Week 9: Real World Experience

Hi Everyone and welcome back to my blog!

This past week I worked alongside my off-site advisor and his team to produce one of the biggest projects I’ve ever been a part of. It was a 2 full-day shoot for a company that owns high-rise buildings across manhattan. Our first day started off with a terrible miscommunication that ended up with us having to push the shoot days forward a day. We went over to the flower district in midtown and picked up olive branches and 2 sets of flowers to stage the interiors and to act as props. Once the shoot actually started the second day we got right off to setting up lights and getting the models ready. On this set, there were 2 photographers, a groomer, 4 models, and then me and two others serving as production assistants. I was responsible for staging each scene and prepping the models for what the client was expecting for each scene. I got to work alongside an award-winning interior lifestyle photographer who has photographed almost every high-end building in Manhattan. He walked me through how he approached lighting each scene and taught me how to properly flag and diffuse strobe lights to create lighting scenarios that looked both realistic and like a render. He taught me that the key to lighting interiors is to make them look as close to an artist’s render as possible without making them look fake. What that means is creating lighting that removes most shadows while also keeping the highlights for the windows exposed for so the viewer is able to see the view from the office space or residential space while also seeing the details of the room. I would love to be able to share some of the images we took and are in the process of editing now but due to copyright issues and embargos, I can’t right now but hopefully can in a future blog post.

Till Next Week!

-Danny