Welcome behind the scenes of our latest fashion shoot using Lensbabys. Hey guys, welcome to
Phlern, my name is Aaron Nace. You can find me on Twitter at AKNACER. Today, we’re taking
a look behind the scenes of our recent fashion photo shoot and we did it all using these
Lensbabys. Lensbaby sent us this pro effects kit for review on Phlern. It’s really
cool. It comes with a Composer Pro, which is basically the base system, and you can
put a couple of different lenses in there. They have a Sweet 35 optic, which kind of
creates a radial blur around the edges, and an Edge 80, which kind of creates a slice.
We were playing around with it in the studio and we thought well why don’t we just go
ahead and push a little bit further. Do something that most people probably wouldn’t do with
a Lensbaby to do a high fashion shoot using a lens like this. I’ve got to tell you,
the results are stunning and we had a lot of fun doing it. The concept for this was
actually really simple. We just wanted to create some great fashion shoots. To do that
we looked at some photographers around the internet, as well as you can see we have an
inspiration wall behind us. We looked at Michael David Adams, Mert and Marcus, Rankin, and
some other ones, and basically got an idea of how we want to do these shots.
Everything was going to be lit with multiple light sources, mostly hard light sources as
well, and we’re using a lot of color to really bring out interest in these photos.
We’ve got a lot of color and a lot of flare, and that worked perfectly when using the Lensbabys. We
decided to up the ante a little bit in this shoot. For the first time ever we shot almost
exclusively with bare bulb. What that means is you’ve got your light here and you’re
shooting basically with just this bulb. That means you’re not using soft boxes or reflectors
or anything to actually modify how this light comes out. We did use quite a bit of gels,
which we basically just taped right over the cone here.
Using bare bulb gave us some really interesting results and something that I’d never played
with before. It introduced some really cool challenges, but it also gave us different
results than we would normally get. A lot of the time people don’t really cover posing
models. Being that this was a fashion shoot, that was an incredibly important part of the
shoot. There are a couple of different techniques that are going to help you guys out when posing
your models. The first technique is just look at references. You can see we have a reference
wall behind us and we look at it all the time. Grab a couple of pictures off of the internet
and you can actually print them out or put them on your phone so you can do a couple
of sample poses. You can say, okay go through this one, go
through that one, go through that one, and then your models can actually see what’s
going on in these photos and they can pose with those as well. It’s going to help you
a lot when working with the models because they can just see something and then imitate
it. The second tip is that if something feels really uncomfortable for the model,
if they’re posing in a weird direction like this or something, it’s probably going to
look uncomfortable on camera. You really want them to stretch out and use the angles of
their body to really get something interesting, but if their feeling really uncomfortable
and it looks forced it’s probably going to come across as forced in the end photo
as well. You can tell them to… I do the shakeout
technique. If a model’s like, you know, this, and I can just see their really tense,
I say, “All right, shake it out, let’s just start over again and do something a little
more natural.” They’ll usually go into a pose that works a little bit better. The
last tip is get in the place of the model and pose yourself. If you want to look like
an idiot on suit, I really don’t mind it. I think it’s a lot of fun and opens things
up a little bit. You’ll find me actually doing the pose of the model. It helps to get
a feel of what the space is actually like and how you can move around your body. Then
you can get a feel of okay, this is the idea that I want, step back behind the camera.
The model can imitate the pose you made and it usually works out pretty well.
The equipment used for this shoot was actually really simple. We weren’t using a whole
lot of lighting modifiers and that meant we could keep everything down to a bare minimum.
We were using these guys bare bulb, oftentimes with gels on them. You place a gel on the
top of your strobe… You can see this doesn’t fit but you can just tape something down like
that and get it to work for you. These are relatively durable and not too expensive as
well. So using the lighting modifiers, as well as the gels.
The only thing we did need to do, let’s say we’re putting a gelled light right next
to someone and that light is spilling back onto the wall behind them. Sometimes you really
don’t want that. You want a separation between your subject and the background. You can use
things like these flags. Just stick them on a light stand or something like that and that
will block the light coming from a certain direction. We use these flags in a lot of
cases just to go beside the light and make sure they don’t hit areas we want.
Then of course we were just using the camera with a simple lens on it. Everything was super
easy and quick, which was really great for this shoot because it allowed us a lot of
creativity to create many different looks. We wanted to create as many looks as possible
over this one day shoot. Our goal was 20. I think we wound up with something like 15.
Don’t always expect for every single one of those shots to turn out. I think two or
three of the shots from the day just didn’t turn out as I wanted. It’s still not a big
deal because we still have a lot of other shots to fall back on. If you planned to
go for a couple more shots than you actually need out of a shoot, usually you can throw
away the worst two and you’re still left with a better crop of the whole. Because this
was a fashion shoot, a lot of what makes these images great really had nothing to do with
me. We had a great wardrobe stylist, Reggie, we had an awesome makeup artist, Christina,
and our hair stylist, Jamie, kicked butt. These people really created the look of the
photos and I’m just the guy who takes the picture. Keep in mind, guys, all of these
shots you see, they’re productions by many, many different people, each of which is a
professional at their own thing. You don’t have to be the person who picks out all the
clothes. You don’t have to be the person who’s great at makeup. Just find those people
who are good, get them on your team, and you can create some amazing results together.
One of the reasons why we chose two models is because oftentimes doing hair and makeup
and styling, they’re really important but they can take a little bit of time. If you’re
photographing one model, the other model can be getting ready for the next shoot. You can
swap them out back and forth over and over again. There’s really no down time when
you’re doing something like this and you can wind up getting a lot more looks out of
the same amount of time. Guys, thanks so much for taking a look behind
the scenes of our recent fashion shoot using bare bulb lighting and Lensbabys. Using things
like these forces us to get out of our comfort zone and into a little bit more of a creative
bubble. I would recommend totally switching up your normal processes because you might
wind up finding an entirely new process that works for you in a great way.