fashion photos in East London
Two weeks ago I did a photoshoot for a new friend of mine called Anna. She’s a facepainter – there may be a more fabulous word for what she does – in fact if there isn’t, there should be.
Anyway, back to my point; the photoshoot for Anna. She hired the Rag Factory in Brick Lane which is typical of Shoreditch – shabby chic, grungy fashion or derelict beauty!
minging carpet makes for great backdrop
We were in a medium sized rehearsal space with its own stage lights and plenty of set bits and bobs. Thom brought some real lights along from his theatre and we began setting up. The models were two friends of Anna’s, my sister and her mate, both of whom had travelled down especially for the shoot.
We had five main set-ups; the first is in the photo above, black screen a light on the subject with another on the wall behind her. The tree to the left you can see is part of another of the set-ups.
light directly at the lens
After the sofa shots we moved on to the window, Thom lit the window from inside the studio using a blue gel with another for the subject. This was really cool because the windows and the subject really worked well together and popped out in the shots.
Another set up was a knackered old rug that was on the floor of the studio; I loved how awful it was so I asked my sister’s friend to lie down on it (with a black sheet hidden between her and the skanky rug) and act almost dead. Thom lit the scene from above and to her right and left respectively. I shot the photo from directly above and then from one side, taking advantage of the growing darkness to let the subject fade into blackness.
Finally there was the staircase, which is another one which I loved. This was a very simple set up. The model sat on the staircase and I poked my head through the banister to take the shot. The pink gel lit the model a little and the wall behind her, whilst my sister held a black sheet on the other side to hide the bin!
We were there for four hours and a lot of the time was taken up painting the models and setting up the scenes but it was without doubt the most fun I’ve had with photography this year and we definitely want to repeat the experience.
In photoshop I enhanced the colours, boosting the difference between the light and shadows and used what I had to create a fashion style look to the final images.
I’ve dotted this blog with photos taken on various camera phones and underneath I’ve added photos from the real shoot; you can see the full set on flickr.
