Anatomy of a photoshoot

I had this concept in my head for a while and found a model who's look I liked. I wanted to do some fashion/beauty/music. I've spent much of my life being a musician so this idea resonated with me. I still do not have the shot that I started out with in me head. But I knew we wouldn't get that one shot, because the location we used won't give the look I envisioned, but it offered a lot of other nice looks. The look I have in me head will have to wait for fall and another shoot.

Zoreh is a beautiful girl. She needed help with instrumental posture and if you play strings, you will see the deficiency. Tammy is a lady you will only see in the first picture here. But the photos would not have been as good without her. Tammy is my MUA (make-up artist)/photographer assistant. I've used Tammy a number of times. If I want a gal to look her best, Tammy is my go to guy, er.. gal.



The way I work is to meet the two at our location and let Tammy get to work while I set up and play with the light before shooting.

Here we started working about 6:30 am because I love the creamy golden light of early morning. Once make-up was done we got rolling.

This shot was early in the session. The sun is low and coming at her from camera right, leaving a very dark area in the bottom of the frame. I had Tammy climb over the edge of the bridge and hold my TTL flash at the edge of the bridge, just out of the frame on the left, pointed down towards Zoreh's legs and feet. To get the shot right (the way I wanted it) took several tries to get the light balanced. This is a shot I could not have gotten with out help. Getting help is my tip of the day.