio. The whole shoot reminds me of the total eclipse of the heart video so I laugh every time I see the images.
Thanks to Meschantes for the design of the outfit, Gothic Lolita wigs, Denise Hutter MUA, Tommy Gooch -executive photographer assistant, and Paul and Joe from straightline productions. More soon.
Duck face lighting test.
3 Responses to “Gothic Lolita shoot with Alexa”
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Truly curious how you got it all misty in the background!
Fog machine.
Nice, thanks.