One of my more successful images is “Pearls” created in collaboration with the superb model Nanette McCrone, and quite a number of people have asked me about what wonderful studio I shot it in, how many fancy lights did I use, and who did the models make up to get that lovely skin tone.
Well, it was taken in the lounge of the model’s flat after an aborted outdoor sunrise nude shoot, I used a single Jessops 336VM light from a kit of 3 lights I bought off somebody at the camera club for £25 for the whole set. I am no expert in lighting so setup one light to her right, and hoped the other wall to her left would act as a reflector. Nanette was not really able to get far enough away from the wall for the shadow of her to be out of shot.
This was my first shoot with Nanette, but it very quickly became apparent what an absolutely superb model Nanette was. Between us we were coming up with lots of ideas, using various props that she and I had bought along, and she was coming up with some great poses.
Then during a 10 minute session with a string of pearls she had we producing this image, which would become pearls. Now a lot of studio workers would probably throw this image away (probably all the images from this session!!) due to the poor lighting, or because the composition was too messy.
I felt I had enough to work on, and with the use of the crop tool and some dodging and burning, and some hue/saturation adjustment layers in Photoshop to get the statue-like effect I was looking for in the final image – so no fancy makeup I’m afraid.
So the moral of this story is that you don’t always need expensive studios and lighting to get a good image. You need a good model, maybe some props, a bit of creativity and our good friend Photoshop.
We produced a lot of images on that morning, all with one light in Nanette’s lounge. So here’s a selection of the sort of thing we got up to.
I wasn’t to keen on the carpet being the base of the picture so Nanette had a lovely coffee table we used as a posing stool. Here’s a pretty straight picture of Nanette doing one of her yoga poses on the table.
The single light worked quite well with ‘bodyscape’ type images, showing off Nanette’s superb figure.
Some of the other props were just bits of material from charity shops and other sources, the blut tint was added in Lightroom to add that bit of wierdness, as that was what I thought was needed with the way Nanette used these particular props.
And finally the set wouldn’t be complete with another picture of those lovely pearls which have produced that really succesful image.
Many thanks again to Nanette for creating all of these images, and in particular one of the most succesful images I have.
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