Wednesday was a grey and rainy day, just what I needed to spark some creativity.  I booked two separate shoots for the day.

My first shoot was with Mischief V. I last worked with Mischief V back in early December when it was barely warm enough to shoot outside. We lasted about 30 minutes outside shooting before having to retreat back inside.

This time we stayed inside and shot for about 175 minutes and took 115 images and ended up with 112 usable images over 13 sets.

0150325 Mischief V Set 04 Image 07

I had an idea for the shoot with Mischief V, Ink stamps on skin maybe a little white paint to represent a canvas.  Pretty standard idea to base a shoot on.

We started with Mischief V posing an a tall stool trying to find some interesting body shapes on to which we could use the ink stamps. I decided to turn on a task lamp to get some more lighting, that’s when we went off on a tangent with shadows and silhouettes. I have a couple of great shots of just shadows.

We did manage to circle back to the ink stamps and placed them on strategic areas of Mischief’s body. My idea with the white canvas didn’t quite work, I wanted to tape off an area and paint it but getting the masking take to cooperate just wasn’t in the books.

However Mischief V’s assistant was a dab hand at the foam paint brushes and whipped up a blue, purple and black design which she painted on Mischief V.

At the end of the shoot I had the idea, we’d put lotion or hand sanitizer on the design and photograph it as it broke up. For some reason I chose Corn huskers lotion instead of hand sanitizer and well it didn’t do anything (except look like someone had sneezed on the design ;0)

I felt our shoot was very creative, lots of paint, ink and shadows. It was a very fun shoot just want I needed to get rid of the winter blahs…

My second shoot of the day was with Mel V from Chaos Talent. This is the first time I have directly booked with Chaos Talent. I’ve worked with a few of the Models that are represented by Chaos Talent. When I was working with the other models from Chaos talent it was booked through events or independently.  I  booked Mel V on the recommendation of Ally the Chaos talent booking manager.

We shot for 117 minutes and took 89 images and ended up with 80 usable images over 12 sets.

0150325 Mel V Set 03 Image 14

 When I’m working with a model that I haven’t worked with before the first couple of sets I usually use as warm up sets. This is where I try to get an understanding of how the model and I work as a team.  My plan was to start out at a local park and walk around take some pictures. What with the rain and my previous shoot running late I decided to skip the park and shoot entirely indoors.

With the warm up sets I try to learn things like how much direction do I need to give or does the model anticipate the flash that sort of stuff.

Mel V is a great model to work with, during the warm up sets I tried to put her at ease as best I could. We talked about what she liked about herself and the aspects that weren’t her favorite.

I could tell she was eager to pose well and had a little excess nervous energy.  She started to anticipate what I was looking for which is good but it also brought out a smidgin more of that nervous energy.  I noticed it when I was taking about the tattoo on her right upper arm. Her arm got a little more tense and rigid like she was anticipating me taking a picture of it ;0)

We talked about it and I tried taking pictures of her face while taking about her hand that sort of thing. It’s perfectly normal she doesn’t know me from Adam. If the roles where reversed I’d be a little nervous about the photographer as well ;0)

When I’m taking pictures I’m looking for an honest pose with a natural look to it. I notice tension and unease mostly in fingers and faces by set 3 Mel V was getting into flow of it.  She was relaxing and not tensing up or trying to anticipate the pose.

Set 03 image 14 (the image above) was the moment I thought this is relaxed we’ve warmed up and we work well as a team.

I’m not ready to choose my top 20 images from Mel V’s shoot but man I do have some favorites and they are knockouts.

I look forward to working with Mel V again.