80′s Style – Creative

Always a fun day when we can push our limits a bit and do an 80′s inspired shoot. Yes, we channeled our early Run DMC and Cyndi Lauper to think breakdancing, awkward angles and Reaganomics. Been wanting to test out this location as well. It’s an art project on 10th street in Austin in the Castle Hill neighborhood. You can see the top of the castle in a few shots. Our models for the day were a mix to me. Jenny Lynn and I have worked together a good handful of times, but Shellie and I just met on Sunday and did this shoot on Tuesday! Fast friends, imho.

We braved the late spring Austin Sun that was pushing temps into the 90′s already and we were working towards a desaturated, hard sky look with a bare beauty dish (without the center reflector) pushing a sharp edge of light around. For the top image, the sun was shining directly onto Shellie (in the leather Jacket) while Jenny Lynn had her features brought up with the light from the beauty dish.

And it was all yellow… Ok, not an 80′s song but it fit the mood of this image. We took just the bare edge of light trailing from the beauty dish until it was point more at the photographer (me) than at Shellie. We just wanted light on her but not the walls. I moved the light, hit the test button and adjusted until it was where I wanted it. That and then Shellie had a super cool marionette/rapper pose going on, so there is that.

If these gals were releasing a new record on Vinyl, this would be their album cover. Rocking it. Can you figure out the lighting?

This photograph had me in the mindset of “Watchmen” and their take on Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. We had Jenny Lynn pose in a military fashion, very hard and rigid, and lit her hard as well. The contrast comes from the cartoon animals in the background to subvert the message of open hostility. Loved the way the lines and hard light provide a frame for Jenny Lynn to move in.

For the last set of images that we photographed on Tuesday, I wanted that blown out-Jazzercise-Olivia Newton-John-feel to them. Gelled the speedlights with the different colors in my bag and provided a hard/soft look with the beauty dish in close. I realize now that I should have turned the speedlight heads towards me and bent the umbrella swivels parrallel to the ground to help remove the lightstands from the background. Live and Learn.

So close to getting the side ponytail here! See how the lightstands are in the background just a bit, I could have gotten more distance my placing the umbrella swivels at 90 degrees.

And after that we went over to Austin Java, one of our favorite meetup spots, to chimp over the photos and drink some sweet tea. Great day for shooting! Thanks again to Jenny Lynn and Shellie for braving skin damage from the sun and the bare beauty dish. I think the photos are worth it!

–JB

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2012 at 12:17 PM. It is filed under Creative and tagged with 80's, beauty dish, creative, fashion, grafitti, jenny lynn, run dmc, shellie, watchmen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.