Today’s Post by Joe Farace
“I never will forget the way you look tonight…”— Chris De Burgh, The Lady in Red
If you’re interested in glamour photography I suggest you follow Dita Von Teese (@ditavonteese) on Instagram because she posts some inspirational images. Each Monday one of her Instagram fan sites publishes a series of glamour portraits of her wearing a corset and that’s what inspired me to try #CorsetMonday here.
When I started getting serious about glamour photography I went through a phase when I asked models to wear a corset during our shoots. I even tried to include an image of models wearing a corset during shoots I did for the lighting equipment reviews for the print edition of Shutterbug. But the magazine never published a single one of these images. Since they wouldn’t let you see any of the photographs, I’ve been publishing some of them on Corset Monday posts until…(The bottom of this post has more information on that subject.)
Some of these models in this series have either never appeared on this blog or may be under represented for many reasons, including how many shoots I did with them. The images that have appeared in this series so far are not all of the photographs of women wearing corsets that I’ve photographed over the years. Not every shoot is perfect. One of the most common problems is my being rusty from not having worked in the studio or having photographed a model in a while. The pandemic certainly exacerbated this gap between shoots. Nevertheless, what you see in this series are photographs of models who were great to work with even if I was not on my A-game. As former major leaguer Preacher Roe once said, “Some days you eat the bear; some days the bear eats you.
Let’s keep the series going with this portrait of Dalia, who I found on an Internet modeling site. Most times the models you find on these sites are great to work with but the process can be frustrating and challenging, In this case, Dalia was a sweet aspiring model who I only had one shoot with. Like many of the “one-shoot:” models that have appeared in this series I wished I could have photographed her again but for many reasons, for as Douglas Adams once said, sometimes “the Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two.”
How I Made this Portrait: Dalia was photographed during a test shoot in my home studio with a Canon EOS 60D and EF-S15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM lens (at 85mm) with an exposure of 1/125 sec at f/8 and ISO 200. Lighting was provided by a single monolight with a 64-inch parabolic umbrella mounted and placed at camera left. Background was a Savage Photo Grey Infinity vinyl backdrop hung on JTL background stands. You can take a look at my studio setup in my YouTube video.
The advantage of using a large parabolic umbrellas is three fold: First, a big light source, especially when placed near the subject is going to create soft lighting. Second, because of the umbrella’s parabolic shape, light falloff towards the edges is minimized. Third, a parabolic design produces high light efficiency allowing you the choice of producing either high contrast directed light or extremely soft light. Imported parabolic umbrella can cost $6,000 or more while Paul C Buff’s PLM series of umbrellas with 51-inch models starting at $39.95 with larger models at affordably prices.
Special Note: We are getting close to the end of this series and I would like to keep this #corsetmonda going through 2023. To do that I’m looking for women interested in posing in corsets for photographs used on this blog series. After signing a simple model release, they will receive a choice of a CD or flash drive containing all of the approx 200 photographs that were made during the session to take home the day of the shoot. The model will also receive full rights to use the images however they like. If you’re interested, click CONTACT and let’s talk.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($2.50), 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 with new copies available from Amazon for $27.43, as I write this. Used copies start at the hard-to-beat price price of $5.42 and the Kindle version is only $11.99 for those who prefer a digital format.