I’ve been waiting to do a shot like this since I started this project. As I mentioned in the beginning, one of the inspirations for the project was Lee Morris’s iPhone fashion photography shoot. In that shoot, Morris accomplished the photos by using his entire photography studio, except the Camera, using his iPhone instead. So I wanted to try something similar.
This shot was done during a photoshoot for Zivity with a model I hadn’t worked with before, Megan Gardner. Megan likes my work and we clicked well together. The shoot was very freeform and casual so I knew she’d be ok with me experimenting a bit while we shot. I had the lights set up for shooting with my Canon 5d Mark II so I just took a moment to set down the dSLR and pick up my cellphone and snap a few shots.
While I like the end shot a lot, it became clear that since I lack the fine control over settings (both F-stop and shutter) on the iPhone, the exposure was a little higher than I wanted it to be. But a little tweaking in Lightroom and Photoshop CS5 and I got it right where I wanted it to be.
For this first cellphone glamour shot I decided to use one of the most basic photostyles I use. A standard three light setup with keylight at somewhere between 30 and 45 degrees camera right with a hair light on a boom above and a fill light 45 degrees camera left, all three with softboxes attached. While processing I burned the backdrops to pure black EXCEPT for leaving a hint of light under the models left leg because I like the detail of the shadows there. That subtle hint sets her out from the ground and backdrop in a similar way to the highlights from the boom light on her hair.