Properly Exposed Boudoir

Brittany is a rare find when it comes to shooting. She’s a lengthy 5’10” without the killer heels. It makes it a little difficult when trying to follow the “always shoot down on women” photography rule, especially when you are 5'2" like Mel. But rules are made to be broken and Brittany sure does break them. She’s also up for just about anything. As we were outside warming up with some portraits before the boudoir, she mentioned that she saw my dad’s '67 mustang on her way in.

“I’ve always wanted to take pictures with a car.”

Always accommodating, I tracked down the old man and procured us some keys. Later that day he mentioned that he was thinking about selling it. “But maybe I should hold onto it for your photography,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

Seeing the rusty cogs and gears of husbandly scheming whirring away, I cut him short, “That’s an awfully expensive prop. And after you’ve used it a few times, a prop becomes common place and not worth using anymore. I think it’d probably be best to just sell it.” Mind you, this car has been in the process of getting sold since I was in high school, so it’ll likely be around for many more shoots just in case someone else sees it and says, “I’ve always wanted to take a picture with a car.”

Every once in a while I like to provide a before and after example. Digital photography is so much more than the craft of the original photograph; these days you have to be skilled at post processing as well.

The original shot is aided by an off-camera flash shot through a small soft box. It's set to high speed sync so that I could pull the color of the sky in without losing Brittany in the shadows of the grass. This in and of itself is a trick, but then comes the post processing.

The post pretty much speaks for itself. Complexion is cleared up, fly away hairs are erased, a little snugging of clothing. It doesn't look like much was done, but it amounts to over an hour of careful attention to details, working and reworking different areas of the photo to pull them in line with a vision without making it look like a photo of someone else. And of course the trickiest part of all is making sure that you can't tell, when looking at the end product, that any work was done.