Pink Flamingos

On July 16^th I did a session with Lena Volkova.  This session was inspired by pink lawn flamingos, Amy Winehouse, and the song “Trailerhood” by Toby Keith.

For this session I used:

Photography Equipment	Props/Miscellaneous
Cannon 80D Trigger 2 strobes 2 c-stands 1 Backdrop stands Black Backdrop Silver Backdrop Sandbags 72-inch Umbrella Umbrella sock 1 rectangular soft box Soft box grid Step ladder	Lawn chair Astroturf 5 bricks Pink table Pink flamingos Margarita glass Sunglasses Steamy romance novels Green foliage Wood garden beams Beach towel Styrofoam blocks

The set up

To make the set for this shoot and give it that trailer park vibe, I started with the background. The background had to be silver, while I would have loved to have half a trailer or some corrugated metal, a silver backdrop works in a pinch.  To avoid sun streaming through the backdrop and creating weird shadows due to the doors in the back of my studio space, I hung a black backdrop up first then placed the silver over top of it, which stopped the sun from streaming through the backdrop.  I then laid down the Astroturf lawn.  Once that was down, I placed wood garden beams in the back of the Astroturf to make a nice transition from the lawn to the backdrop. I also placed 5 bricks down on the front of the lawn, these were mostly to ensure the AstroTurf would not curl up and stay flat at the edges. I then added the lawn chair with a towel over it, then placed the table next to it. From there I placed the pink flamingos into styrofoam blocks and covered the blocks with green foliage. To add even more ambiance to the scene I added some steamy romance novels, a margarita glass, and sunglasses to the table by the lawn chair.  These last few elements doubled as props for the model to interact with during the shoot.

The lighting for this shoot leans towards high key.  I wanted the scene to be evenly lit and bright, so I used a strobe with a large 72-inch umbrella with a sock attached to it.  This light was to my left, slightly raised, and pointed down at about a 15-degree angle. I then added a second light to my right, whose job was just to add a little pop of light on the model. This second strobe had a rectangular soft box with grid attached to it. This light was raised slightly and pointed down at about a 15-degree angle.

Camera Settings

For this session I used ISO 100 with an aperture of F10, and shutter speed of 1/250s. My focal length ranged from 18mm to 170mm with most of the images being taken at 24mm.  By keeping the camera setting the same throughout the session, all I needed to do was dial in the lighting then just worry about composition. Also, by keeping the same settings during the session, it made the session images easy to edit as I could balance one photo and carry those setting across the whole set, with only minor tweaks. 

The Photos

My favorite photo is from the end of the session when the model asked just to do some simple headshots, so she could have some images that show off the makeup. This photo perfectly shows off the headpiece and wig combo and the makeup while capturing the theme of the shoot.  I white balanced the image, adjusted the exposure slightly, then ensure the skin tone was correct by adjusting the color channels. When doing this I had to be carful not to affect the other colors in the image. I then added a slight pop of light to the model’s face.  From there I pulled the image into Photoshop where I used a frequency separation technique to refine and smooth the skin. I then used a dodge and burn layer to bring out the highlights and shadows. From there I finalized the image.  For this whole shoot I did all skin retouching by hand, instead of relying on Adobe’s neural filter for a more polished look.

This next photo shows basically the whole set, and really captures the vibe I was going for.  I did all the same Lightroom edits I did for the previous image; however, this image did require a lot of Photoshop to fix a few minor set issues.  In Photoshop I removed the seams in the backdrop and AstroTurf. I also went in and filled in the foliage in places where the white stryofoam was peeking through. I also did skin retouching and removed any lines in the skin caused by sitting in the lawn chair. No one likes cross hatch patterns on their thighs. This image also has a slight vignette around the edge of the image.

I didn’t shoot the whole time with the lawn chair in the set. I do like removing and adding set pieces as necessary to mix things up. In this case I removed the lawn chair and moved the flamingos around a little bit.  I then asked the model to be cute with the flamingo, which resulted in the image below. I followed the same editing steps as I in the previous images.

Finally, I wanted to do a few laying down poses, as I felt that really would capture a summer vibe. I saved the laying down poses for last, because the wig and headpiece combo is a bit heavy and could slide off the back of the model’s head, even though it was thoroughly secured with bobby pins.  For these images I did adjust the lights slightly, so they were a bit higher and pointed down at a bit more of an angle.  I just love the pose and expression in this image.  Again, I followed the same editing steps as in the previous images for this photo.

Overall, this was a fun little shoot, and it was fun working with Lena Volkova. A few images from this session are published in the August issue of Edith Magazine.  You can see the whole set here: Pink Flamingos. 

Credits:

Model, Make-up, Stylist: Lena Volkova (Instagram: @lokelicious) 

Wig/Headpiece, Set Design: Heather of Munchkin Photos (Instagram: @munckin_photos_by_heather)