So, I’m sorry it took a little long since the last one but The Shoot is back! For Episode V, I linked up with Brandy Aniston via a mutual friend. When I spoke to her before the shoot, she was telling me there were 3 new lingerie sets she had picked up recently so I didn’t worry about that part of it. We scheduled for around 11am and although it’s been a gloomy winter in NY, I was hoping to utilize some natural sunlight for this session. I always bring my strobes to shoots but I decided to keep it light and pack one strobe. Partially laziness but also because I’ve just been using a one light setup lately and really liking the results.
FRIDAY 02/05/16 – NEW YORK, NY
I’m not a morning person but I was up around 9am. It was snowing pretty heavily, so I figured I will have to rely on my strobes once again. I checked in with my makeup artist Eve to see how the roads were by her. She was already en route but had given me the heads up she may run late courtesy of the typical NYC snow day traffic. We pretty much made it to Brandy’s hotel room on time and the snow was dying down. Eve got started on makeup after Brandy showed me the outfits. I scanned the room to see where I would shoot each one. I wanted to use a different area for each outfit, but there wasn’t too many options. I had a rough idea in mind and setup my one strobe.
By the time hair and makeup was ready, the sun was beaming and provided me with great lighting through the window. For the first set with the yellow lingerie, I had her setup on the bed. I supplemented the sun light with my strobe for this since the light from the window didn’t reach that far in. It left some nice streaks on the edge of the bed which looked great.
Next outfit was black so I had her pose right next to the window and really utilize the sun. Her friend was hanging out with us and was smoking his vape. At first I told him to hold off until I finished, but it actually gave me an idea. I had him lie down on the floor and blow it out and I took some shots with the smoke rising over Brandy. It’s not photoshop it’s real vape smoke you see in the shots. It left a slight haze for few of the shots after and it turned out to be an awesome effect. One of those happy accidents that are always fun when it happens during a shoot.
There wasn’t much else usable in the room, so for the last outfit I utilized this chair in between the bed and the window. I was glad that the chair was round and almost egg shaped instead of the typical angular type. She could come up with better poses with this shape and it was something a little bit different to look at. The lesson here was that you never know what may happen. A snow day can turn into a bright sunny afternoon, and what I didn’t want in the shot ended up being in the shot. I am really happy with the shots I got, another fun shoot in the books.
|| BRANDY ANISTON
Photos © Sonic Highlark
