Sam has been a friend of mine since freshman year of college over 15 years ago. We had multiple classes together and shared a love of creative expression, collaborating multiple times on various projects throughout our courses. When I saw she was starting Moonstone Botanicals, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to work on a personal assignment for myself and flex some of my editorial photography muscles.
I knew I wanted to approach this like a magazine feature, so that meant I wanted to shoot:
- Environmental portraits
- More “traditional” portraits
- Action shots of Sam while she worked.
I also wanted to be intentional about going in with a pared down kit. When I’m shooting in the studio, I’m typically using 3-4 lights at a minimum, but I’m trying to be really intentional about working with a smaller kit and being flexible in unknown situations. So for my shoot with Sam, I packed up one light (Flashpoint AD300 Pro), a large soft-silver PLM, and a small MagMod XL Starter Kit.
I hadn’t been to Sam’s house before so I wasn’t sure of the space I was walking into (typical for an editorial shoot) and it turned out she had these AMAZING big windows on the back wall of her living room that were letting this gorgeous, warm, California-esque sun into the room. I went ahead and set up the PLM anyway to give me some different looks, but I knew I would probably be rolling with natural light inside.
The images above used the PLM with a white scrim on the front, while the ones below I transitioned to natural light only.
A few more action shots of Sam working on some candles for her store, and we were wrapped up inside.
We headed outside where I knew for sure that I wanted to shoot a bit of a deconstructed portrait with one of my go-to canvas backdrops (hands down my favorite I own, made many years ago by the incredibly talented Ryan Parker).
Sam's backyard had that same beautiful warm light, as well as a classic worn back fence that I thought contrasted nicely with the blue of the canvas.
I used the MagMod's Reflector XL paired with their MagSphere XL and a 1/4 CTO Gel to add some subtle warmth and fill and viola.
The sun was just starting to move down behind the trees as we were wrapping up, and I wanted to snag a final shot with some of that golden backlighting that also allowed me to show of some of Sam's fantastic tattoos. Honestly, this is probably my favorite shot of the day.
