Elizabeth

After our Little Red Riding Hood shoot, Jenna wanted to do an Elizabeth Taylor tribute shoot.  I definitely wanted to be the photographer since this would give me another opportunity to attempt the Hollywood Lighting style.  My previous two attempts, one with Adrianna and one with Sarah, were mediocre at best, but after taking some time off from shooting, I was ready to give it another go.

Jenna arrived all made up and ready to shoot. She brought some images of Elizabeth Taylor that she liked and I had some on my iPad that I wanted to re-create, fortunately they were the same pictures.

I used four lights for the tribute portion of our shoot, key, fill background and kicker. three of the lights were gridded with barndoors and the fill was diffused.  The difficult part of the lighting was to keep it specular and controlling the spill.  We must have taken 40 shots per pose to get the lighting pattern close to Paramount style.

After three poses Jenna changed to a powder blue, white polka dot, vintage bikini.  Honestly, I like the contrast between Jenna's "Retro" look and her tattoos.  I know some photographers find her tattoos distracting and even some of the ladies at my work.  At least I respect the photographers comments, but the "haters" at work, whatever.  LOL!!!

Oh, back on track, for the bikini shoot I went with a high key look similar to my latest Maternity session.  Simple white muslin hung from the opened garage door and a white 4' x 6' reflector held by Jenna's Fiance'.  It was a nice clear sunny day.  For the entire shoot I used my 85mm lens, but shot the bikini sequence at f/2.8 and 1/100 shutter.

What did I learn?

• When shooting Paramount style, really get that key up high and do simple poses.  The model needs to be able to maintain the pose as you adjust the lights.
• Don't settle for "good enough".  Keep shooting until you get what you want.

Overall, I think we achieved our goal and also had fun during the process.  I'm not sure what's next, but I have to send in my Einstein strobes for replacement.  I've mentioned it here on the blog, but in addition to the Pocket Wizard RF problems, they have corrected two other issues, so April will be either Nikon Speedlights or On Location shooting while Studio in the RAW is closed.

Thanks Jenna for asking me to be the photographer, kudos to Gloria Boling for the awesome Hair, and you, my followers for keeping me moving forward.  That's A Wrap!!!