One of the main reasons a photographer would want to get into studio photography is to do some kinda commercial work, ideally for some sort of editorial or promotional purposes. With some help the ever wonderful Girls of Geek I was able to get some practice in with shooting the girls as they modeled clothes from their website.

Key to promotional photography is showing off what is being promoted, whether that’s a clothing line or a life style it needs to be made obviouse what you’re trying to sell in the shots. In this case it’s not only the clothes the Girls of Geek are selling but it’s also their brand. The girls are very good at keeping their brand consistent so really all I have to do is make sure the shots are good.

Since This was being done in a studio environment the lighting set up is entirely under my control and as such I’m in charge of it works. For this set up I had two clamp lights set up at both ends of the back drop working as a As a back light, kick and fill all at the same time. This was designed specifically to create separation from the backdrop and make sure dark clothing and hair can be outlined and not feel like it’s part of the background.  At the same time I used a 1k Soft box as a key light that gave nice soft even lighting which also offered a nice catch light in the girls eyes.

My  favorite thing to shoot in this new round of studio experiments was the Girls of Geek new Hoodie. It’s a great piece of clothing and is now on sale on their website (girlsofgeek.com). Shooting it made me pause with concern because of the dark of the pieces outlining the hoody but my lighting set up as well as some fancy post processing allowed to come out against the black backdrop.

 

I think from here on out I’m going to refine this style for my studio photography long term. I like what I’ve come up with now what I want to do is refine it. Possibly get a grey backdrop and get all my lighting lined up the way I want it but over all I think that this might be my permanent studio style in the long term.