We start Day 2 of our fashion shoot today. The experience has been incredible so far! I can’t show you our final images yet, but I wanted to share some behind the scenes stuff and give a you a peak into what we’re doing.

The company that hired us is based out of London and NY. They are wanting to redefine the fashion industry in how hair is styled along with the tools hairstylists use. They showed mus a quick presentation on how they are fashioning hair after architecture in Italy. The presentation in itself was awesome. I had no idea that top of the line hair stylists took their inspiration from architecture around the world. We also used high quality sheepskin products that you can buy here.

When I showed up yesterday, I was under the impression that we would be shooting every thing in the salon. But plans had completely changed in the last 24 hours. I was handed the latest Vogue magazine and asked to capture something out of the box using Franco next door. Franco next door?

There is a shop next door called Franco the Tailor. He is an Italian grandpa who has this wonderful old world look.

With Franco’s permission they wanted us to create an old world scene in his shop. They wanted the model in a man’s tux and Franco to be working on the hem of her jacket and pants.

We walked into Franco’s shop and basically asked if we could use him and his shop for the day. He wasn’t prepped for this at all. But he was totally open to it and let us take over the whole place with setting up lights and camera gear. Franco even got his hair done for the shoot. He was loving it.

So Brian, Yuriy and I went to work on setting up a scene. Just like a portrait shoot or wedding, we wanted to set ourselves up for success. To do this, we needed to answer the following questions. What type of lighting would we need? How do we make this shop come alive but not take attention away from the model and her haircut? How do we use as little light as possible for dramatic effect?

Lots and lots of test shots and scene setting were done as we prepared for the model. Guess who got to be our fill in model to practice on? Yuriy himself! 🙂

We knew we wanted to have a series of shots with all the chaotic details of the tailor shop included. But we didn’t want the details to take over the image either.

So we went to work on figuring out how to get the most dramatic lighting for the story we wanted to tell. And for those of you who have been to our workshops, you have heard us talk about how we like to keep things as simple as possible. So one light is all we wanted, if we could pull it off.

The image above had to much light on Yuriy’s face and not enough drama for what we wanted to eventually do in post process.

The image below is closer to what we’re visualizing.

Now we add Franco into the scene and make the lighting a little more dramatic. Isn’t Yuriy great! He’s such a good sport!

We get as many details figured out so that when the hair stylists and model arrive we are ready to shoot.

The creative process and energy were so different and yet so similar to a wedding. The difference is all the prep time we had unlike weddings. The biggest similarity is the whirlwind that came through the door when the model was finally ready. It went from testing lighting to “we’re ready to shoot now and you’ve got 30 minutes to make it all happen!” That fast paced pressure felt very familiar, and I soaked it all in. It was a blast!

Off to start Day 2!

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