Photo Shoot With Rachel

A good friend and model I've worked with a few times is about to embark into a professional career after graduation this Spring. However, she also intends to continue doing some spokesperson work as a model for a short time. Rachel came to me to update her spokesperson portfolio and to also get some professional head shots for her new career. 


Makeup artist and stylist Chantel Remick worked with us to make sure Rachel would look her best during the shoot. Both Rachel and Chantel are fantastic to work with, and do a great job. I thank both of them for helping to make this a highly successful photo shoot!


I'll cover the setup for several of the shots below. You can see more of them here.

The first photo was shot using my standard high key lighting setup. However, I wanted additional light on Rachel's hair. So, I used a side light camera right and slightly behind her to add the highlights to her hair and a slight glow on the side of her face. 

For this shot, I wanted to give Rachel a more pensive look. I put her in a low key setup and thoughtful pose. The key light is a 3'x4' soft box camera right. I used a strip light camera left and to Rachel's side for a kicker to add some dimension to the photo.

This is the first outfit Rachel and Chantel decided to use for the beginning of Rachel's spokesperson photos. I shot this with a 22" beauty dish camera left and slightly to the model's side. I used another strip box camera right and behind Rachel to produce the rim lighting for this shot. To prevent the rim lighting from being "washed out" or hidden by the key light, your rim lighting needs to be 1-1.5 stops brighter than your key light. Mine was at least 1.5 stops higher for this shot.

For this more formal spokesperson shot, Chantel added a little more makeup and modified Rachel's hairstyle. I moved Rachel to another background area in the studio in order to add interest and formality to the shot. I used a single light with a 3'x4' soft box for this shot. This produced a very soft light with some interesting shadows and dimension to the shot.

In this shot, I wanted to keep Rachel in her more formal attire but put her in a bright, fun location just to mix things up a little. The colorful crackle-painted doors did just the trick for this. Once again I used just one light with a 3'x4' soft box camera left and to Rachel's side. 


If photographers have not worked with a makeup artist before, I highly recommend it. A good artist like Chantel makes my life a lot easier by significantly reducing post-processing time. 


John