So how did I get these great shots of Gretchen Stockdale lying on the stones. The stones are light and dark black in color and can be found in any garden center. I had my assistant rub each of the stones with some baby oil to get them to glow and have a nice shine when the light hit them. This made for a much more interesting look on the stones, it’s little things that will help make your shot stand out a bit more than a model just lying there on the stones. I had the pink swimsuit on hand which I thought would look great against the dark stones.
The set was out-side in open shade which gave a lot of flat light to work with, I also had a large silver reflector off to one side to bounce some bright light into the space to help with a highlight on Gretchen’s body. We sprayed some water on the stones before the model was laying on them and once she was in the right spot on the stones we also sprayed the model with some water on her as well. The makeup girl also put some baby oil on Gretchen’s body before she was on the stones so that she would be shiny and sexy looking. We placed Gretchen hair around her head and made sure to not just let the hair fall down behind her head.
Once we had Gretchen in her place on the stones it was time to work with the position of the camera set up and to focus in on what we would need to see in the camera frame. I did this from being on top of a ladder and I had the camera on a boom over the space so all I had to do was to look though the view finder to see if I was framed up right. I shot a polaroid® to check the lighting and exposure and once I had what I was looking for it was time to shoot real film. As I looked down to see what shot’s I was getting I had Gretchen move about just enough to get a small difference in each of my images. I think you can see these shots turned out fantastic and we got some great images. As always it was great to be working with Gretchen as she is a true professional and did not complain about lying on the stones. Even though it seems to be a bit painful but Gretchen never said so.
In this shoot I used a Hasselblad with an 80mm lens and 120 mm color transparency roll film.
