How We Shot It – Finding Treasures at Your Local Fabric Store

Welcome to Craig Lamere

What’s up everyone, this is Pye. Just wanted to give a shout out and welcome to Craig Lamere, one of our newest SLR Lounge writers! Craig is a great photographer and he is a valuable addition to the team. Enjoy the article!

How We Shot It

The “How We Shot It” series is composed of images submitted by our writers! But, did you know that we also have a segment called “How You Shot It”? If you enjoy sharing how your images were created, please send us an email at contact@slrlounge. Of course please understand that we receive innumerable emails every day, and only select a small percentage of article submissions for actual publication based on image and tutorial quality.  Thanks, and enjoy!

The Photo

Background and Vision

For about the last year or or so I’ve been on this fabric store kick where I will go to my local fabric store and look for cool fabric to make some type of garment to shoot. Since I have no idea at this point how to sew I’m pretty much limited to wrapping, pinning, taping and twist tying everything. I always go to the bargain bin to find my fabric. To me it’s like treasure hunting. I found these two pieces of fabric I loved. One I used to make the dress, which we wrapped Brooklynn in and the other I used as a type of vail and held it on by taking a strand of fake flowers and making a head wreath. I have to say I was super happy with the overall look that was created with $12 of fabric and a $7 dollar clearance strand of fake flowers!

Equipment and Camera Settings

• Canon 5D III
• Canon 100 L 2.8
• 1/160 sec @ f/10 & ISO 100
• Manual exposure, Manual WB, RAW

Lighting Setup

This was a very simple lighting setup. I shot this portrait  in front of a grey muslin in my studio. The lighting was a one-light set-up using a 42″ Octa and a white V-flat reflector to balance things out.  See the lighting diagram below!