This series was taken few months back while I was in Paris and I finally got around to processing them. I am not sure why I didn't do it earlier.
The setting was a big white room with a sky light, we were technically inside a huge softbox. I'm not usually a fan of such big, broad, soft light but the fashiony people are so whatyougonnado? The lighting is uncomplicated: it's soft and even, and it shows the details of the clothes really well without drawing attention to itself. In such case, it's really hard to mess up (lighting-wise) so all I had to do was direct the model to pose the way I want. Everything was shot with my friend Rachel's 5dMk2 with a 24-70mm because mine didn't work.
During the shoot, everything was shot vertically and dead center. I wanted some lee-way during post-processing for crops or texts. The photos were cross-processed slightly using NIK ColorEffex and cropped to fit my taste. A centered composition is O.K in fashion and being within the rule-of-third is generally desired but for this one, I wanted to do something else so my crop is a bit weird and to the side. The very top picture is a tighter crop and by far my favorite but the main purpose of the shoot was to show the clothing so that's what you gotta do.
Thanks for reading!
I saw these three pictures on your flickr account, and didn't know (then) about the reason for the varied framing; yet, my favourite would be the last one. It's not only showing the clothes, it also has a very nice mood (given by the model's face expression) and a bit of... je-ne-sais-quoi; maybe the camber of that shoe?
ReplyDeleteAnd again: the sole reason for a tighter crop would be the short attention span when a viewer would look at it on the monitor, amongst 1000's of other pictures. By itself, the third picture would make a very nice print. Just imagine a canvas print, two meters high, no frame, seated right next to a door on a white wall!
Barbu: thanks for the comment and you are right on all points. In hindsight, I didn't think the full length picture could truly be appreciated on a computer screen so I cropped it closer, kinda like a magazine front cover.
ReplyDeleteAs for the je-ne-sais-quoi, for me it's the legs showing even though she's wearing a classy dress.
Love the second one - strongly calls to mind a certain Beardsley drawing. Flows beautifully.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with the third is, I think, your watermark. There's a nearly horizontal bar of "shadow" just below the model's fingertips. Very distracting, given the elegance and flowing lines of the subject.
These are REALLY good. (IMO, of course, and that's worth nearly nuthin').
John: you are right, I think I need a better way to watermark my work.
ReplyDelete