edu LIBRARY

Photographer: Nikita Gushue – F.ALT Photographics; Model: Amelia Nightmare; Dress by Deadly Couture

Inspiration/concept

The main point of shooting this photo was to promote the latex dress (designed by Deadly Couture), but I wanted to do it in such a way that Amelia’s funky and animated personality would shine. The horror movie posters are simply there to add some of my favorite things. I went with a room set-up because it just looked good, not much of a reason I know, but it lead to good results.

The shot

I’m a Canon user; I shoot with a 7D a variety of wide angle Canon glass (mainly the poor excuse of a lens, the 18-55, but I’ll bust out a 24-70 if shooting on location). I hardly shoot smaller or wider than f-5.6 with a shutter speed of 60-100 and this shot was no exception. It’s shot at f/5.6, 1/60, ISO 160 and the focal length is 37mm (on my 18-55).

I use Alien Bees for my lights and mainly shoot in studio.

Post-production

I would say it’s pretty much half and half when it comes to how much of the image is created in front of my camera versus how much of it is created in post. A lot of the time, when I’m not taking pictures of people interacting with an environment, I’m taking pictures of the props I’d like to see and then composing them all together in post.

As with all of my photo shoots, I set my lights in such a way that I have the most control of illustrative creation in the post-processing stage. This is mainly a flat set-up that leads to even exposure with the shadows and highlights, and the contrast is added in post.

With the series involving Amelia, the shoot itself took two hours and two hours was spent on deciding on the composition and illustrative look of the final results.

Result

This set with Amelia has been published a few times and actually ended up being my most popular/recognized series. It’s the most sold print set on my online shop, and most used image with Deadly Couture Latex. It has also received the most attention of all my image sets throughout various social media sites (Facebook, Tumblr, Deviant Art, Model Mayhem, etc).