On my way to Aceh in April I received two smses in a span of 5 mins, from friends who do not even know each other. And each one asked me to do shoot for a friend. That was how I met Alila, a singer/songwriter who was such a livewire when she stepped into the studio. Such a joyful and bubbly person! Someone introduced her to my facebook the day after she was just checking out my website. And then she realized the images were from the same photographer! She wanted a few simple images for her CD so we brainstormed a short while and came up with images along these lines.

My guitar is going to be famous. For my keepsake, I didn’t DI away the pick mark in the full body portrait We did the shoot to her music, blasting away from her phone. Awesome stuff, look out for her CD! Her voice is so rich and I can’t wait to hear her music on a proper sound system.

Alila, I thank God for your talent!

Technically, it’s a very simple lighting setup. The idea was to just shoot against white to leave the CD designer a bit more creative space. Alila had not engaged a designer yet and decided to go ahead with the photoshoot first. So I set up:

1. One 80X120cm softbox on camera right for most of the shoot.

2. One light with a diffuser to light the white backdrop. If you don’t do this, you won’t be able to get a completely white background. The trick is to adjust your light ratios.

3. One light with diffuser at camera left, slightly behind her to light her hair and give the edgy light on hair and part of the face. I don’t use this all the time though.

These were essentially the lighting setup throughout most of the shoot. Of course I played around with light output and direction of the key light quite a bit for visual variety.