Three Looks One Photoshoot

In this blog post I want to highlight what is possible with three looks and one photoshoot.  I take a case study from a photo shoot I did earlier this year with Jeff and show the process of creating three very distinct looks in one photoshoot.  We can create a lot of content if we have a whole day to shoot.

Jeff originally called me and said “I’m ripped at the moment, lets shoot something cool!”  When a client phones me with a statement like that, my mind really starts to race!

Step One

The first thing I did was ask Jeff a series of questions so I could figure out a direction to go in.  Based on my discussion with Jeff I created a mood board.  A mood board helps the team know what our end goal is and helps convey mood, theme, colours, and story.    Below is the mood board I put together with Jeff for our photoshoot.  The purpose of the mood board is not to copy exactly what someone else has already created but to spark inspiration at the photoshoot.

First look

For our first look we chose fire for the theme.  I personally have never done any photography with a model and fire.   I was super excited but also nervous as I had never done this before.  I went to the closest dollar store and purchased all of their birthday cake sparklers to use for our fire.  I also made sure the fire extinguisher at the photo studio was not expired. I made sure to show up at the photo studio super early to set up my gear and take test photos.  I wanted to make sure I was not wasting Jeff’s time fooling around with the lighting.  It was a good thing I did show up early as it took some playing around with my gear to figure out how to create the effect I was going after.  This might have been the most technically challenging photoshoot I have done to date.

Here are some of the first test shots once Jeff got the the photo studio.  We started off using a green flashlight so we would not use all of our sparklers.

Here are the final images from our fire look!  I am so stoked on how they turned out!  Anybody else want to do a fire look?  I think I’m hooked!

Second Look

For the second look I wanted to do some photos with Jeff’s gun collection.  Let me tell you something, Jeff has some big guns and I’m not talking about his arms.  Jeff is fully licenced and trained to own these guns and I did let him know that I wanted to make sure everybody stayed safe while in my studio.  The last thing I needed was a gun to go off while I am taking photos.  I was picturing a Rambo styled movie poster for this look.  We decided to shoot this on a grey background and we were going to turn one of the photos into a composite.

Third Look 

I saved the best for last!  Well…. I saved the messiest for last!  I have seen multiple photographers play with powder before.  It could be coloured powder, or powder being thrown at a model or a dancer covered in powder.  However, I have never seen a body builder covered in powder.  I covered the whole studio in plastic and then we let the powder fly.  It got everywhere and was so hard to clean up.  Ill let you tell me if it was worth it!

This is what is possible if we spend a whole day in the photo studio.  We are able to create three looks in one photoshoot.  I love doing my 1 hour sessions but we are bound by time and cannot create as diverse content as this.  Having a wide variety of content is very useful and I really wanted to show that off in this case study.  All three of these looks are very distinct from each other.