In this “Tuesdays with Lauri”-video we take a behind-the-scenes look at my recent photoshoot that I organised in London. We talk about creating a composite image in Photoshop, as well as take a quick look at the lighting I used in this photograph.
For this photoshoot, we built a team that was possibly the most multi-cultural team, I have ever been lucky enough to be a part of. We had people from Finland, The States, England and Lithuania all together in London.
We had created a concept around ‘The Queen of the Crows’ and compiled a moodboard around that theme. We figured out the look and feel that we were going for, and used that as the basis for our make-up, wardrobe and styling in general. We were lucky enough to get the amazing wardrobe designer Kevin Freeman and the awesome costume accessories and props designer, and maker, Clea Broad to work with us during this shoot.
Kevin provided us with three amazing dresses, and Clea gave us a huge amount of different accessories and props to use.
As we were really going for a magical, almost surreal look, I felt that the best way to create the photo, would be to composite it together from several different elements. For this reason, I photographed our amazingly talented model, Jen Brook, on a white backdrop, and decided to use one of my old nature/landscape photos as the backdrop.
The lighting for this image was very simple, as I couldn’t haul a lot of equipment all the way to London from Finland. We used a very large white reflector as the backdrop, and lit the scene with an alienbee-strobe with an umbrella on it. We positioned the light right outside the frame on camera-left and angled it down at about 45°, in relation to out model’s face.
This gave us the dramatic lighting we were going for.
Technical details
Camera: Canon EOS 5D MkII
Lens: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM Standard Zoom Lens
ISO: 100
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter: 1/100
I hope you guys enjoyed this article and video, and like I said in the beginning, this series will be continued with 1 or 2 other videos/articles, where we are going to be taking a more in-depth look at creating a complex composite out of several different elements. So, stay tuned, and see you again next tuesday! :)
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