I have been working with Beverly Hills Lifestyle Magazine for the past few months and one of my favorite things about shooting content for them is working with art director Jamie Breuer. It was actually Jamie that got me connected to shooting for BHL magazine, and to date he is one of my favorite art directors to work with. Not only do we get along aesthetically, but our personalities vibe well with each other which makes for a very stress free creative environment.
This particular editorial was for BHL’s winter 2011 issue, which is normally their holiday issue. As usual, the conversation between Jamie and myself began with the crew he wanted to put together for the job. Since he and I frequently work with the same artists, the work environment becomes very comfortable and familiar. Stylist Holly Copeland (whom you may remember styled the BHL shoot we did in Joshua Tree as well as the Cote De Pablo shoot) came back on board, along with set stylist Ninaki Priddy, makeup artist Mathias Alan, and hairstylist Mitzi Gip. Out of all the packages Jamie received from modeling agencies, Photogenics submitted the best choices. Jamie’s first pick was Alli Cripe, and I happily agreed as I had worked with her on a beauty shoot before and she was an amazing model.
Jamie and I then discussed location and concept over several emails. The clothing Holly would be pulling were mostly metallics which would fit right in with the holiday feel. Jamie mentioned that he did not want to go overboard with the holiday theme, but still have glitz and glam to the images. Several digital tear sheets were emailed back and forth between us in order to narrow down our vision for the shoot. We then decided to shoot at the studio, at which point backgrounds and backdrops were discussed. We really wanted the metallic fabrics to pop and didn’t want to use an overwhelming background. The clothing themselves would serve as the holiday elements. Jamie also stressed that he didn’t want a completely black background either, so it was up to me to come up with the right solution.
I’m sure many times I’ve mentioned how a fashion shoot is always in a state of flux; it grows, it evolves, it is forever changing as if it were alive. This is because there are several creative individuals working together simultaneously towards a common goal, and it is this collaborative effort that gives the shoot life. We all feed this being with our ideas and suggestions, and what we usually begin with is never what we end up with. This shoot was a good example of that. I always like to start off as simply as possible. Whenever I shoot in the studio, I treat is just as if it were a blank canvas. Ninaki brought some very cool design elements but I couldn’t quite see how they would work just yet. We initially put up a thunder gray seamless. At first I wanted to use hard-shaped lighting to showcase the metallic finish of the clothes, so we hooked up a speedotron zoom spot. After a couple of test shots, it just seemed too blah for my taste, so we took down the seamless and put up a mottled canvas backdrop. The added texture definitely helped, then Jamie and Ninaki discussed layering some other fabrics to give the set some depth. That gave me an idea from a shoot I did almost a year ago where I layered some muslin on top of the canvas backdrop. We kept adding and adding to the set, and it still wasn’t quite working for me. Everyone was making great suggestions but it definitely needed some editing. I find that this becomes a very crucial point in the shoot, because you still have time before the models are set-ready to finalize the set design but you just can’t seem to get it right. The last thing you want to happen is to be 3 looks into the shoot and decide then that you want to change everything around. Wasting time is not part of the agenda. I called Samy’s to pull some more muslin, and instead of sending out the assistant to pick up the order, I took the opportunity to step away and take a break, so I went myself. During that short drive I was able to picture things a bit better in my head. Conflict usually arises when you force your ideas instead of using them to work within your shooting space. I think we were trying to pull off something that I feel we just didn’t have the resources to accomplish, and once I accepted that I could think of a better solution. Through listening to what everyone had to offer, we ended up creating this amazing atmosphere in the studio utilizing the grip equipment as part of the set. Once we got over that obstacle, everything went relatively smoothly.
Now that the set was finished it was much easier for me to envision a lighting design. I wanted to position the lighting so that I could shoot all around the set without having to physically move the lights. I took a couple of old Mole 2K’s that we have and set them up to serve as both lighting and prop elements. The zoom spot remained as the key light, while the 2K’s worked as rim lights. To compensate for the weaker output of the 2K’s, we had to add 4 stops of ND gel to the strobe. In order to balance the color between the tungsten and strobe sources, I set the camera’s white balance to tungsten and slapped a CTO on the zoom spot to warm it up. I had to shoot at 800ISO to get a decent shutter speed while shooting wide open in the F1.4-2.8 range. The continuous sources remained stationary and all I really had to move was the zoom spot which was on a roller, and we used that as the key which followed the model’s position. Finally, we also used a rolling full-length mirror as a reflector which bounced the light from the 2K’s back into the model. You can also see from some of the shots I used a cross-star filter over the lens. I used two lenses for this shoot; a 50mm F1.4 and an 85 F1.8.
I think you can see from the photos not only how everything was set up, but also how I moved around the set to capture different angles and perspectives, how I utilized set elements to give depth, and how the light was able to change from shot to shot just from moving the camera position. I also want you to note how the magazine decided to lay out and crop the images compared to my original framing. All in all, this shoot is definitely one of my favorite shoots to date. Many thanks to Dondee Quincena and Wayne Hayes for their hard work on this shoot.
