4 Models. 3 Huskies. 7 Assistants. Clothing, Make-up, Hair, Prop Stylist and a New Camera System. This shoot was just screaming to be filmed for a BTS on our DVD! That’s when we contacted Jay Espinal who came out to shoot for us on my Fall Fashion Shoot for Kurv Magazine. Check out the teaser video above to get an inside look at a segment from the DVD and read the full story below to see what my thoughts are about shooting with the new PhaseOne IQ!!
Fashion Photography EXPOSED – The DVD!
We’ve kept it under wraps for over a year. But now the secret is finally out! If you haven’t heard by now, we are releasing the first full blown educational fashion photography DVD ever made! We have pulled out all the stops to leave no stone unturned, no question unanswered. And I am honestly very pleased with the results!! Initially we wanted to base the format of the DVD loosely around what I teach at my workshops: a chance for photographers to work on a real fashion shoot with top models and professional hair stylists, make up artists and fashion stylists. And that’s great for a seminar when you’re in the room with me so I can show you what a difference it makes when you work with a pro team. But then we took a look at the bigger picture and realized that the real challenges that most young or up and coming fashion photographers face is inside knowledge on how to break into the industry. On Fashion Photography Exposed, I show you how to produce better fashion shoots with better lighting and then I show you the importance of promoting yourself and your business so you can compete in a very competitive and unpredictable industry. There is so much that the DVD offers but I’m not going to go into all of the specifics here in this post. You can find out all the information about it on the Fashion Photography Exposed DVD website.
I’m sort of known for not being a fan of using speedlights. Just never liked the look they give. I am not sure where this idea or belief came from, but I remember being back in college in the mid-’80′s and my colleagues and I would sort of categorize photographers who use this kind of light as Not Serious Ad Shooters. Not fair, I know, but none the less, I was young and impressionable and the idea has stayed with me over the years. However, over the last two or three years, I have been incorporating speedlights with my other lighting, whether I”m using natural light or studio flash like my Profotos. And what I mean by incorporating is that I use the speedlight to embellish the main lighting on my set. So let me explain that more clearly.
Ditty Bags! A quintessential part of every photographer’s stock, a ditty bag holds our essential necessities for a shoot. I don’t know what you guys call it but I got used to the term years ago and always lovingly refer to mine as a ditty bag, even though I get the strange looks from my ’20 something assistants. When researching the reason for the name I found this great little article about ditty bag: The Ditty Bag is “a small bag in which a sailor keeps small tools and equipment, also personal articles” according to John Rogers in Origins of Sea Terms: A modern Glossary of seagoing terminology. They did and still do have one main purpose: to hold a sailor’s personal possessions and some tools of the trade. They have even been referred to as a “housewife” because they held all the essentials for repairing clothing, personal belongings as well as everything that was needed on deck!
One Poison Apple
Over the summer, Douglas Little hired me to shoot a campaign to launch one of his new extravagant products. If you can remember Mr. Little from this previous post, he creates curious but gorgeous goods. He’s mainly famous for his decadent candles, and this new product was surely going to top the list of all things sinful and delightful. Douglas’s new candle was a Swarovski crystal layered candle that retails for a cool $420 bucks! Since the name of the candle is Poison Apple, he wanted to play with the Snow White theme. He sent me one comp, that’s it. He wanted one single image to promote the product with, but the image was well thought out and planned. He wanted to use his girlfriend, the illustrious burlesque dream girl Leila as our model since she naturally has a Snow White essence to her. With her jet black hair and snow white skin, she really was the perfect choice for our model.
