The Launch of Stroborati BODY ART
I’m starting a new series of Stroborati body-painted images and will be incorporating some very artistic designs on the models in my upcoming images that will be styled by Hilde Marie Johansen, an extremely talented makeup artist/stylist/fashion designer in Bangkok. Hilde hand crafted this headpiece for model, Mara Bee, also from Bangkok. See the hot photos in her Model Mayhem portfolio.
Since I planned to shoot only head and shoulder compositions I converted my hotel room into a mini-studio. This setup shot was exposed only by the fluorescent ceiling light. Check out the counterweight for the boomed soft box, I used a 5-kilo sack of rice I bought at a nearby supermarket when I discovered they didn’t sell kitty litter. It’s the tail end of the rainy season here so there’s no dry sand to find anywhere. No doubt you’ve seen on the news that a huge portion of Thailand is presently under water. The central section of Bangkok, where I’m located, is predicted to remain relatively free from the inundation.
In the setup photo you’ll see two black cardboard gobos, one on either side of Mara Bee. They were concealing two 24×24-inch gridded soft boxes behind. You can barely see the edge of one on the righthand side. But in the end I didn’t use those units for side rim lights since I preferred the look of just the one light source boomed above. On the bed I angled a Lastolite 30-inch Sunlite/SoftSilver triangular reflector to bounce a bit of fill under Mara Bee’s chin.
For the reflective background I taped together nine foam insulation panels laminated on one side with metallic foil. A lightweight pack of ten cost me about 15 bucks at the local building supply store. Later in post I cloned out the joint lines.
I used a Canon 580EX II Speedlite mounted into a 16×16-inch small, gridded soft box for a tight circle of soft light on Mara Bee’s face. This unit was triggered with Pocket Wizard TT5 radios. The lens was a Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS on a 5DM2.
In post-production Photoshop I first softened Mara Bee’s skin a tweak using the “Dynamic Skin Softener” filter in the Nik Color Efex Pro collection. Then I applied another filter in the collection called “Glamour Glow.”
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Glen Allison
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One Comment
It’s looking great! The way you’ve framed it with a white border in a black background with the title underneath works really well.