Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I think it’s bad manners to stand around in public with ripped jeans and your hair in a mess, holding a Starbucks. ”― Dita Von Teese
If you’re interested in glamour photography you might want to follow Dita Von Teese (@ditavonteese) on Instagram because of the inspiration that her images will provide you with. On Mondays one of her IG fan sites typically publishes glamour portraits a La Teese wearing corsets, so I thought I’d give the #corsetmonday concept a try here.
Once upon a time I tried to include a portrait of every model I photographed wearing a corset during every shoot including lighting equipment reviews that I wrote for the former print edition of Shutterbug. You may, or maybe not, be surprised to learn that the editor, managing editor and art director never published a single one of these photographs in the magazine. Since they, for their own reasons, wouldn’t let you see the images, I’m going to try to publish them here for the coming months.
Some of the models that will appear in this series have either never appeared or may be under represented on this blog for several reasons, including the number of shoots that I did with them. Others, like this portrait of the one, the only Tia Stoneman have appeared on this site many times, including some from this very session but most of those images were made using available light, unlike this one that was made in the makeshift studio in the basement of my former home. Every time I look at the images from this session I get nostalgic about working with Ms. Stoneman. If she ever decides to come back to modeling, even after all these years, it would make me incredibly happy.
What Took You So Long?
How I made this shot: This portrait of Tia was made in an 8×9-foot space in the unfinished basement of my former home. Lighting was provided by two inexpensive Adorama monolights and you could probably accomplish the same kind of effects with speedlights. She was photographed against one of Savage’s Focus Grey seamless paper backdrops that was hung from my JTL background stands.The only amenity this basement studio offered was a stool and a 4×5 foot rug that came from Target. It’s not even a real posing stool just one I sat on to run my model trains. This set-up wasn’t fancy but it, I think anyway, worked as you can see in the image at right.
The camera used was a Canon EOS 5D Mark I with my workhorse EF 85mm f/1.8 lens. The manual mode exposure for this particular sequence of images, according to the EXIF data, was 1/50 sec at f/13 and ISO 200.
As far as posing is concerned, I seldom ask the model to move preferring to let her be herself and don’t employ “official” poses that the model herself would not normally find herself. That why also why I almost never use a tripod during boudoir and glamour sessions because a handheld camera provides the freedom to move around and lets me put myself into whatever position necessary to get the picture.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to treat me to a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50), please click here. And if you do, thanks so much.
My book Joe Farace’s Glamour Photography is full of tips, tools and techniques for glamour and boudoir photography and includes information on all of the cameras used as well as the complete exposure data for each image. New books are available from Amazon for $27.82 with used copies starting at $8.90 as I write this. Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital format.