Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Shooting Scarlett

Scarlett 2 Last week, I ended up on Mt. Bonnell in Austin while looking for pancakes. Don't ask me why I was up on the highest point of Austin jonesing for Mrs. Butterworth and hotcakes. Suffice it to say, I was there, the pancakes weren't, and I had my camera.

So, there I was, roaming around the park and thinking, "This would be a great place to shoot." I wandered up the stairs to the top, walked down the path to the bottom, ran across a photog shooting a Marilyn Monroe remake, and eventually wandered back to my car. One of the things I noticed was how windy it was up there. If I were to shoot here, I'd definitely need to find a way to anchor my brollies so they wouldn't flip over the edge, taking my flashes on a long dive to their flashy end.

Scarlett and I have been talking about doing a shoot for some time now. She has this awesome leather corset that just looks great on her. The problem? I didn't quite know how or where I wanted to shoot her in it, so tonight, we met at Mt. Bonnell to do a test shoot (sans corset, of course). I knew I wanted to try something like overpowering the sun but the weather didn't quite cooperate with me, leaving the sky mostly cloudy, save for a twenty minute stretch that kept filling my lens with flare (and not the TGIFriday kind of flare, either ... thank god).

After doing four different setups, I struck my equipment and we ended up sitting up there for another half hour while the sun finally set over the horizon, talking about the various things I want to try out and some of the scenes I have tumbling around in my head. She mentioned she knew someone who had a decomissioned bazooka. She's going to see if she can get her hands on it so I can shoot a scene with it (which I think would be absolutely awesome). We talked about using other props in a photo (swords, mainly) and just batted around a few ideas.

The image above is of Scarlett. We've only known each other for about a year or so and she's quickly become a good friend. She's fun to work with. I can't wait to figure out the corset shoot with her.

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