Sliver Holiday Session

On November 19^th, I did a holiday themed session with Sanj.  For this session, I wanted to do a set consisting of all silvers and whites with these large ornaments I bought at Michales Crafts.  The set really, I think is reminiscent of a modern or simplistic window display, giving the shoot a very commercial feel.

For this session, I used:

Photography Equipment	Props/Miscellaneous
Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix strobes 2 c-stands 2 light stands 1 Backdrop stand 1 canvas backdrop Sandbags 1 octabox 1 bell reflector 6x6 foot silver reflector 40-degree Grid Barndoors White backdrop	Ottoman White cloth Ornaments Fishing line Silver bells Stool 3x6 foot metal frame White garland Dowel rods J-hooks Backdrop bar

The set up

To build the set I hung a white backdrop with enough length to cover the floor.  I then hung the grey/silver canvas backdrop over that.  To hide the seam, I placed a white garland on the floor.  To create depth and separation I hung small ornaments on a second backdrop bar placed in J-hooks connected to the backdrop stand.  I then balanced the 3x6 metal frame of a reflector between two light stands.  I then placed dowel rods across it and hung the larger ornaments on the dowel rods.  This helped create depth in the image.  I then placed the ottoman in the center of the floor and covered it with a white cloth to form the base set.

I was leaning towards a high key look for this shoot, so I tried to keep the lighting bright while trying to avoid making strange shadows due to the ornaments.  To do this I placed a large octabox perpendicular to the center of the set.  Then to my right, fairly close to the backdrop I placed a strobe with a bell reflector, grid, and barndoor combination. The barn doors were important because I helped control the fall of the light on the backdrop and reduce shadows from the ornaments.  I then placed the 6x6 food silver reflector on my left-hand side to bounce light from the gridded strobe back to create a bit of fill light.  See the image below.

Set up

Camera Settings

For this session, I used ISO 200 and 250.  I think I might have bumped the ISO wheel while shooting.   I used an aperture of F8 with a shutter speed of 1/250s.  My focal length ranged from 24mm to 105mm, with most images being taken at 24mm.  

The Photos

This session has a commercial feel and look due to the set looking more modern and higher key.  Since I did the shoot in studio with the same setting throughout, the editing was the same for all the images.  I first adjusted the white balance, then bumped the exposure up by a ½ stop.  I then increased the clarity slightly and did a medium contrast tone curve.  I then added a blue/blue color grade which helped pop the slivers and whites in the images.  The final thing I did in Lightroom was add a medium vignette.  In Photoshop, I cleaned up stray strings from the ornaments, especially if you couldn’t see the ornament.  I removed a few distractions and blemishes.  The last thing I did was run the neural filter to smooth out the skin.  I really like the neural filter for portrait sessions because it saves a lot of time.  I will still retouch by hand when I’m doing beauty images, as that is more focused on the makeup and face.  But in general, the neural filter is really good and getting better for skin retouching.

One of my favorite images from the session is using the little star props I found which I had the model use to frame her face.  The image looks like it should be some holiday ad in a catalog.

I like this next image because of the attitude being portrayed by the model.  The attitude I’m getting is a wealthy, sexy woman.  Not this image I did end up having to do a bit of extra Photoshop work to extend the background behind the model.  Thankfully the content aware fill and some clone stamping did the trick.  I thought about cloning out the one hanging ornament but decided to keep it in as it balances out the bells in the image.

Overall, this was a good shoot, it turned out a bit more commercial looking than I wanted, but that is ok.  It also gave me some additional experience minimizing shadows due to the hanging ornaments.  If I do this shoot again, I think I’ll change a few things, like having a better ornament size and height variation.  I think I’ll also go and add some fake snow to the set to give more of a winter feel.   If you want to see the complete set you can see it here: Silver Holiday.

Credits:

Model: Sanj (IG: @sanj.femme)

Set Design: Heather of Munchkin Photos (Instagram: @munckin_photos_by_heather)