Todays Shoot - Sarah (NSFW)

Sarah is one of my favorite people to work with, despite the fact that prior to this shoot we have only shot together one time.

she is a professional make up artist who is alllll over the place - LA, NYC, shes worked on countless celebs, movies, music videos, etc. (yes, even Gary fn Busey!).

Since our last shoot we have stayed in touch and planned to shoot again when she was in the area - but due to weather and schedules, this was probably the 5th time this 2nd shoot had been rescheduled for haha - but finally we made it happen.

She modeled for me a little over a year ago for the goth/fetish project (see below) - but this time I wanted to expand on that, add corpse paint, etc.






































So we started with the goth/fetish/fashion stuff - which to be honest - im sort of getting bored with now that i have the corpse paint book in the works - but I always need more content to add to production. I shot this with split lighting - two 3x4 softboxes on profotos at 100% - ISO100 - F16 at a 160th - I shot these with the 70-200 2.8 L lens mostly - for some reason I like that one the best in studio - I do switch out to the 24-70 every now and again but find myself really liking the 70-200 better

see unedited images below












































































In between these shots - we went back and fourth to a more fashion type of look - but I figured it was easy to just split them evenly for continuity sake on the blog. For these shots i boomed a beauty dish straight down - as high as possible - and brought it about 6-8 feet from the background to keep the background from going too white - the first stuff we did was with her gloves and black lace - which she wanted to shoot alot of - and second she had an awesome bowler hat that i thought we could do some nifty stuff with - the settings for this are F20 for the first set and F16/18 for the hat set - at a 160th - ISO100 - and i switched back from the 70-200 to the 24-70 a bit but again mostly stuck with the 70-200 - these were my favorite shots from the first (non-painted) sets

see unedited images below


















































































































We then went around the building and shot some industrial nude shots - i figured i didnt want these to be super creepy so i grabbed two dynalite jackrabbit kits - powered them to about 1/4th or so - and just used two umbrellas for the first few sets - i decided to just bring the 24-70 2.8L USM lens - as i wanted a good mid-lens for both wide and tele type shots. My setting on these are: F18 (electric panel) F16 (window shot)F14 (blue wall) all ISO100 - all at a 160th as i didnt want to bleed in any ambient light for this one.












































































for the next shot i used an umbrella at 1/4 camera left and another umbrella at 3/4 pointed up toward the ceiling/her shoulders to both light her evenly with the 1/4 light and also give background light - as i was going to be shooting from a very specific angle. What I wanted to do was shoot against the ceiling - to cut out everything around her cause i was sick of the blue/white walls and love the creepy panels of the ceiling - however - i wanted to make sure - shooting at that angle - that i 1. wasnt getting an unflattering or extremely pornographic image and 2. the background was lit enough for seperation. So I did some very specific posing to avoid anything untasteful - and this is what we got - settings are F14 - ISO100 - 160th



















After finishing up that - we added corpse paint! yeayyy! for those who dont actually know why im doing the project - or whats behind it - please check out - www.jeremysaffer.com/corpsepaint - for all the info

now - i figure shes an incredible professional make up artist so her corpse paint was going to be AMAZING (and i was right) - during the process she got some black paint in her eye - and started tearing - which made cool black tears - but i needed solid lines for this project - sooo i had her wipe it away so she wouldnt go blind or something - and she redid it with real makeup and did an INCREDIBLE job! lots of inverted crosses! just what was needed!

For the on location shots I brought only a beauty dish/boom - which i wish we had more time i would have done some things differently but it was getting VERY late and we were both feeling tired.

I started out just outside my studio on a white wall and put the dish directly against the wall so the rest of the hallway would go dark and give VERY specific lighting - then for the hallway shots - i just moved it over a bit to the middle so it would splash some light on the side but still have a dark hallway - the settings for this are F16 - iso100 - 160th - again trying to not bleed in any ambient light. - and again i was shooting the 24-70



















































After that we moved to the basement and shot again a green metal door (i love how metal reflects light and use it to my advantage always) - but i jumped to F20 to really make it SUPER SUPER dark - then we shot just outside of the door at F18 - same settings as the shots above






































I wasnt really feeling what i was getting in the basement that day - maybe i was tired - or something - but I wasnt into those shots until i looked at them way later that night - I was kinda over it before i even started shooting it - so i was stoked to get back to the studio because i know ill like those shots.

So we started on white with a boomed dish - i set the FStop to 18 - again - iso100 at a 160th - and got alot of shots i really really dig from this set - these were shot with the 70-200












































































then we switched up to split lighting with the same settings, and these i was into some of them - but again when i get SUPER tired i just get to the point where i cant produce work ill be completely satisfied with - but these shots below i did like alot.


























































after that we shot on black and i just didnt like the shots - we were both so so tired that after something like 10 shots we both agreed DONE! and went home and watched movies.

Sarah is an incredible model, and incredible makeup artist and hopefully I'll be able to work with her again sooner rather then later - I really want to get her back up here next month to shoot more when we are both more awake!