Behind the Photo - Day of the Dead
For years I have wanted to do a Day of the Dead styled photoshoot, and to kick off our new studio's launch, I decided to just go for it. I am so glad that I did because this final image came out better than I could have imagined.
We put this shoot together in less than a week. Our makeup artist Eve only had one time slot available that week, and it was the day right before Halloween. So we were cutting it pretty close, LOL. But this is what happens when you wait till the last minute. More specifically, this is what happens when you finish renovating your studio and want to put a shoot together ASAP.
Thankfully I was able to get the perfect person to model just in time for this shoot. Kimberly was a past client, and I felt like she had the perfect face for all of the makeup to really stand out. Plus, Kimberly massively saved the day.
I knew that I wanted to have a flower headpiece for this shot, but I couldn't get the flowers myself. On the day of the shoot, Kimberly walks in and says, "I brought a few things." Lo and behold, she pulls out all of these faux flowers she got from an arts and crafts store, not to mention a few necklaces that we ended up using as well.
Well, after Eve finished up doing all of the face painting and painstakingly applying each little individual gem to Kimberly's face, we started cutting up the flowers and pinning them into Kim's hair.
All of the colors just came together perfectly. And to top it off, one set of flowers had these cool-looking twirls, so we decided to use two of those as horns for the headpiece.
Generally, on a photoshoot, anything that can go wrong does. This session was one of the rare occasions where anything that can go right went right.
For those interested in the technical way we got the final image, it was actually a pretty simple lighting setup. I had one medium-sized softbox as the main light (camera left), a large gold reflector (camera right), and for the background that is just a gelled light shooting onto a white wall. You can find the exact gear used listed out below.
I always loved the sugar skull, day of the dead style artwork. It's colorful, vibrant, and beautiful while also being a symbol of rebirth into the next stage of life. And for a photoshoot that was pulled together in such a short amount of time, I really feel like we all came together and killed it. Pun intended =)