Earlier this month I had the pleasure of working with a beautiful new face: Sveta. Having modeled in the Ukraine for 3 years before moving to the U.S.A. just one year ago, this long-legged beauty is a fresh face just begging to be signed. To top it off, she has the sweetest demeanor of anyone I have yet to work with. With a calm confidence that matures her far beyond her years, this young budding model is a joy to work with - striking pose after stunning pose. As an added bonus: the contours of her face love the camera!
We had an intimate team, with only myself, the model and MUA, Mary Czech, present for the shoot. What a dynamic trio! The creative energy and relaxed atmosphere created a perfect shooting environment...
The shoot was separated into two sections:
The first was set in front of a blank wall next to my ever- reliable natural light window source. This always works well because I can switch in various fine art papers from the local art supply boutique, thus giving me diversity in my beauty images with the consistent natural light that has always been a very important feature in my work. I've always been partial to the dramatic shadows and multi-dimensional qualities that result from manipulating the light sources naturally available in any setting. In this series I occasionally added in a reflector to catch a soft light on the other side of her face as well.
The second series, set in front of a wall of glass tiles, was a test shoot to give my new speed light a test run ;) To my delight, the little treasure packs a lot of power, so we snagged a few stills from the very onset. But then, after having spent 45 minutes or so on the previous still and composed beauty shots, I felt like getting a little more spontaneous... so the speed light was set to full power, down dropped the shutter speed, and up went the overhead dimmers for little more tungsten colour and glow. Between Mary's idea to pop the colour up a couple notches and glue on the falsies, and Sveta's ability to carelessly throw her head around while still looking gorgeous, we got some beautiful long and multiple exposure images!