Stock Shot Project

Today we did a studio stock shoot with two models, a little girl and a woman who played her grandmother.  Here are a few of the many situations we photographed, all about relationships and the passing on of knowledge from one generation to the next. 

Notice how in each of these situations our studio stylist carefully color-coordinated the entire scene matching the background to the foreground and to the clothing on the models.  All of this was carefully scripted ahead of time so on the day of the shoot we can move rapidly from one scene change to another.

My primary studio is set up for daylight shooting with windows surrounding two sides.  The day was very overcast so I needed to boost the ISO to 800 and sometimes to 1250.  This allowed for a fast shutter speed and made it easy to hand hold the camera without blurring the image.  I usually work with fast aperture Nikon lenses and use them fairly wide open in order to keep the story-telling aspect of the background soft so it will not impose itself on the main scene.

In an overcast situation it is important to balance the light to keep it from going too cool.  For this we include a gray card in every situation.  One click on the card in Photoshop Bridge balances the scene for daylight.

In simple situations such as these, it is very easy to wind up with static shots. So I always try to have the models actively engaged with each other to give the photos a warm spark of reality.

My camera of choice for this type of shooting is the NIkon D3s for its superiority in low light, its ability to focus quickly, and its super fast motor -- all of which allows me to capture that one moment in the scene when the situation comes alive and looks spontaneous.