It’s #anythingcanhappenday and today’s post features the dynamic Pam Simpson from a session we had during our 13’th (of 19 so far) shoots together. She and I have a shoot had a shoot earlier this year with her as a brunette and have another scheduled for next month, marking our 14th year of working together
Today’s Post by Joe Farace
I’ve been searching for ways to heal myself, and I’ve found that kindness is the best way. –Lady Gaga
I previously wrote a post called Tips on Finding Glamour Models: In an update to it, I complained about the current state of modeling websites and the difficulty in finding glamour model these days. But it wasn’t always like that.
In February, 2014 through a combination of a recommendation from a photographer friend and the very same modeling website that I complained about, I met Pamela Simpson. Thus began a multi-year collaboration of model and photographer that produced the most fun and one of best working relationships I’ve had with any model since I started doing glamour photography all those years ago.
What You See is What You Get
One of the delights of working with Pam was never knowing what her hair style or even its color would be from shoot-to-shoot. This time her hair was blue although in some of the portraits we made it sometime appears purple because of the colored gels I was using on the LED lights I used during this particular portrait session.
Using LED lighting while becoming extremely popular in many portrait studios is not without it’s own learning curve. Rather than just copying and pasting content from some of my other posts, here’s a few links to get you started: Working with and Using LED Lighting; LED Lighting Concepts for Portraiture; and LED Lighting and The Lady in Red. There’s more on this blog. Just use the Search feature (magnifying glass icon) and type “LED” and you find many posts of the subject of LED lighting.
Today’s image is from our thirteenth photo session together and was made using two LED light sources. The main light was a Rotolight Anova, that years later failed and while waiting for its repair/replacement, I received a Rotolight NEO 2 LED 3-Light Kit for testing.
How I made this portrait: This portrait of Pam doing an impression of a world weary burlesque dance was made in my 11×15-foot home studio. The Rotolight Anova LED light was placed at camera right and she was photographed against the formerly white wall of my studio walls created a pseudo film noir look.
The camera used was Panasonic Lumix GH4 with the versatile Olympus M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 lens with an exposure of 1/60 sec at f/4.0 and ISO 800. The RAW mage was retouched using my standard techniques and processed using the Glamour Glow filters from Color Efex’s Photoshop-compatible plug-ins.
I felt that the gritty mood of the image demanded that it be made in black and white so used Silver Efex;’s default preset with a little bump in the Contrast slider to produce the monochrome featured image. By way of comparison, the original color RAW file is shown at above right. Let me know which version you like best.
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. Used copies start around twenty-five bucks.as I write this. The Kindle version is $19.99 for those preferring a digital forma