Today’s shot (apologies for skipping yesterday as I lost the whole day trying to do an HDR panorama, but Photoshop would just not cooperate… very frustrating) is again an order from my school, this time we were to do a 2 page spread mock advertisement for a certain brand of Jelly beans. I collaborated with Ina Lopez and two models for this one. The concept was simple enough, to bring jelly beans as part of a sexy, cute bedroom game between two consenting people. These candies’ flavors being so intense, we wanted the game to be intense visually, thus the light bondage set-up.
The shoot went well despite some difficulties on the set: the space being ultra limited (I literally could not move the tripod once it was set), there were little options for lighting. Since the bedspread, walls and tank top were all close to white, I chose to bounce a flash equipped with a silver umbrella off an opposite wall to make the whole room into a giant soft box. This made a soft light which would counteract nicely the violent element in the scene and, we hoped, would help people understand that these two are having fun.
Model direction was key to the later, and much time was spent on exact positioning and expressions. Both models were cooperative and we got each shot within 20 minutes. Due to the space restraints, we were unable to shoot both models at once and had to resort to compositing the image, which worked in our favor time wise as well.
Post production was an involved process as I spent close to 4 hours on the shot. Compositing was fairly easy, but creating an interesting light and localized contrast out of a very soft washed-out shot was more of a challenge. The female model also had very pale translucent skin and her whole body was airbrushed and colorized to even her skin out. Make-up was retouched, although lightly, and colors and saturation were dealth with locally as well.
McComber Photo 