A kinda SPEZIAL shoot…
Spezial – Kavala, Greece
Spezial is a sneaker and streetwear store that also includes a barbershop and a tattoo studio.
It happened by chance, that I visited the store for an event some friends organized, and it didn’t take long for me to start thinking about interesting pictures someone could take in this well-designed place, and since just architectural images don’t really “Do it” for me most of the time I asked George, the stores manager if he and the other staff would be interested in doing a portrait project with me in their store. They happily agreed!
A couple of weeks later
I visited spezial one more time before the shoot and planed the frames I wanted to create. For example what light was the best for each situation, what framing would play best together with the stores interior design and in what direction the styling should go. Styling was definitely not an issue though since my soon to be models had a wide variety of items to choose from the store!
Shoot day!
Sunday morning I arrived at the location with my friend Panos, who kindly assisted me on this shoot.
I choose a very methodic approach to every frame, first I settled with the exact framing and fixed my 5D mk1 on a tripod and set my settings so that the ambient light was not affecting my exposure. Then I set up my first speedlight, a Canon 580ex II in an 80cm umbrella behind, and slightly left of the camera, and set the flash power to the desired brightness, which was slightly underexposed, before even getting my subject into the frame I took 3 exposures of the background at different exposures so that I had all the information available for post-production.
And finally I added the subject to the frame and set up my second light, a yongnuo 600ex-rt in an 80×80 softbox, which I had Panos hold into the frame just above and a bit in front of models face, in order to create dramatic and contrasty light. The lighstand and softbox ware easily removed in post using the previous exposures of the background.
Check out the Spezial FB-page and website which will be online soon!
