Sofia : Floral - Behind the Scenes

Just to have something to blog about, I’ll give you a little insight to how the mornings of my fashion/portrait sessions go. This is from my morning shooting a boudoir-like session with my friend Sofia last Saturday.

Before Saturday :

I created a small, simple mood board to send to my model, Sofia Noethe and my hair & makeup artist, Sarah Taubman, just to give them some vague idea of what I was going for. I didn’t work hard to make it perfect, but I did work hard in finding the right inspiration. I used just a crappy online collage maker while I was at work, but it did the trick :

Morning of :

I went to Kowalski’s and got a great deal on daisies. Three bouquets for $11.99! And you can’t really see exactly how many there are here, but I will tell you that this bundle was LUSH.

Then I :
-cleaned my house before the girls arrived
-formatted my cf card
-charged my batteries
-gathered my lenses
-and rallied up the other gear I needed.

I also used everything in my power to keep my cat from eating my flowers. :)

Then Sofia & Sarah arrived and started on hair and makeup! While they did this I set up the rest of my “set”.

Now, I don’t have all the resources in the world, so I just make use of what I have. I use my own apartment for my “studio”, I found an old wooden stool in the alleyway once and use that for makeup and as a prop, etc.

For this shoot I had Sofia lay on a white presentation board. This board has gotten a LOT of use since I bought it. It’s one of those little science fair boards that folds up. I use it all the time. In the past I’ve used it as a baby portrait backdrop, a reflector, a product seamless look, and now as a white floor for a model to lay on! It’s small, but it gets the job done. Here it is :

Then I set up my lighting as well. I just have a cheap strobe, cheap softbox, and not even a wireless trigger for it, it’s a cord that goes from my light to my camera. Luckily my dear HMUA sometimes sticks around to assist and was able to hold the cord for me! At this point in my career, an expensive strobe is not necessary. This cheap little thing is powerful, the softbox is great, it weighs next to nothing, and if it were to break somehow it would not be the end of the world.

Then hair and makeup took a little under an hour and we began shooting.

We got GREAT shots. For light we used some strobe and then switched to natural light for a while because my window light can just be heavenly. All photos were taken in my living room (which is not out of the ordinary)!

I used a 24mm 1:4 lens for the shots on the floor and then switched to my beloved 35 f/2 for the seated shots.

Here’s the preview I posted on Facebook the other day.

I can’t wait for you to see the rest!
-Ashley