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John Denton's Lighting Lab - Jazz Meets Heavy Metal - part 2 of 1 2

Published 01/06/2015

But we could only protect her beautiful hair for so long and so paint was squidged into it and the hair slicked back to give a fabulous, robotic type of look. I changed the set to the white-wall end of the studio and positioned Jaz on a small stage (a coffee table!). The lighting was a single Elinchrom HD Pro 1000W head, bounced into a silver 7ft umbrella. I love the quality of light this produces; crisp clear and almost shadowless. They're a great addition to any lighting kit; great light and relatively inexpensive.

All shot at ISO200, 1/200s f14 on Nikon D300 with 18-70mm lens From this high key look we moved to a darker set. The backdrop is storm-grey paper. A single strip-box, gridded with a fabric egg crate to focus the light down. A gridded dish is to camera-right and shining through a cinefoil Gobo to put a little light behind Jaz and a little edge on the body. The results were to matt down the effect of the paint and give a very different look to the earlier sets.

The shoot then changed. We moved from the studio to a barn where we wanted to add a more sculptural look to the shoot. We added in a pair of silver wings, a gelled speedlight, smoke machine and the same gridded strip-box as in the previous shoot. It was cooooooolllld. Jazmin proved her toughness by trotting barefoot across the farmyard wrapped only in her wings. I'm so glad my models are as daft as me at times.

When shooting any sort of movement such as this, then shoot wide and crop later is the best advice. You don't want to shoot great shape and then have a wing tip disappearing off the edge of the frame. Jaz moved the wings whilst I shot. I sometimes overshoot on these sessions then pick the best. On this session I decided to anticipate the movement of the wings and click when the critical movement arrived. This needs much understanding between photographer and model; she may be moving for a minute or so with no flash and she needs to know she is not doing anything wrong - you're just waiting!

For the final set I turned off the speedlight and shot with the key light only. (This spread.)

At the end of a fantastic shoot it took several packs of wet wipes to get the thick of the paint from Jaz's body. Then an hour or so in the shower with a gallon of shower gel and conditioner.

Was it worth it? Hell yeah. I hope you like the pictures we produced but ultimately I don't care. It gave me a creative buzz, a creative reboot and prepared me for the next round of shooting with clients. That's so important to me and I recommend you do it too. Feel free to show me the results. More images from this shoot are on www.dentonnudes.

tumblr.com as well as a behind-the-scenes video.

Love and Light
JD

• John Denton's Lighting Lab - Jazz Meets Heavy Metal page 1
  
• John Denton's Lighting Lab - Jazz Meets Heavy Metal page 2
  

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