Wind Burn Composite Portrait BTS
This was my first experience collaborating with a model on Model Mayhem or any model for that matter. To be honest I'd heard some not so great experiences from both photographers and models regarding the site, but after this shoot with Bridget Rose, I'm pretty sure I'll be collaborating with a LOT more models in the days to come!
Bridget was effing awesome to work with! To this point I had been working with people who weren't models. Now aside from the fact that Bridget is obviously gorgeous, I didn't realize how much easier photographing a good model would be on me as a photographer and how much it would teach me!
So I decided to meet with her before hand in a coffee shop so that we could both meet up before actually working and discuss ideas. The idea hit me in the face and I asked her if she was game.
Bridget is a dancer/choreographer and told me she would really like to have a composite done of her that reflected that side of her. So I quickly sketched out the image you see above on paper and demonstrated the pose I had in my head (much to the wonder to the group of people next to us enjoying their coffee wondering what the hell I was doing).
So long story short, I grabbed a backplate from the top of Taylor Mt. Regional park in Santa Rosa and then shot her on a seamless. I am a huge fan of getting stuff right in camera if I can. The reason for this composite is because I had a pretty wild idea of exactly how I wanted the sheet to wrap around Bridget and incorporate into the scene. That and the fact that she was not wearing much made me want to shoot it somewhere other than the backplate location.
Getting this shot in camera would have been near impossible since the light at this location with this kind of quality lasts for about 10 minutes and the sheet had to wrap around her just so. Here is the capture in camera on the seamless.
As always I shot the backplate first and then matched the lighting on her to the scene. The lighting for this was pretty straight forward. I had a beauty dish to camera right and behind her a bit gelled I think for 1/2 CTO to mimic the setting sun. Then I had a strobe bouncing off a v flat behind me and to camera left to bring up the shadows. This lighting set up allowed me to cross light her and really bring dimension to her body all while keeping a pretty low contrast feel, which I wanted for this scene.
Bridget is very active with her modeling, and I encourage everyone who likes this image to follow her future work here.
