For the next look, I wanted to glam Terri up and make her feel like the strong, powerhouse she is. I have a black and gold Louis Vuitton scarf she always compliments and was just gifted a gorgeous pair of black and gold crystal earrings from Mark Ross that I knew would go perfectly for this look.
I needed a simple, form-fitted black dress for this shoot. On Amazon, I ordered a basic black dress and sized up so I would be able to clamp her into the dress and not run the risk of it arriving and being too small.
The lighting here got a lot more complex. I started by getting the main light dialed in on Terri’s face. For the main light, I used a Westcott FJ400 with the Westcott Rapid Box Switch Octa-M softbox. I placed the light high and angled down slightly and used the Westcott Eyelighter to fill in the shadows being created by the directional light above. Because I chose a backdrop that matched the colors of the wardrobe, I needed an edge light to separate Terri from the background. I used the FJ200 with the basic reflector that comes with it, no additional modifiers for this, at a power of 1.5. This created a nice highlight along the left side of her body and hair (her left, camera right).
I used the Buffalo Bill backdrop from Intuition Backgrounds in their fabric material again for this shoot and chose to NOT light the background for this one because it would have been too orange in contrast with the subtle gold of the scarf. By not adding light to the background, it allowed it to become darker and not so distracting. I also had Evolve tone the background to blend better with the gold tones in the scarf.
For these photos, I wanted to showcase her personality a little more so it was all about getting her to really laugh and loosen up, not so much about having a soft and romantic expression—that just wouldn’t work with this look. Fake smiles are always so obvious in photos, so figure out ways to make your subject really laugh and you’ll capture some great expressions while they’re laughing, and their smile will be real after the laughing calms down a bit.
Pro tip: Make sure you take behind the scenes of every shot 🙂 We all got so caught up in the 2nd outfit we forgot to take pictures of the setup!