One of the areas of photography I enjoy shooting is fashion. The fashion industry involves many different professionals including designers, buyers, makeup artist and hair stylist, photographers, and models.
Meet Zoe, an up and coming model in the Tampa Bay area that I had the pleasure to photograph in St. Petersburg last week. I was first in contact with Zoe at fashion show back in June at Swim 2012 at Safety Harbor Spa and Resort. She was in need of portfolio images so she can promote herself and provide them to the designers during castings as prints or on comp cards. This is one way that Professional Photographers assist in the fashion industry.
For this fashion model shoot, I brought my friend and Creative Director, Xina Scuderi, who assisted with model posing, lighting, and was a huge asset on location. Having an assistant on the set really benefits both the photographer and model. Often at times, the assistant sees something that the photographer misses and they can also assist in lighting.
For Zoe’s shoot, I was looking for the urban feel and thought that brick walls and dark alleys would portray the look that I wanted. Fortunately, St. Petersburg has everything required for the urban photo shoot. Since the optimal time to shoot is around Sunset when the sun is lower in the horizon, we met with Zoe and her mother an hour before sunset. Having Xina, or an assistant on location helps when using natural light, as light is often needed to be bounced back with the sun reflector.
Zoe has a little internal hipster in her and you can sure see this with her retro Converse All Star kicks seen below. The hat Zoe was wearing came from the “prop bag” and was the perfect fit for the hipster.
The shot below, I had Zoe walking into the frame and holding onto her jacket with one hand. I try to show motion in some of my photos when I have the opportunity and thought this was an optimal time for that. In the photo below, you can feel the motion as one foot is off the ground.
Sometimes the best photos are where you have your subject look someplace other than the camera. This adds a little creative effect and can create a more interesting photo. The reason for this is that when your subject is looking at a point outside the frame, your viewer will be curious about what’s catching your subject’s interest (just like the images below).
After I captured a few poses using the brick wall as the backdrop, we moved onto the dark alley a mile away in the heart of downtown St. Petersburg. Since the sun faded now it was time to get out the off camera flash and use the shadows with creative lighting. A little tip when shooting in dark alleys with no ambient lighting is to bring a small flashlight with you to light your subject so the camera can focus clearly.
In the photo below, I had another opportunity to show movement. This motion was created by having Xina create wind using the sun reflector.
It was very nice to work with Zoe and I would recommend her for anyone who needs a model for a project as she is professional, very easy to work with and of course a hipster. I wish her all the best in her modeling career. Thanks again Zoe, the mom, and Xina.