A new shooting is profiling itself on the horizon. I met with two colleagues working on a startup magazine in Berlin. They have entrusted me with one of the photo series to be in their first publication. The theme of the series is a relatively abstract hommage to Audrey Hepburn. Images of her abound and have a distinctive style, however the goal is not to reproduce the image language often associated with images of her time, but more to imagine what her life would be like if she lived in today’s Berlin.

We had our first discussions and are now working on the organization. We need 7 individual images and will be working with two models, one male and one female. Most of the shooting will be done outdoors, so I will probably get along fine with a big reflector. I’ll keep you updated on how we proceed!

PS: for those waiting for the result of Sunday’s shooting, I expect to start making progress by the end of this week. You’ll see the first results here with some description on lighting

Shooting today went very well! Everything turned out as planned. Considering the small incidents this week, Im happy that at the end, the photos were good.

We started at 11am and worked all the way to 6pm. The Suite we got in the hotel was about 50 square meters and finding shooting spots within the room was tricky but we ended up producing about 3 to 5 series, each with its own style and spot. The raw images are looking good. Here you have a preview of some of the series:

A shooting is always very exhausting. Transporting heavy equipment, cramping your body into impossible postions to get the right picture, moving up and down and focusing throughout on adapting yourself to the environment where you are shooting. It is consuming and I usually come back home with body aches and an empty mind. That why I won’t write much more today. In the next days, when I start the selection and processing I will write more about the selection process, my lighting for each shot and the post processing. So stay tuned!

I leave you now with some pics from the production with some comments

Giada getting made up by Tanja

Nice collection of shoes. Some of the nice things arranged by Jennifer

Of course the lingerie couldn’t be nicer. Jennifer got some real nice Christian Dior

Getting the clothes ready

Tanja creaming Giada’s legs to ensure they look smooth on the pictures

Jennifer and Giada working out the last details

The family picture!

Shortly after lunch, I got a phone call from my production assistant with breaking news… the hotel managers were not signing the property release, not without seeing the photos.
Oh no! the last thing I needed! What now? We’d never have a plan B in such short time.
We decided I write them an email: some sample pictures, a description of our concept and an indication that cancelling so late would involve me losing invested money.
Same reply: “nope, not without seeing the pictures”.
That just couldn’t be true…
The production assistant gave it another try. After some clever talk she found out they were worried about the nature of our shoot and if we really really were just doing lingerie…
Luckily, after understanding their worries it was much easier for us to reach an agreement: straight after the shoot we will show them the raw pictures and if we didn’t take naughty pictures then there should be no reason not to sign.

Great!

Sunday, the shoot will be at the Arcotel John F in Berlin-Mitte.

I woke up this morning with a mission. Get a model for Sunday. I sent out mails to those models which would fit well in Sunday’s concept… and then waited… and waited for an answer. It was a long day, and if none of them could, I could start thinking about canceling

Eventually all three replied and they all could! Didnt really count on that One of the three was new and I had not yet worked with her. Her portfolio really impressed me but I decided to stick with the one which fit best. The series is for Getty and I want a safe bet. Nevertheless we already arranged a shooting end of May, so more on her to come.

So Sunday we’ll be seeing Giada. A girl from Italy who has started in Berlin with some interesting modeling jobs. Giada and me had the opportunity to work together and it went well. I leave you with a result of our last shooting and am looking forward to Sunday

The next important shooting on the schedule is this Sunday. Only a few days left. You’d expect things to be organized… well not quite.

The theme is a follow up on my Hotel Lingerie series: individual models in different hotel locations.

For this next shoot I had a specific model planned, a girl I met a few weeks ago at a party who had seen my photos and was very motivated. Well, after various phone calls clearing up the details today she finally decided not to participate… which is ok-ish, but why tell me so late???!

So here we are, 4 days before the shooting, Styling, Make Up and Hotel ready to go, and no model… I have no choice now but to frantically comb my address book and figure out where to get a model on short notice!

I’ll keep you updated

… one more blog to dot the blogosphere… you ask yourself “and what now”??

Well if you are interested in the process of creating photography, all the related stories, hype and behind the scenes junk, then I probably have some interesting stories for you

I want to keep it short on introduction: I’ve been at this for some years and reached a point where I want to share my experiences with others. I’ll keep you updated on each photo shooting, from the very beginning, when the ideas float in the air, through to organization, production day and all the way to the post-production. Oh, and we’ll be seeing quite a lot of pictures here too

So, warm welcome , hope to see you here often