Heressss Rachel, back on the blog for her third outing. I am a little late with this shoot as this was back in late February, better late than never though right 😉 . It is a good sigh when you are too busy to blog because you are two busy shooting portraits in Studio during the week and Sports & Events with DE Photo at the weekends.
Rachel came down to my studio for a shoot on a Saturday to get some extra shots for our spread in the SUN, which was a piece on her being in the ICA Bootcamp on RTÉ. We had got plenty of images in the shoot a few days before in the Hotel Shoot, however it so happened that we were both free that day and Rachel popped down for some extra shots… and also to have the craic. My studio is just over an hour down the road from Dublin so it was a quick journey for her. See all my published stuff HERE
Amy Mcguire was also free on the day and she came over for a few hours. Amy is a talented Make-Up Artist who lives pretty close near Gorey, which is handy. Amy uses proper airbrushing to apply makeup and it gives a great finish. I have worked with Amy a few times now and we always have the craic shooting.
So for this shoot, we didnt have a set style in mind, we just wanted some fun, cute and sexy shots… as thats what the papers usually like. So bikinis and lingerie were the order of the day. We used this cute blue/white set along with a pink/white version. I prefer the look of the blue set, but the girls liked the pink set better. For the pink set, Amy “dolled” up the makeup a bit more and added some pony tails for a cute effect.
I shot both of these in the lighting style that I am liking more and more each time I use it, as I think it suits the simple look of the studio space. Its a simple 3 light setup, with a main 135cm Octa bank on camera right giving a nice big soft light along with 2x 60cm softboxes to the rear and side of Rachel as rim lights. Simple yet effective.. A large diffusion panel is used on the left to add a tiny bit of fill light on the left side of Rachel to fill in the shadows a bit. Simples.
The large space in the studio means that I can use my 200mm 2.8 at the 150-200mm range while Rachel is close enough to still get her full body in. Although the lights at their lowest power still give F4, even at F4, with the subject close and with a 200mm focal length, the background still goes out of focus beautifully. A pretty nice shallow depth of field is still achievable with this lense at F5.6…. even F8 is you are zoomed all the way in at 2oomm and your subject is at the minimum focus range… great for portraits. Some times with two shallow a depth of field and you can get problems with one eye being in focus and the other out of focus is the face is not straight on etc.
After we had got the shots that we needed, we now turned to playing and getting our own shots. This is usually the best part of a shoot, the testing and experimenting part. I have an idea in my head for a real moody black and white…. Kate Moss type shot. I had Rachel in mind for this shot specifically as I knew from BEFORE that she could pull it off. Rachel is a super poser, every time that flash went she was instantly in a different look and post, like a true pro. One of these shots ended up bing one my my favorite shots (below).
Thats about it for now. Plenty of shoots to come over the next while, from clients, to portfolios and test shoots, so check back soon 🙂
