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POP Magazine’s interview with SAW about the “scary movie” photograph above:

(on newsstands now)

I was hired to create this photograph for an advertising campaign to showcase the Hilton Garden Inn line of hotels. 

The success of this image hinged on our prep work and strategic setup.

For this production, there were a lot of things on our side: a healthy budget, smart creative from the agency, great casting in LA, excellent producers, my go to crew and as much gear as we wanted*.

But there were also some major logistic limitations. Namely, we had to shoot all the shots on site in actual hotel rooms, not in a studio. Although the rooms were nice and new, it was a very tight production space. My back was literally always up against a wall.

I am a shooter that doesn’t mind challenges. That is to say, I actually find that limitations make me push my creativity further. In this case, yes we had to shoot inside the actual rooms, but we were allowed to rearrange the furniture any which way we wanted to get the shot.

We photographed a series of five ads over the course of two days. Here’s where our prep work paid off. Because of the tight quarters, we shot this image the morning of the second shoot day—so that we could pre-light it at the end of the first shoot day. This proved to help us out big time. How I initially set up the shot was to shoot the room as is, with the chair & our stand-in model just in front of the wall. We set it up, took our meter readings, made a test capture and looked at it on our 30" monitor. Boy, did it look terrible.

Okay, time to revise the game plan. What was not working is that although we could light the model for a “night” interior, the strobe lit up the back wall and washed out all the mood. The wall peaked at near 255 and it felt like she was watching daytime TV. It was time to turn the room on its ear.

I executed the lighting technique of “fall off” to work for us rather than against up. I used the length of the room rather than the width to maximize our distance. By doing so, I ended up in the suite’s bathtub. I moved the model as close to me as possible while still using the portrait end of the zoom lens (with the barrel set at 95mm on our Hasselblad 50-110mm.) I wanted the length of the lens to enhance the models face and liked the focus mushiness on the background.

My light source was a large softbox which we rigged just top right of the camera, boomed over on a C-stand. That too was in the tub with me. At this point we were lit and camera ready for the next day.

The next morning we only had the talent for two hours. All along, I had a plan to go in using an oversized soft source and then use cutters to reduce the area of the soft box. We tailored in the flags, bit by bit, until we got an in-between sized light source that felt just right on her face and as a catchlight in her eyes. From there I feathered in a couple nets for some in-camera vignetting along with a pinch of negative fill to add shape. One last step was for me to examine the detail of the 3/4 tones and make friends with my histogram. I wanted to pack in as much detail as I could. I pushed the limits by over exposing 1/2 stop. But with the help of my makeup artist we kept all the highlights in her face down enough and safe from clipping.

Another savvy time saving trick was to get the model’s book messengered over before hand, so that we could examine and decide our hair styling direction before she arrived on set. We booked a redhead model based on how her hair would look in the cool television light and strived to accentuate this feature.

I did all of the post work on the image for the ad agency. The main thing I wanted was to get a cool color temperature on the scene and chair, but a warm enough temp on her hair and skin to really create some pop. I crafted separate settings that got me the best of both worlds and manually bended multiple conversions form the RAW file in Photoshop.

What did I learn from making this photograph? Any time you can get into the location and do a pre-light, go for it. It will save the production time and money in the long run and help you make an image that exceeds your expectations. *=If you can light it with one light, do so.

Hi there. I’m Stephen Austin Welch, a commercial advertising photographer and director. My specialties are capturing authentic lifestyle images,
genuine portraits & graphic still lifes. I also shoot, what I have coined, environments and scapes. See ’em all on my site.

I shoot still photographs & motion spots for ad agencies, creative firms, companies and magazines worldwide.

Call me, SAW, (or my great agent, Norman Maslov,) for the next visual story you want to tell.

We love to shoot!