From Concept to Shoot

They say it’s not good to look at other photographers' work. As I think this is half right. I do believe it contaminates your creative photography style. But it’s always good you think outside the box. You can call this a double edge sword.

So as I go down the rabbit hole called social media. I love seeing work from other creative people in my industry and so thinking about what I’m going to do for my next Halloween project. I run across some images that remind me of Harley Quinn with Halloween colors. A fantastic idea that I wanted to recreate. But the outfit was custom-made. So I ran it across my team to see their thoughts about the shoot. Makeup artist Anastazia had a similar concept but something that was not so custom.

I was talking with the set designer Rex about our idea. He had a slightly different vision for the shoot. He is thinking about the idea of a mad scientist. Hmm, interesting; mad scientists sound like a pretty good idea for the props he designed for the shoot. So we all decided on both views for the shoot.

So, let's talk about the meat and potatoes of lighting the shoot. The first idea was to put spotlights in certain areas of the scene to accent the props. But doing this will take hours and time to set up the lighting. So plan B was to light the background all red without the red light on the model. Sound easy, but that took time to set up. Four to five strobes, exactly.

Model: Aliana Glory, Makeup: Karla Mendez, Hair stylist: Latisha Grant, Wardrobe stylist: Kimberly PYT Woods, Set and Props: Rex Fett