Jason Christopher, LA Commercial & Fashion Photographer Bio

I recently had the pleasure of photographing a new jewelry line by Flori Manning.  The designer herself called me from Chicago where she lives, we talked over the concepts, budget etc. and the next thing you know she is on a plane to  Los Angeles to shoot her look book with lil ol me.

We had a great model and some beautiful jewelry as well as great make up and hair.  One of my make up artists Lori Young did a great job with the make up and hair.

As for the lighting, I used my typical beauty lighting set up. One small white satin umbrella above the model and in front of her and silver reflector on a stand below to fill in any shadows and light up that jewelry.  We shot 9 different looks.  Here we see two of them.

When prepping for a photo shoot with a client who is based out of town you have got to be very thorough and write everything down from every phone call.  Ask your client to email you samples of the look they are going for.  The more specifics you get from your client the easier the shoot will flow.  Because there is no initial in office meeting, everything must be done via email and phone.  It’s not as easy as an in person meeting but it can be done effectively.

A bit more info on the technical side of a shoot like this must be mentioned.  In the first shot you see the model is wearing a necklace AND earrings.  In this situation I needed to set a very tight f stop to make everything sharp from the necklace all the way back to the earrings.  I set it to f/13, so my strobes were popping !  lol   In the second shot we don’t have earrings in the shot, however, the necklace must be sharp from the closest edge to camera all the way back to where it rests on the back of her neck.

Any questions or comments are welcome !

My recent fashion swimsuit photography shoot at the beach was amazing.  I happened to get my hands on some behind the scenes photos taken with a cheap point and shoot but they give you the idea.   Now when I say we had a 100 foot RV I didn’t measure it but as you can see it was damn long !  We had the art directors, model, make up and hair artists, crew etc. all fit in quite nicely.  When shooting on location where you know it will be uncomfortable for the models, your crew and everyone you really need to rent an RV.   A well fed and warm crew is a happy crew !  In one of the photos you see me standing there with a stand in while the model stayed warm in the RV.   Unfortunately no one took any photos of me shooting        LOL  the story of my life.

RV used for our night photo shoot

Art Directors for the photo shoot

fashion model getting her make up applied

When planning a photo shoot the art director and photographer will make a story board of each scene to be shot.  In this story board you see a photo of the location, the swimsuits that the model will wear and the accessories such as jewelry.  Everything is planned out days before the photo shoot so everyone knows exactly what is going to happen.  You end up with a photo shoot that runs smooth with hopefully very little problems.

storyboard for night swimwear photo shoot

Then when it comes time to set up the lighting you need to have a stand in.  A stand in is very helpful because you can get your light set up pretty close to perfect while the model is getting her make up changed and changing clothes.

Stand in used for setting up the lighting

Just remember the more prepared you are the smoother your photo shoot will go.  The end result is a very pleased client that will call you back for another photo shoot.  If you like this post and think other photographers or anyone else associated with the photography business would find this helpful please click on the share buttons

This is another photo from our late night fashion swimsuit shoot.  This time I only used the one 4′x6′ soft box in a horizontal position about 5 feet from the model.  But this time I tilted it up so that the log wouldn’t be so bright and what that also did was throw some light on the background sand.  I could have used a black cutter set under the box to block out some of the light but I didn’t have one lol.  My camera settings were ISO 200 , 1/80th @ f/10.  I used my Canon 28-70mm 2.8 L series lens and shot it at 30mm.  This means I was very close to the model and zoomed out wide.  I did this because I wanted to include more of the scene.  Remember, the longer the lens you use the more narrow your field of view is.  Of course the opposite is true with a wide lens.  Oh and I was sitting under the soft box.  I’ll make a diagram and post that.