Hello hive People. In the second episode of my fashion photography blog, I want to share with you project from the last summer that I did it for little Bulgarian brand called Prototype23. This time the challenge came about of making two different sessions in one day - one e-commerce and the other with an editorial look.
The prints of the collection were with floral elements, soft tissues and the main idea was to shoot it outdoor in a natural environment.
Luckily Sofia ( the town that I'm living in) is close to the Vitosha* mountain
and to find a great place to shoot was not a problem at all.
Since it was August and the duration of the day was nearly 14 hours, I didn't worry that I might not get enough daylight. And this was an important factor because in this situation I had decided not to use additional light sources, except for a large reflector 150х200 sm -
You should keep in mind when using outdoor reflectors of this size because even a slight gust of wind interacts strongly with the reflector and a simple tripod will not help you. In fact, the best option is to have an assistant (physically Strong) who can hold the reflector and not get tired after 30 minutes of shooting :)
Now that we had a clear concept of where and what would be used to take the editorial shots, we had to organize the e-commercial session.
Since I was working as a photographer in a multi-brand company at the time, I had a studio that was set up for this type of photography and that came as a time saver as well.
I will make a post that pays special attention to e-commerce photography because even if it is not an artistic genre, it is very interesting and consists of many different elements that make the image high quality and save time for shooting and retouching.
And quality and time are the two most important factors for this genre.
But we will talk about this later.
So we decided to start with an e-com session early in the morning to have enough time for the other more artistic part of the day.
Another factor was that I didn't want to use the midday light for the outdoor session because it`s too contrasting and the shadows drop in a sharp angle that high all the face of the model. And the only way to fix that is to diffuse light with even bigger diffusers and gears, that was not an option in our case.
We decided to go around 4 pm to have about 3 hours of light.
The contrast was strong again, but the light was already on the side and allowed a nice drawing on the model.
Filled the shadows that formed with the reflector, placing it on the other side.
After we captured the footage successfully, only their processing remained. For which I use Photoshop because it allows me to do a lot of manipulations, including precise toning of photos, for which I plan to do a separate article.
Gear: Body: NIKON D610
Lens: Nikon 28-70mm f/3.5-4.5 AF
Hope you enjoy it :)