Today, I’m going to take you with me on a shoot. We’re going to talk about the lighting setup, the set design, deconstructing an artist's song to come up with a concept for the shoot, and how I came to the end result of the photo.
So, let's jump right into it. Right off the bat, I was fortunate enough to have my man Sy here who is a full-time lighting technician. Very rarely do I get help when it comes to lighting with photography, so it was nice to have a person to take some of the weight off, but more importantly – having someone gaff on set that understands the language of your vision and can translate it is such a gift.
In terms of lighting, the goal was to make Leesa the center focus, so we put a spotlight on her, which was basically just a 10-degree Fresnel on an Aputure 300x 90 degrees at ceiling height. The other two lights were really just there for fill.
Let's talk about the set for a sec. This was a very minimal set. In an ideal world, every artist would have the support and funding to make their vision come to life on a grand scale, but we don’t live in that world, and so part of my job is trying to work around budgets. we spent less than 100 dollars on the set, and the biggest purchase was the chair shaped like a heel. Leesa’s song Club Love is about living in your own world but finding someone who can get you out of …out of your shell so to speak. So, on a literal level, Leesa is sort of daydreaming and doesn’t want to go out, but she gets a call from the person she has feelings for asking if she would go to the club, and the rest sort of the story explains itself.
For this shoot, Leesa really wanted two things. First, she wanted the photo for this single to show her in a sort of glamorous state, getting ready with friends yet expressing the emotion of reluctance. Second, she wanted to paint the bottom of her heels red to throw her spin on red bottoms. It was kind of perfect that the high heel-shaped chair also had a red bottom.
The rest of the props I had at my disposal. That includes the vanity, costume jewelry, hair curler, and glamour mirror.
When we discussed the color scheme for the fits, we agreed that basic black and white would work and would make the jewelry and red heel stand out.
I shot this on the Pentax 67 with Kodak Gold 200. Though the film stock really didn’t matter in terms of color because I manipulated the heck out of the color in the photo. Originally, I was going to put on a Pro mist filter, add a little haze, and give it a daydream-type look, but we came to the conclusion that making the scene look like a house where everyone was getting ready to go out, but bringing the vibe of the club into the house was a good idea, and I tend to agree that it fits the song better.
Overall, I am happy with the finished result. We also had fun with this shoot. There were a lot of great behind-the-scenes moments and shared a lot of laughs on set.
Shoutout to No1elsebutrico for shooting BTS and Lifeflicksyouintheface for joining in and grabbing some of his own great photos from this shoot.
Thank you for watching, I hope my content has helped someone today! See ya soon.