Bruce Smith
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Little Gems 6
The brief for the image featured in this months article was to produce a fashion story of 8 dresses for a fashion designer based in Los Angeles, California, USA. The dresses were all made from flowing chiffon with very saturated coloured patterns. The images would need to have a lot of movement in the fabrics shot against a background of the sky and the desert floor.
Like any location shoot there would be a lot of planning and preparation to be done prior to the shoot. Several things to take into account re getting there, re dealing with the elements of harsh sunlight, wind, dust storms all of which actually made it a very tough shoot to produce.
Normally I would take a trip out to the suggested location to do a recce but Sharons a very experienced make up artist that has worked on many high profile productions as well as working with myself for many years on my shoots in LA. I could trust her judgement implicitly. It was decided. El Mirage it is.
The Right Type Of Model For This Shoot
The client would be styling the shoot and as you will have read above I have my make up and hair styling sorted with Sharon on board. All I had to find was 2 models that would fit the brief. Because our objective for the images was for editorials in magazines we needed to book editorial models and not commercial ones. How do you choose whats the difference.
The Commercial Model
Take a look inside mail order catalogues or magazines targeted at the every day middle of the road family, the models featured are chosen for their look to identify with the reader, models that represent the target market for the magazine or catalogue. Their look is more average and closer to the real world, less extreme. Average in hight c 5ft 7in and up, the type of figure can vary according to the target market or product, a model for lingerie/ underwear will be a little curvier than a swimwear model, a fashion model will be taller and slimmer. than a lingerie model etc There is no strict line between them, they are chosen to suit the markets so the market identifies with their look.
The Editorial Model
Again take a look at the variety of magazines that targeted more extreme target markets, life styles that can be deemed as more edgy and unusual, the models featured will be less conventional with looks that can be unusual, less safe, in common terms an editorial look. The editorial models work is mainly being photographed for editorial features in fashion magazines. Most fashion magazines are always looking for new looks that reflect fashion on the street. A classic case to look at is Twiggy from the 1960s who was probably one of the first unusual looking editorial models with an extreme look, prior to Twiggy models were more like the normal woman, very beautiful, tall and slim but not so extreme. Again their is no fine line distinction, just a new or different look for fashion thats in the now.
The choice of model for this project was more towards the editorial looking. I looked at the models from some of the top model agencies in LA and short listed to about half a dozen to present to the client as potential choices for the shoot. I had a preference to Taja Plecas, who also appealed to my client so we booked her for the shoot. I will go into booking models and the usage for fashion images in another article.
Basic Needs Of Your Team
The team would need to be briefed regarding the shoot and regarding the problems and needs for protection from the elements, especially the dry heat and very dangerous sun burn risk. The clothing to be worn for both comfort and practicality of shooting in the desert, a hat with a wide brim to keep out the sun, sunglasses with high UV protection and of course full sunblock cream and lip solve.
There would be no facilities out there like a toilet, no shade, no protection from the wind, no changing facility, no food or water, all of the things that people need in the desert and to survive a long days shoot. All of the above had to be taken with us from a toilet tent to plenty of bottled water and food to keep every one going through out the day.
Camera Kit List
Main camera body is the Nikon D3 and as back ups a D2H and a D700.
Nikon Lenses, a 17 to 55 f2,8, and a 24 to 70 f2,8. Along with my 70 to 200 f2,8 which always seams to stay in my camera bag.
I wanted to shoot extremely wide angle so the 17 to 55 would be my perfect choice on the D3 body with the full frame CMOS sensor chip.
A Polarizing Filter to help saturate the colours of the fabrics, darken the sky, whiten the clouds, enhance sheen on the models skin and to generally help the overall contrast of the images.
Professional Flash Cards, enough to shoot the whole collection incase of computer crash, Very Fast Car Reader, Spare Camera Batteries.
A Dust Proof Camera Cover to protect my camera from the flying dust.
Lighting Kit That Was Right For This Shoot
As we were shooting many miles away from any where with no electricity supply, we had to take battery powered flash kit, I decided that my Elinchrom Ranger RX location lighting kit with several fully charged spare battery packs, a spare 3 heads, a 77cm beauty dish with a gold deflector, a radio sync, a heavy duty stand, couple of sand bags and a metal chain to hang the pack off the stand for added weight to make sure the lighting stand did not fall over in the heavy wind. As you can see in the outtake image on the right, even my crew were also keeping tight hold of the stand as added protection from the wind.
Looking at the outtake image, you do not get a real impression of how bad it actually was to shoot at El Mirage. The wind was at times beating you with sand and grit as well as as serious risk of blowing over the lighting set up. You will see my first assistant holding the beauty dish to stop it from toppling over, as well as turning it as I shot to keep the flash head pointing just at the right angle so my models face was lit perfectly for every shot whilst she moved to my direction.
The Day Before The Shoot
The day before the shoot I pulled the whole team together to go through every detail of the shoot production to ensure that every body would be well prepared for their input to the shoot, I did not want to come back without fantastic images for my client because of some thing that was forgotten, even a missing cable could jeopardize a smooth production, so every tiny aspect of needs for shooting under such conditions were taken into account.
Checking And PackingThe Kit
We needed to make sure that we had all of the photographic kit needed to produce the shoot, all of which needed to be double checked that it functioned properly with back up kit incase of failure. Batteries for the cameras and flash units had to be fully charged. Every thing was packed and checked off a list the night before ready for the journey ready to leave Los Angeles at 5am in order to get an early start for the long drive to the El Mirage.
Assessing Your Image And Briefing A Retoucher
Adjustments that I want to make to the image to give the finish that I want.
Increasing the overall contrast and saturation, cleaning up spots from dust on the digital chip.
1: Increase contrast using curves.
2: Increasing the saturation using hue and saturation
3: Cropping for dynamics to fit the magazine page proportions
4: Removing the few dust spots
5: Sizing for publication
6: Sharpening using smart sharpen
7: Saving as a PDF ready for print.
The Finished Image
Lighting The Shot
The lighting effect that I wanted to achieve for this shoot was high in contrast on my model with a saturated rich dramatic sky as my background. To achieve this I used one flash head with a 77cm beauty dish with a gold deflector attached to warm up the light with no diffuser over the beauty dish to create a sharper more specular lighting effect.
The flash was set up high up just on my left side and about 10ft away from my model to ensure no fall off of light intensity from my models head to her toes, also to add an extra crispy edge to the lighting.
Metering The Ambient Light And The Flash Power Output
With my ISO set at 200, the ambient light reading on my model with the meter pointing towards my camera position was f8 at 125th sec, because I was shooting with a polarizing filter attached to my lens, (which cuts out 2 stops of light), my equivalent correct exposure would be f4 at 125th sec, so I set my camera aperture to 2 stops under this reading to f8 at 125th sec to under expose the ambient light by 2 f-stops, this meant that I needed to set my flash output power to give me a flash meter reading of f16 taken from my models position with the meter pointing towards the flash and the camera position.
The polarizing filter serves two purposes in situations like this, one as per further back in the article to enhance and saturate the colours of the outfit, to darken the sky etc, also to help under exposure of the ambient light when using flash shooting with a 35mm DSLR that will only flash sync at 125th sec when using off camera studio flash kit, radio flash firing or cable syncing.
Its important to have your shutter set at a max speed of 125th sec when syncing camera shutter with studio flash to be safe from loosing a strip down the edge of your image when shooting with flash at faster shutter speeds than 125th sec.
As the sun was going down I kept the flash output and aperture set the same and adjusted my shutter speed to slower speeds to allow for the decreasing ambient light. I think it was down to about 30th sec by the time the sun was about to set.
If your shooting with a leaf shutter you can sync up to a 500th sec, making under exposing the ambient light and syncing to flash less of a challenge.
The result was as per the image bellow left shot at f8 at 125th sec, image middle is how it looked at the same settings with out the flash firing and the image right is shot at the correct reading for the ambient light with no flash.
Achieving My Clients Objective
As in previous articles regarding achieving the clients objectives, its very important that the images that you produce for your client meet with their needs.
For this project my clients most important factors were to have images that could be used for submission as magazine editorials and her own press adds, so they had to be images that would appeal to fashion magazine editors or they would not get published. The type of magazines that the images would be submitted to needed to be those that suite the ideals and lifestyle of the potential buyers of my clients clothes. To ensure this, I wanted to shoot the dresses with a very edgy/editorial feel to them. Unlike images for a catalogue/look book where every detail and the cut, the colour, the fall of the outfit etc are needed to be seen clearly in the image.
The editorial image is about a combination of reflecting trend and creativity, in easy terms, images that tell a story, exciting and interesting but also showing the feel of the outfits that the client envisaged when designing them. To bring the clients vision into this shoot i wanted to emphasize the colours and the flowing softness of the chiffon dresses by shooting them against the vibrant blue of the desert sky as well as the starkness of the desert floor using the natural wind to create the movement to the flowing fabrics, this was my interpretation of achieving my clients needs. It sounds very easy but how do you guarantee your going to achieve all of this.
Pre Production Plan
Now that I know what my clients needs are, I have in my mind what the images will look like, I have to put together a production plan to ensure I come back with fabulous images that will work for my clients objective. A few more questions that I need the answers to, how many outfits to produce during the day, what type of model would suits the clients image and the style of the dresses, how did she envisage the look for hair and make up, would the designer be styling the outfits re the accessories such as jewellery and shoes etc. All of the little things that can add to a fashion shoot.
The Chosen Location
As I had not produced a shoot of its kind in Los Angeles, I had to ask around for advice as to what would be a good destination to produce this shoot. As it happened the hair and make up artist that I had chosen for this shoot, Sharon Hawkey suggested that the best place to produce this shoot would be at El Mirage Lake, its a dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert of San Bernardino County, California, about 2 hours or so drive from Los Angeles. When I saw some of her outtake pictures I decided it would be perfect location for our shoot, Sharon had worked on a shot there only a few weeks earlier and new exactly where we should go as well as a lot of information regarding what to expect when we got there.
More To An Image Than Technique, Pixels And Photoshop
Creating an amazing image is not just about your cameras number of pixels, lighting or type of lighting kit or fancy techniques in photoshop. A great image must have more to it to make people look longer and sigh a wow that images is fantastic. When some ones first impression is my god how sharp the shot is, look at the at the definition its incredible. Nice to hear if your a sharpness, detail and technique freak but in my mind if this is what they see in the image the image is lacking in energy, feeling, movement and emotion, the some major elements that I strive to get into every image that I shoot. With out real energy, movement and emotion in your original image there are no lighting or photoshop technique that can put it in. Its about having an idea in you mind and portraying this to your subject through your communication, your directing and your being in full control of your shoot.
A Few More Things About This Project
A few other aspects to the production of this shoot. It just so happened that one of our models lived on route to the location, so we used this as stop off to get both models made up and to have a cup of coffee or 4 to wake every one up.
We took with us a large canopy to use as a base for the team to set up tables and computer kit as well as a shelter from the mid day blistering heat. The wind was so strong we had to tie the canopy and its legs to the wheels and roof racks using a 3 vehicles barrage to block the wind and to stop the whole thing from flying off across the desert.
The make up was being ruined by the wind causing the models eyes to water along with her being attacked by the harsh sun, we could only shoot c 10 frames before she had to have her make up repaired as well as to take a brake from the heat.
