Silver Goddess

On April 20^th,  I got to work with Valtinen to shoot a silver headpiece I made several months ago.  This shoot was inspired by the headpiece and a version of the “Lady of the Lake”.  The goal of the image was to be rather soft with a lot of light and silver tones. The post was held back till I found out if I was published. I had eight images from this set published in the May 2019 issue of Jazzy Magazine.  
For the shoot I used the following items: 

Set Up

·                  Canon 70D

·                  18- 200 mm lens

·                  Strobes with power supply

·                  7-foot reflective umbrella

·                  C-stand with boom arm

·                  RF-transmitter

·                  Tether line

·                  Desktop

·                  Silver garage insulation

·                  white tulle

·                  Step stool

·                  Props: sword, and three large peonies

·                  Handsome assistant

The set up for this was rather simple (See image right).  I placed the large umbrella with the strobes in front and slightly above the mode. Because the background was silver a good portion of the light bounced back for a glow. I started with two speed lights off to each side pointed directly at the background, but due to the reflectivity of the background, I ended up with competing light sources.  Thus, I turned the speed lights off and only used one light.

Now onto the image descriptions.  I shot 199 frames, edited 106 frames, and delivered 52 final images. I shot using ISO 100,  with an aperture of F8, and a shutter speed of  1/250s. My focal length ranged from 18 mm to 60 mm with the most common focal lengths being 28mm and 24mm.

I edited all these images very similarly, to ensure they maintained a glow to them. To achieve the glow, I used a preset called soft glow a starting main edit, after completing the white balance, exposure, and luminosity base edits to ensure consistency within the set.  I then blurred the background slightly, which also reduced the texture. I also ensured the models face was properly lit compared to the background.  Because the outfit for this shoot was sheer draped fabric, held together with a few pins, I did have to do some photoshoot edits.  I did the photoshop edits to cover gaping holes in the fabric drape,  I also did do some frequency separation on a few of the up-close images to ensure the model’s face kept a nice soft glow.  I did also adjust the color slightly on a peonies to bring the pink color out, because they were slightly getting washout out by all the light and white in the image.  Overall the shoot went well and the images turned out how I expected once the light was dialed in appropriately. 

ISO 100, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/250s, Focal Length 18mm

ISO 100, Aperture F8, Shutter 1/250s, Focal Length 50mm