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Articles Tagged with: fashion photography

Stella Nova Fall Campaign

Now that the advertising has run, I wanted to show you some of the work I did for Stella Nova Spa & Salon. The ad above was for the back cover of the Charleston edition of Skirt Magazine. The one below is from The Little Black Book’s back cover. The model is Karson Terrell, who had just won the crown of Miss Folly Beach Teen 2013 the night before. This was her second photo shoot of the day and she was still glowing.

Hair and make-up was done by Stephanie Murray Waltrip, who I met earlier this year at the Change For Change Art Show when I shot her family’s portrait.

I wanted to share with you some of the shots that didn’t get used, because we had so much fun making them and I believe it shows. This photo was the final “perfected” image for the similar shot above used on the Little Black Book. The one they used was actually a test shot, so the lighting wasn’t positioned correctly yet and she wasn’t “posing” – I just had her standing in place to test the lights! My guess is that the art director liked that fact.

In a similar fashion, the photo they chose at the top of this post was not a planned shot – it was just off-the-cuff playing against a wall because the light was great on our way to do this shot:

One of the things they asked for was the color blue, and they wanted something slightly editorial in nature. Stephanie and I thought this would foot the bill:

I think that this shot truly shows off Stephanie’s talent in the hair department:

And Karson’s eyes in this shot are hypnotizing:

When they told me which shots they were going to use, I was a little surprised because neither were what they had asked for! My first reaction was “I’ll never send anything but the absolute best shots to the client ever again” because they used a test shot. Then I realized just how silly that line of thinking is. These shots are for them, not me! If I gave them something they liked, then I did my job. More importantly, the art director did her job of finding an image that demonstrates their brand. By delivering more than what they asked for, we actually did the right thing. As an artist, the things I look for in my images are very different than what someone else might see. In portraiture, my job is to decide that. In commercial photography, my job is to let the client decide.

I shot most of the shoot in portrait because that is what the client asked for. This last shot was an alternate I did for myself because the scene looked too cool not to capture in landscape. I had Karson’s mother holding my light over the side of the roof while I was leaning over the railing to get this:

If you read my blog regularly, you may remember that the portrait version of this shot won an honorable mention at the Coastal Carolina Fair this year 😉 Be sure to check out the rest of the photos from the shoot in this Flickr set.

Charleston Fashion Week 2012 (Friday Show)

Friday night was a big night for the Low Country’s style scene, as Charleston Fashion Week had a big sold out show in Marion Square. I was on hand to capture images for Charleston’s TheDigitel.com and their non-stop coverage of all that is Fashion Week.

The photo pit was noticeably more crowded on Friday, and I had the pleasure of not only shooting with photog buddy Robert Donovan, but I also sat next to Paul Zoeller, who’s a local photog I’ve been a fan of for quite a while. He also happens to be a really nice guy! I also made new friends from Charleston Scene, including Marie Rodriquez.

So, you can read the entire rundown of the event in tomorrow’s Digitel article, I’m just going to show you my favorite looks and shots.

In addition to the local showcases (which were Mary Mojo & Gwynne’s of Mt. Pleasant) and the featured designer (which was designer Chris Benz), there were two competitions as well. In the first competition, the models got to duke it out in the “Rock the Runway Model Competition”.

Nikki Jansen took the women’s title and Samuel Roberts took the men’s title.

The Emerging Designer showcase was the most exciting part of the show for me, mainly because the design’s are the equivalent to concept cars you see at the car expo – they’re just far out there and interesting.

Hannah Goff advanced to the finals, which will be held tomorrow. Here’s a couple of her looks:

I was happy to have a different vantage point from Wednesday’s show, I was able to get some more creative shots from this low angle. Thanks to Paul for letting me in his spot for parts of the show!

To wrap it up, here’s a few more random shots. I’ve got a bunch of “red carpet” shots that I’ll be putting up soon, so come back if I took your picture out there! You can view all of my shots from Friday night here, and don’t forget to check out Wednesday’s post here.

Look, it’s Charleston Fashion Week creative director and the style editor for Charleston Magazine, Ayoka Lucas:

That was a lot of fun, I can’t wait to do it again!

Charleston Fashion Week 2012 (Wed. Show)

Last night, I shot my first runway show at Charleston Fashion Week. It was a pretty intense scene, but it was also very light-hearted at the same time. Lots of people dressed to the nines, but no feeling of pretention or fashion snobbery that I saw. It was actually a lot of fun for this fashion show noob!

The festivities kicked off with a musical number by King Sing. The first designer, Tommy Bahama followed.

JLINSNIDER is a local favorite, and the place was buzzing to see what the Charleston designer had to show.

I have to admit, I really liked the cyborg themed stuff:

After a break, the Emerging Designer contest began. Here are some of my favorite shots from them:

Bob & Kris Galmarini took home the people’s choice award, but come on, they might as well of had puppies on stage! How cute are these kids dressed like it’s 1995??

And the winner who’ll move on to Saturday’s finals is Angela Sum (who’s collection is featured at the top of this post):

Prior to this event, I’d searched high and low for a decent picture of what the photographer’s pit looks like at a fashion runway show. I couldn’t find much, so without further ado, here’s the photographer’s pit at Charleston Fashion Week:

I have a ton of photos from nearly every look at the show, you can check those out here. I also have a bunch of candid shots, and I’ll be posting those soon as well. Make sure to follow The Digitel Extra on Twitter for full live coverage of this week’s events. I’m heading back into the pit on Friday night, so hang tight as there is more to come…

Kicking Ass With Krista

I met Krista soon after we moved to Charleston back in the mid oughts. She was working at the local gym as a personal trainer. She approached my wife and I and asked us if we want a free personal training session, to which we happily obliged. I can honestly say that in a fight, not only would she kick my ass, she’d run circles around me while doing it. But, beyond the fact that she’s built like a UFC fighter, she’s also a very beautiful woman.

I invited Krista over to the studio with the goal of demonstrating how dynamic she is. Together I think we swung for the fences and hit one out of the park. We started out doing some fashiony type poses.

Then she put on her workout clothes as I went for an edgier and athletic look to compliment her. She’s a pro at this, so all I really had to do was be there, but when working with any model it’s truly a partnership. You collaborate with the talent and they put their trust in you to capture them at the peak of their performance. In a situation like this where someone spends their life doing something and you’re in charge of conveying that to an audience, it’s important to understand how to use your craft to capture it effectively.

Even though she had a much busier task of watching five kids all by herself during the shoot, my wife Amy still was able to put her fingerprint on this shoot by suggesting that Krista bring her wedding dress. Only problem was, when Krista got married she was wearing the dress for two (she was pregnant, slowpoke). Ahh, the versatility of spring clamps to the rescue. Those things are only second to gaffers tape in importance in your photographer’s tool kit. With this look, I wanted drama, both in Krista’s look and with lighting.

Finally, we went total glam as I set up some speedlights behind her to get a ton of lens flare and backlighting. I totally think that experimenting and playing around after you get the shots you initially wanted to get leads to some of the best shots you’ll make. The model is loose, your photographer juices are flowing, and things just seem to click.

After that, I handed Krista the camera and asked her to make my new Facebook profile picture. She’s just getting into photography and has taken a few lessons, so I was more than happy to get her to turn the camera on me. I think she got it 😉

Haley (Part 1)

Over the weekend I setup the home studio and invited Haley over to be the first model in it. I’ve been exploring the different practices of people photography lately, and I have to say that this shoot was one of my favorites. It could just be the fact that Haley was an amazing model to work with, but I really had fun. She also had fun (it shows), and my ~~assistant~~ wife Amy had a lot of fun as well. In fact, Amy played a huge part in coming up with poses as well as keeping the energy up (we shot late into the evening). Here’s one of Amy’s pose ideas:

Haley is such a natural. Every shot felt like a keeper – in fact I haven’t even gone through all of them yet. I felt I needed to share these with you fine readers, hence the “Part 1” – there will be more of these soon!

So, here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of my home studio – You can see how I had the lights set up for this shoot. The giant softbox is an AB800 as the fill, the beauty dish is my 2nd AB800 as the main light, and there’s an SB-600 speedlight in the smaller softbox as a kicker in the back.

After getting some traditional poses, things started to loosen up and we got shots such as the guitar one up top. Each time she changed clothes, she brought a new energy. She also got to choose the music, which I provided via Pandora. I asked her who her favorite musical artists were and she was quick to respond with Florence + The Machine. If you’re looking for a good alt-rock Pandora channel, that one does the job!

I’ve also been reading and watching a lot of stuff from Peter Hurley about headshots lately since his guest blog post on Scott Kelby’s blog last week, and I find his style and approach really inspiring. I threw on my 50mm f/1.8 and since it was late and I couldn’t shoot with natural light, I used the modeling lights from the Alien Bees to get this:

I set the white balance to incandescent for that shot, but when I turned on the Nikon SB-600 in the kicker softbox, the flash color turned the background blue to get this effect:

In post, I decided to experiment a little on a couple of shots. Here’s a black & white:

And finally, here’s a composite I made with an image I shot at Tugaloo State Park last year. After combining the two, I used a cross-processing effect to get the color.

This was my first attempt a fashion style photography, and while I have a lot of learning ahead of me, I think Haley definitely made this look better than I expected!

More to come very soon…