My shoots with Versatile continue, and I had my first opportunity to work with local Houston model Sabrina Sin. Though I’m sure most people would see her tattoos, razor sharp cheek bones, and ice blue stare as intimidating, yet she is actually a bowl full of sweetness. Regardless of what’s going on in and around a shoot, between shots she’s smiling and bubbly. Her personality and extremely photogenic face make her a model worth shooting more than once.
We started the day with the catalog shots.
Afterward, I saw the opportunity to shoot her in a robe I’ve wanted to shoot for a very long time. It matched the corset and background so well, and I thought it’d be great to shoot something *not* catalog. So I had her wear my vintage early 90s Victoria’s Secret robe, and took this shot, my favorite of what we shot that day:
After the shoot, a DJ friend of Sabrina’s joined our makeup artist Angel, she and I to dinner. We snickered over drinks as the waiter nearly dropped our orders in our laps while ogling Sabrina.
Some tips I learned on lighting pitch black enviornments
Last weekend was the annual Fetish Ball here in Houston. The day before the ball I shot Sabrina again, along with one of the headlining models for the ball, Athena Fatale. This shoot was fraught with a lot of difficult parameters. It was to be shot at a club that was doing a pre-Fetishball party. I had never been to the venue, and not long before the shoot date I was told we’d only have 3 hours to shoot. Truth-be-told I had 3 girls to shoot in 4 styles, add in hair and make-up, and you can see how this time limit would be a problem! The second big problem? The entire venue was either painted deepest black or darkest red. I learned quite a few things about this predicament.
It turns out, black paint does not light nearly the same as black seamless. I’ve been working with strobes for so many years, and know how powerful they are. I was under the impression they could light any area. Here’s where wattage plays a very important role: black seamless has a degree of bounce to it. It’s not really 100% black, it’s more 90% grey. Because of this, you can light it so it appears black, or appears to have a small amount of grey to it. Also, it does not swallow your subject. Black paint reacts very differently. It swallows and absorbs every ounce of light. In this situation, the paint was also shiny, so you’re going to get strong highlights. I recommend soft light when paint is glossy to reduce the sharpness of highlights. I also learned to up the wattage of your lights as much as possible! My wattage was not nearly high enough, had I used the next wattage head up the images would have been far more crisp.
In spite of that, I love the image we did get. In the short amount of time I was not able to set up a lighting situation to light the scene exactly how I liked it, but the small direction I gave the models took the image a long way.
The other issue was the red paint. Again, the paint does not shoot the same as it does the red paper. I found this red paint to bleed a great deal. Because there was no light in this location what-so-ever, the red needed to be lit. Opposite the issue with the black walls, the red needed to be lit on a very low setting, as the saturation of the color creates a bleeding effect.
I really love how nearly editorial this image looks though. I curse not using a higher wattage light on Athena, as I’d like it to be sharp enough for print. Alas, it’s not.
