Model Mayhem

By
Scott Forman
Published: July 23, 2009Posted in: PhotographyTags:

This past Friday, the 17th of July, Chris and I met with Mandy and her friend Stacy. Chris had contacted Mandy through Model Mayhem, an online talent site, and setup a shoot for us. Another girl from Model Mayhem had said yes to shooting as well but ended up flaking out so Mandy brought her friend Stacy instead. Mandy, Stacy and Stacy’s boyfriend all came to Chris’s house and from there we went a few blocks in to Benson.

I decided to start the day off with some quick and easy natural light shots. I wanted to put the models at ease and get them comfortable shooting before I spent time getting strobes setup and ready. Shooting with the sun can give you great light if you understand how to use it to get what you want. And, I absolutely love using reflectors with the sun because you get exactly what you see and you can create some great images with very little work. I had Chris stand a few feet away with a white reflector to light Mandy’s face.

When using a reflector as a light source, treat it like any other light source by placing it to give you flattering light. The only exception to this is when you use a reflector on the ground to block green grass or other dark colors from reflecting in the skin. Don’t try to use the reflector low as if you are batting the sun light directly back at itself.

I asked Mandy to stand partially in the shadow of the building so the light coming over it would still hit her chest and hair. Mandy has been modeling for years and took absolutely no prompting for posing. She was very easy to work with and as the camera clicked she changed up her pose and gave me many different looks in a short time without any need for me to direct.

F2.8 and be there! :)
Boop!

After a few minutes I brought Stacy in for some pictures. Stacy was a natural and with a little bit of prompting from me on turning her body a certain way or moving her feet she was posing like a pro.

I’m a very technical person and rather than fight that I use it to my advantage when I’m posing a model. In my head I connect their matching body parts with lines (feet, hands, eyes, hips, etc). My goal is to make sure none of the lines are parallel to the plane of the camera, especially to make sure that subject isn’t completely square on with the camera. Sometimes I break these rules, especially if the model takes on a pose that I really like but when I’m at a loss for thinking up a pose these rules help me to create something appealing.

Stacy has beautiful tan skin and an exotic look about her. Chris suggested the gold reflector for her and I agreed that it would be a good look for her. I asked Chris to step back away from Stacy so that he was around 30 feet away.

When using a gold or silver reflector you really need to have it a good distance from the model because it can get very bright when it reflects the sun directly! At one point I walked over to Stacy to take a meter reading then looked back toward Chris and get the sun right in my eye off the reflector! I couldn’t see for just a little bit after that, even though it was 30 feet away!

Stacy
Do you want it up?

Next we decided to go into the covered alley that we had shot in the week before. The alley is a bit dark so I grabbed a speedlight, a monopod to use as a boom and a 30″ shoot through umbrella. I had Chris hold the umbrella up over Mandy as she posed against the wall in her flannel shirt and jean skirt. I shot this at ISO 250 to bring in a little more ambient light and F2.8 for limited depth of field. The week before I had shot a similar shot with Anna with the same lens but at F4. Comparing the two you can see the difference a stop can make in depth of field. Both shots were shot at nearly the same focal length with the same lens.

Creamy F2.8

Lower in the alley there is a garage door with an old green door next to it. This area is on an incline so I had Stacy stand at the bottom by the door and I stood up higher on the incline. I setup a small 30″ umbrella on the ground pointing up at Stacy and another above her on a boom for a clamshell light setup. Stacy went through various poses by the door and gave me many different shots to select from.

Don’t feel like you have to show people every shot you take. Definitely take a lot of shots but once you get back to the computer narrow it down to your absolute best. For each set, you will have one that stands out among the others. Do your final processing and put that image online. When you put up multiple images of basically the same thing the poorer images drag the great ones down, not the other way around. I almost never use more than one shot per each portion of the shoot. The only exception is when a particular pose is so different from another that they don’t appear as just a simple variation of the same image.

A little off the shoulder

Soon we packed it up and drove few blocks away for another setting. The sun hadn’t started setting yet but was low and casting long shadows. I placed Mandy in position to give me a nice background and with the sun directly behind her head. I added a bare flash on the left to provide some body separation from the dark background and had Chris hold my Speedlight Pro Kit on a boom above Mandy’s face. I laid down on the ground with my wide angle lens and shot quite a few shots of her jumping.

Shooting with the sun directly behind your model like this is very easy as long as you ask your model to keep their shadow over you. As they move and pose remind them to watch their shadow and keep it over you as much as possible. This will help minimize any sun flare coming from behind them.

Mandy had never been a cheerleader but she did a great job of pretending. Afterwards, I realized I was having her jump like with wearing stiletto heels! Thankfully there were no accidents or skinned knees…

Ever been a cheerleader?

Then, because I liked the light so much I took a few beauty shots.

Moto Lover

Sometimes it’s ok to break your rules! Mandy’s eyes in this picture are parallel to the bottom plane of the camera but I really like this image because that makes it look very strong. She has very beautiful and expressive eyes and having them square in the photo makes them seem even more powerful. Her hips and elbows are still slightly tilted so they are not parallel which also helps this image work for me. Had everything been perfectly horizontal it wouldn’t have had the same effect.

For my last set I had Mandy stand in front of an old building that I thought would look good blurred out with a wide aperture. I used similar light here. I placed the bare strobe on the right and behind a trash can to control flare and had Chris boom the Speedlight Pro Kit over Mandy while keeping it centered with her nose the best he could as she moved. For some of the shots I stood on a step stool I brought. It put me about 3 feet up for a more downward angle.
Nice Jacket!

Move over a few feet and totally change your image. The image below was taken at roughly the same spot as the image above but I moved over a few feet so that a red brick building with green ivy would be behind Mandy rather than the lighter building. My exposure allowed that background to go nearly black which made this shot look almost like a studio shot.

Mandy

We had a great shoot with Mandy and Stacy and everyone was pleased with how well it went. Mandy plans on moving to Australia at the end of this year but we plan on shooting again before then.