I recently shot another installment of promo images for the Swiss handbag label RoyalBLUSH. Things were a bit rushed, because the images had to be ready for the GREENshowroom, part of the Mecedes-Benz Fashion Week in Berlin. All in all we had little more than a week to shoot, process and get things printed.

In this post I’ll cover the speedy shoot and in part two I will explain how I used the powerful tools of Adobe Lightroom 2 to process and retouch 9 images in less than a day! We’ll have behind the scenes video and a free Lightroom Preset for download!

Continue reading after the break…

As it turned out it was youngster day at the studio: We cast Ingrid (of FOTOGEN Model Agency Zürich). Even though it was one of her first fashion shoots she performed really well, was very professional and gave us everything we needed. Also new on the scene was Nadia Smug our hair & make up artist. I think she did a wonderful job and I’m looking forward to working with her again!

So let’s get going with a peek behind the scenes:

NICOLAS HENRI: RoyalBLUSH - The Shoot from Nicolas Henri on Vimeo.

(If you’re reading this via email or RSS, click here to see the video)

The intended use of these images was for a flyer at the show, the designer’s look book and as promo material to be sent out to fashion mags. Because of this we decided to go classic and shoot against white seamless, which makes it really easy to add logos and other type plus the magazines can easily drop it into their layout as a cut out, use wrap around text, etc.

Shooting on white seamless you will need to separate your background and subject lighting, making sure they affect each other as little as possible. The white seamless background needs to be substantially brighter than your subject (at least 1.5 stops) so all the creases or shadows your foreground lighting may cast are washed out. Just plain white. On the other hand you don’t want any of that strong light on the background spill onto your subject, as it will always burn out the highlights in skin tones or bright clothing.

As you can see above, I used two plywood walls on wheels (Yay! walls on wheels - almost like meals on wheels!!), one on either side to completely shield the model from the lights behind it. On either side, behind the walls I had a Broncolor head, equipped with wide angle reflectors (the ones you might use when working with umbrellas) firing at the far side of the white seamless. This way the center of the beams cross in the middle, resulting in a more even coverage on the background.

As a main light for the model, I used a beauty dish, slightly elevated over the eye line and dialed in for normal exposure. To fill things in and to provide some extra light on the floor I had a softbox set up above, about 1 stop under the beauty dish. This was the principal light setup, which didn’t change during the shoot.

But after all what we were doing was about the handbags (+ some leather jewelry, also designed by RoyalBLUSH). So some extra punch was needed to make the accessories pop out of the image. For this we created a cross lighting situation, using a tightly gridded spot on the opposite side of the beauty dish at roughly the same power. I had the flash head sitting loosely on the light stand so it could be dynamically aimed at the bag by an assistant, even though Ingrid kept changing poses. This really helped to work out the texture of the bags.

Given the express nature of the project, we had created a situation which worked for many output vectors, worked in favor of the client’s products and still allowed to dynamically adjust to varying scenarios (differently shaped and sized bags, different poses and compositions). This enabled us to shoot 9 different handbags + jewelry, change the models outfit in between and we did it all in 4 hours studio time!

This wraps up part 1 of the “speedy fashion shoot”. Next week in part 2 we’ll look at the post processing side of things and how you can deliver 9 quality images, both in color AND a gorgeous high contrast black & white version - all in under a day! We will even have an original Nicolas Henri Lightroom Preset for free download available, so stay tuned…

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Posted by nicolas_henri on July 2nd, 2009 :: Filed under Lighting, Making Of, Photography, Uncategorized
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