English content Originally posted on ELLO

Last Sunday, I shot with Lea. It was not the first time we were shooting together, but this time she welcomed me in her very home in order to make a try for new « in situ » project. Actually « new » is not quite right since I’ve already tried multiple times to deal with this tendentious project of shooting home.

In the past tries, I either brought my studio flashes or some kind of strobist installation. Let’s say it straight: I didn’t really achieve anything that good. I mean, I’m not an expert but I don’t consider I’m in trouble in studio. I know pretty much what I do while I’m in studio , even if I don’t really know many lightning techniques. But when I’m on location … I never reach a sufficient satisfaction level with flashes or strobes.

Note: this picture is raw file, mainly for illustration. It’s NOT a final image of the project.

The second very difficult aspect of this kind of shoots is to produce something where you’re not falling in the « girl next door » concept: you do not want the picture to look like you shot your girlfriend in the shower or falling in a kind of low cost gonzo erotica. That’s a red line I don’t want to cross, and it’s very very hard.

Dealing with all these issues, I decided to install a set of hard constraints for this shoot:
- no artificial light ;
- prime lense, 50mm equivalent (APN PORN! I use a Fuji X-T1 which have an APS-C sensor, so it’s basically a 35mm that I screwed on it) ;
- only one lense ;
- shoot the same location until I have at least one picture I like.

Note: There is also another component for the project but I keep it for the release :)

It’s a bit early to get a definitive opinion but I think it worked pretty well. Having such contraints demands me to focus on the creative part and stop thinking at technical options. I know how to use my camera, know my settings in this kind of situation so the best I had to do is play with very few technical options (mostly my aperture) to focus on composition options. I took 5 times more pictures than I usually do in studio, but most of all I renewed with self confidence for this kind of shoot, which is a very good first step.

I’m going to edit the pictures soon and will post the result here. Hope you will like it :)

This post has been initially posted to Ello network: https://ello.co/angestudio/post/wL37E1hnKnJGECq6PnCUHg