There's no Smoke without a Pole!
At the end of November 2018 on a typical dull autumnal day I set off to Bridgenorth in Shropshire on what was to become a very unique photoshoot at the Pole Squirrels studio.
Disguised very cleverly as a village hall, it had all the perks one would expect, plenty of space, loads of parking with gallons of tea and coffee on tap and a warm welcome.
You may have seen that most studio shoots until now have been traditional ‘clean’ backgrounds. Either coloured paper with or without shafts of light which do give a lovely ‘technical’ look and feel.
However on discussion with head Pole lady Daisy we felt that we could make this a little more unique atmospheric by incorporating the lighting style from ‘The Greatest Showman’, but maybe with a lots more vibrant coloured smoke.
And so it began. The ladies all were well prepared over the two days with their 6 moves and various costume changes, which were naturally all colour coded to suit the prepared lighting gels. This sped the days along nicely.
I used strip box rim lighting with 4 additional remote coloured gel lights to bring out the tints around the body shapes. The previews were checked the same day and numbers confirmed thus everyone went away buzzing with excitement after seeing what we achieved together.
At the end of the session, even more emphasis was placed on theatrical lighting, so I altered the shoot to one single spotlight and Daisy and a few others pulled some wonderful dramatic shapes to bring the ‘set’ alive.
Less than four weeks later all the coloured images were delivered to each individual client, some of whom sent me really touching notes of thanks.
As you can see from the video, the shoot and the final edited images were the result of a lot of post production work. This exercise proves that with a little preparation and planning, drama and lighting can be mixed to create a unique style and feel for any studio shoot.
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