Fashion shoot for Kak Potratitj

Yesterday after work, i met up with my buddy Patrik at Sokol metrostation.
We where on our way to the fashionshoot i mentioned earlier.
The location was in the English House wich is a interior boutiqe so to say, where they show and sell those very typical english dark and heavy kitchens, offices etc.
Mahogny fur alle! Not our taste exactly and we had time to make some ironic comments about the style.
In the corner of the store there was this office interior and thats where the session where taken place.
The Photographer was allready there and had started to rig up his gear.
And DAMN IN HELL what gear he had!

He must have rented it because after a quick counting i estimated the total sum of his gear up to about 200.000SEK.
Hensel Pro 3000 strobes and ringflashes, and upon that softboxes, batteries and all that stuff aswell.
It got my Elinchromes look like a fart in space in comparsion.

The camera he used was a Nikon D2X and for this one he had a nice setup with primelenses aswell.
As i could see during the shooting he used 50mm f/1.4 and 35mm f/1.2.

I could have asked him thousands of questions but they DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH IN THIS COUNTRY!
Well, i know it might be the one who needs to adapt to them, but anyway...
Why i was there was mostly, offcourse to keep my friend company during the shooting (that according to him, apparently was a fast one,...only 4 hours!..) but also to check out his gear and most of all study how he work with the lights.
This fashionshoot was for a enclosure to Vedomosti (Russian version of Financial Times)(http://www.vedomosti.ru/) called "Kak Potratitj" wich means something like "Time to spend".

And with that said, you can imagine the brands of the clothes the where suppose to market.
Ralph Lauren, Boss, Gucci and many others and to that a special setup of expensive watches.
They even had a guy from the clockstore that was supervising the wacthes all the time untill the shoot was over.
All the stuff was reeeeaaalllyyy nice!

The photographers task was to create and also strengthen the natural light and to bring out the shine of the clothes, cause that was what the client requested.
I was acctually quite impressed how he managed that. First i found the pictures quite boring and abit to dark, but after while when you looked at them and understood the purpose, it became a total different feeling.

He using a big softbox as mainlight over the models head all the time at quite a low power.
The he mounted a ringflash with an octabox on the camera. That was all he used during the entire shoot. Nothing for background or no bouncers to light up shadows etc.

What bothers me most is that i was not allowed to take any "Behind the scenes" pictures.
Hmm i can understand it aswell cause of publishing and legal rights of the photos etc etc..
(And i didnt really wanted to crush him with that fact that i had a D3 in my backpack..MUUUHAHAHAHAHA! ;))
No serisously, it was not the most appropriate moment to take other pictures so offcourse i respected that.

But i got alot of inspiration and ideas for my own future sessions with me and also to get the chance to experience a pretty nice and serious photosession, that im glad and thankful for!

So this saturday we will have a shooting at Patriks place.
Keep wacthing.

Pakka!