When we pitched a couple of fashion shoot ideas to editor Nancy Slade at Saint Louis Bride Magazine, we had absolutely no idea it would turn into this. But lucky for us it did! The idea we started with and the end result are quite different, but the evolution of the idea from initial concept to finished execution was the best part for me (liz talking). If you’ll indulge me for a minute, I would love to share a little bit of behind the scenes info about this shoot! Some of this will mean MUCH more to photographers than the rest of the world, so feel free to skip ahead to the photos kay?

I am pretty sure the only thing about the concept that continued from inception to print was the idea of using projections. Now projections, (although cool in my personal opinion) are tricky little suckers. They are made of light. Meaning to see them, you have to be in a pretty darn dark space in the absence of other light. Yet we needed light to see our main subjects, the models. So the light used on the models had to be VERY controlled with a narrow beam to keep from spilling over and washing out the projections altogether. A fun little photographic puzzle to be sure!

The shoot didn’t come together in one night – it had three parts. The first was the floral shoot. All of the beautiful bouquets from talented local florists were dropped off at our studio the day of shoot 1. That night we headed over to the Contemporary Art Museum and photographed each of them in a similar fashion to how we would be shooting the models at a later date. Since we were at the Contemporary Art Museum we took a little liberty to shoot them in strange situations…such as the cafe’s steel sink (fun!) After we photographed the bouquets in their entirety, we individually shot floral stems from each against a black background. Over the next couple of days, we prepared each of the stems to be used as projections for our next shoot with the models.

And finally, it was time to see it all come together! Our beautiful models Brooke and Molly from West Model Management arrived on scene and went straight into hair by Bonnie Boze and makeup by Lisa Lipsitz. In the meantime, Kate and I dealt with a little projection emergency. As it turned out, the projector we rented was not strong enough to handle the larger space and increased distance without us shooting the models at a MUCH higher ISO than was acceptable. So we resorted to a double exposure plan – one shot exposed for the model and one for the projection. These would later need to be combined in Photoshop. Which meant our models got direction like “you are trouncing through a magical forest” and “be the tulip” without seeing the scene they were actually in. Kind of like working in a green screen environment. They performed fabulously!

Then we made everyone wait while we put it all together. Let’s just say we may have made Nancy Slade and Ethan Woods a wee bit nervous since no one could really envision the finished result except Kate and myself. We hope you enjoy the final product as much as we enjoyed putting it together. A HUGE thank you to everyone involved for making this idea come to life!

L Photographie Wedding Photography St. Louis Liz Sloan and Kate Hayes