Dream Client (FINAL)

For my final project I was given the task to come up with a concept I could imagine myself receiving from a client. Since I had worked so hard to try and cover multiple facets of the commercial photography industry, I thought it would be fun and interesting to combine all of the lessons I learned from past projects and culminate them into one project.

I imagined a client came in and asked me to shoot lifestyle images of an athletic clothing line. Being a dancer, I knew I would have access to multiple pieces of athletic clothing from either myself or other dancers on campus so I had the styling covered but I still needed to find the models.

I decided to go on the popular model search website, Model Mayhem and see if I could find women willing to work in exchange for portfolio images. I wanted fit looking models that had experience in either dance or pilates because I knew if they didn't, it would read in the images. I was lucky enough to find two women of different body types and skin tones to further achieve my vision for the campaign. One was a little more thin and toned while the other had much more muscle mass.

I knew I wanted to find a location in which I could shoot multiple areas and have the same feeling throughout so I instantly thought about Laguna Beach due to the multiple number of pilates studios around and the obvious beachy vibe it has. I contacted a local studio and asked if I could shoot inside in exchange for marketing material for their location and they quickly agreed.

In order to make the shoot as quick and painless as possible for the establishment owners and models, I decided to bring along two assistants with me. One would continuously hold my reflector while the other had anything and everything ready for me when I needed it like spraying the models with water to make them appear as though they were sweating. In this way, I felt like the shoot was more realistic because a photographer would usually always have a team on hand to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Here is the campaign I was able to create:

I combined all the aspects of my previous projects in order to create this campaign. In project one, I focused on people and portraiture as the subject while trying to show the same person in three different scenarios. This is similar but also differs in some ways. I used different colors and textures of clothing to change the feeling of each image but the models themselves didn't change in any other physical aspect. In project two, I focused on creating product based photography that could be used to sell the product and at first, I focused more on website based selling but upon further research and input gravitated more toward lifestyle settings of products. This is much more a common thing today and I feel the images I came up with properly shows the products in the right scenarios while throwing a bit of fashion in there as well. I also think my eye for the physical really helped me during this shoot because I was able to use my knowledge of dance to pose the models much better. The third project used concept driven photography to tell the story of a musician and I think it is similar to this project as I used the concept of physical activity to drive the styling, model search and retouching of the campaign.