problem solving: light as a maximizer

When commissioned by ad agency Publicis to shoot a print ad series for Oral-B I was immediately captivated by the concept: people in important situations who are distracted by food caught in their teeth. The conceptual humor was right up my ally. I was eager to dig in.

One final photo from the series. "If it's stuck in your teeth, it's stuck in your head."

The art director was concerned that the lighting on the location shot and on the separately-shot food item wouldn't match. Poorly planned lighting would have been a dead giveaway that the image was a composite. At our first pre-production meeting we figured that we could shoot the food in the same light as the location shot: just stick the food in the hospital bassinet, shoot it, and enlarge it for the composite.

This didn't work for a couple of reasons. First, we still weren't sure what food we were going to use as the baby even during the nursery shoot. We were debating BBQ ribs, strawberries, etc... We went with broccoli the day after. So we were going to have to shoot it separately anyway. Second, smaller food items were going to look wrong even if they were in the exact same lighting because they would be enlarged.

*this gets a little complicated after the jump*

stand-ins

You can't expect your talent to sit under the lights while you're framing the shot. Best to have some similarly-built stand-ins.

geek goddesses lp collector: athens, ga

The first of a couple of Geek Goddesses shoots on the road in Athens, GA went off better than I could have imagined.

Luckily, a good friend of mine Sean Wessling has a killer house AND a killer record collection. We also had an awesome model, Melinda, who had great ideas of her own and lit up when we put on Thunder Road from Springsteen's Born To Run LP.



For this shoot, I really let the location guide the everything else. Sean has great wood paneling and painted wood floors in the record room. He has great taste when it comes to color. I went through his collection and pulled out some iconic rock albums for the display wall. I got rid of his ipod and cd player, pulled out some big speakers and made some stacks of LPs. It hit me pretty early on that this would be a great photo to shoot square. The repeating pattern of the square LPs were perfect and I was able to easily move the stacks around to fill in the dead space. For wardrobe we chose bright yellow and blue to stand out against the muted colors of the room.

We got some great shots early on, but I really wanted Melinda's hair to be flying, so we cranked some Queen and got to work.