Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!!!

My photographer friend shared this photographer's FLICKR site with me, his name is Christopher Peddecord and has a series of Ballet images shot in Black and White.  So I was on a quest to do my own version, but with local ballet dancers.

After contacting the Bakersfield Ballet group and placing calls to other Dance studios, I still had no subjects to shoot.  I then  posted a couple Casting Calls on Model Mayhem and received  some responses, but when I'm ready to shoot and I have to plan ahead, I end up moving on to something else.

I contacted Vanessa, a local model who has a billboard of her on display in town, through Facebook.  I shared the theme with her and she said she would do her best to meet my expectations.  In addition to the dance-based shoot, I wanted to try and mimic stage lighting again after my shoot with Jeff, of Fluidity Photography.  So I decided we would do a Cabaret-themed shoot.

I also wanted to make sure Vanessa didn't have to worry about make-up and hair.  I contacted my friend, Angel, and he agreed to do the Hair and Make-up for this shoot.

The lighting for the Cabaret shoot consisted of four lights.  The key was outfitted with a 8.5" reflector and a 40 degree grid to simulate a spotlight, a strip box without diffusion, but gridded to provide a rim light, a hair light, bare bulb, with barndoors and a fill light bounced off the garage door.  The key light and hair light were metered at f/8, the rim at f/5.6 and the fill at f/4.

We shot various poses and then after an hour decided to switch to the lighting scheme used by Peddecord.  Grey seamless and a fairly large key.  We replaced the reflector with my 64" PLM and removed all other lights except for the fill.  We shot for about another hour and then called it a "wrap."

So What Did I Learn?
  • On the Cabaret shoot I need more distance between the model and the background.  Although the curtains created some separation from the balck seamless, it still was too close.  I also needed to move my key farther away to create a better spot light effect, or at least try a snoot.  We did use Black Wrap on the 8.5" reflector to create a harder edge.
  • For the Black and White dance images, I need a taller space.  Vanessa is tall and when she jumped, I could see the ceiling in my images, even when I stood on a step stool and shot at a downward angle, the limited space made it difficult to show "air."  I definitely need to find a bigger space to shoot the ballet images.
This was another good shot with decent results, and once more I learned some more.   I'm glad I got to work with Vanessa and now I know why she is in demand.  Working with Angel is always a pleasure and I love his work!!!  So this was another busy four days, with three shoots: Halston, Nicolette and Vanessa.

Stay Tuned, I am playing with some new light modifiers that aren't on the market, yet.  They are called SABER STRIP and are just the tools I was looking for to provide a nice narrow, but beautiful quality of light.  To see more photos shot with these exciting modifiers, check out the SaberStrip Lighting Group on FLICKR, and "That's A Wrap!!!"

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