Behind the scenes video feat. Loïs Bret
This is part of the work I made inside the Château la louvière, this is the 2nd video I am sharing, and this session was a bit different.
More an exploration of genres, than an actual photoshoot, an opportunity to test new techniques. You should be used to it now, let’s break down some of these images.
This session wasn't planned out, of course, we had a few ideas in mind, but this is one of the few sessions we had there where I was given carte blanche and where I allowed myself to improvise on the spot. This is not something I often do, usually, I prepare all my sessions, to ensure that my team and I are efficient on the day of the shoot. We wanted to go boudoir at first, but then we tried lingerie and glam, to finally make simple portraits, that I ended up not liking. I wanted that commercial look from the beginning my lighting setup was quick. I went from shooting the upper body for my first images but decided to go full body. From there, we kept on adding up accessories and layers, to finally make these :
Loïs Bret (Château la Louvière - Léognan France) Fujifilm GFX100s - GF 30mm F4 R WR 1/125sec f/4.0 ISO 100
The following images are maybe the only pictures I knew I would make this way, including the chandelier and the ceiling in the shot and creating this surreal long black dress. We took advantage of my big light stand that I don’t often bring out with me (Easy to guess why) to get my light with beauty box 65 exactly where I wanted it.
Loïs Bret (Château la Louvière - Léognan France) Fujifilm GFX100s - GF 30mm F4 R WR 1/125sec f/4.0 ISO 100
Working with assistants is a luxury these days, and having a team onset is an obvious time saver. This epic dress wouldn't exist without them, and without the talent of my wonderful model: Loïs Bret! I ended up favoring the 2nd version because the upper body was placed better in the frame. But the more I think about it, the more I enjoy the other one too!
Loïs Bret (Château la Louvière - Léognan France) Fujifilm GFX100s - GF 30mm F4 R WR 1/125sec f/4.0 ISO 100
I talked about the use of camera apps in past videos, and how useful they were in certain situations. Well, this is one of them. I attached my camera at the end of my light stand and decided to shoot from the ceiling. We wrapped this long white fabric around the camera and tried different poses. Unfortunately, we discovered at the end of the session that we preferred the pictures that were made when the fabric wasn’t falling straight down towards the bathtub. When I opened the files in photoshop, I even discovered that there were a couple of poses that looked better in the early takes. So, with some photoshop trickery, I decided to merge some of the pictures to have the same fabric shape throughout.
Loïs Bret (Château la Louvière - Léognan France) Fujifilm GFX100s - GF 30mm F4 R WR 1/80sec f/3.5 ISO 200
BEFORE & AFTER
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Attitude is something I am working on more and more, I am still learning and I still have a lot of room for improvement. Since originally we were supposed to make a lingerie shoot, the outfit for this one was easy to choose. I wanted to make a strong portrait of Loïs, and this chair was a perfect accessory for that.
Loïs Bret (Château la Louvière - Léognan France) Fujifilm GFX100s - GF 110mm F2 R LM WR 1/125sec f/2.8 ISO 100
We ended the shoot with something I’ve done multiple times in the past. Using the environment, utilizing objects to your advantage. Here we used these 2 pillars to hold the fabric in place. At first, I wanted to keep them out of the frame but after some thought, I decided to keep them in.
Loïs Bret (Château la Louvière - Léognan France) Fujifilm GFX100s - GF 63mm F2.8 R WR 1/125sec f/4.0 ISO 50
This is the type of session I try to set up from time to time, where we allow ourselves to explore a bit more than usual. Sometimes, we don’t learn much, and some other times we discover new things, we improve our technique. This session in particular influenced some other images made the following days, but more on that in a future post.
I really hope you enjoyed this one and that I managed to motivate you to explore more. If you have any questions, you know where to leave them!