The meth edition. That should be the subtitle of this shoot. But actually, it was much more than that. Sibyl is an actress here in Portland that I met on the set of Bank Run, an interactive iPhone movie and game by friends SilkTricky. By pure happenstance, I actually had met Sibyl (and her kids) a couple weeks prior while walking my dog by her kids’ school but we made the connection on set. She was in need of some head shots and also wanted to do something a little darker.

Though I am not much in favor of typical head shot shooting, I was interested in working with Sibyl (who had also gotten the fantastic makeup artist, Amber Arpin, on board). Though the initial idea was pretty straight forward, I did end getting some good lessons from the shoot.

TIP: Set up a time that works for your talent, but also for you. In trying to figure out a time for our shoot we ended up having to adjust several times, finally making a Sunday afternoon the call time. Now, in the winter in Portland, playing in the afternoon is playing with fire. There isn’t a lot of light most of the day and starting anytime past noon can be tricky. So we met around one to start makeup at Amber’s place (not our location). Once makeup was done we headed out, getting to our location in downtown Portland a little after two. We had three costume and makeup changes to capture. You can see where this is going. In short, make sure you have enough time to get what you need. If you don’t, rescheduling is better than trying to fit it in.

So the first set was to get some “lovely” head shots. Sibyl has a great “Penelope Cruz” type look which makes photographing her fairly easy in this setup. The next look was more edgy—little black dress, Prada shoes, attitude. Between the time lost in from the first set, the makeup change, and the outfit change, we were really running low on light. The overcast day was turning into an impending stormy night minute by minute. Add to that the freezing cold and a concept we hadn’t quite flushed out and the shots just didn’t come out as planned. Sensing this a short way into the second set, I called it a wrap, opting for a look that would be better suited to transport inside should we encounter rain.

And thats when we got some really cool stuff. It is much darker than anything I had done previously (or since really), but I think came out with a cool effect. Amber really coated Sibyl with a heroin-chic palette—a sort of prom date gone horribly wrong feel.

^ This was one of the first few shots of this set. I’m not sure if it was the direction I gave at the outset or Sibyl’s true discomfort with the freezing cold temperatures, but the resulting photograph has an amazing, “I f**king hate you” vibe.

^ Heroin-chic at its finest. I decided to go with the greenish tint to accentuate the cold feeling that parking garage fluorescents inspire when dinged with a flash. (No, dinged is not a technical word. But, I will probably use it, or “hit” or “tagged” to talk about using the flash for accents instead of exposure.)

^ One of the great quotes (and one that Amber and I still joke about when we work together), occurred just before this shot. It was me, and it went something like, “Sibyl, normally I would never say this, but… go ahead and get on your knees.” Now, I talked in an earlier post about the importance of building a rapport with your models. This is a clear example of just that. In no way should you ever, ever, ever feel that you can be demeaning to your subjects, especially females, in any way. There’s no excuse for it. Simply stated.

I did, however, really love the effect of this shot. You can see what the flash does to the concrete and her fair skin when contrasted with the darkening night. I had the camera all the way on the ground, so framing was a bit on the lucky side, capturing the building on the right to stay out from behind Sibyl’s head.

It turned out to be a pretty good shoot in the end, though I would have loved to have started about two hours earlier (and 20 degrees warmer). I didn’t post any shots from the first two sets and I don’t really have a good excuse as to why. I just like the darker stuff better (since that’s what I really wanted to shoot). There will be plenty more from Sibyl coming up later. This was also the first shoot where I was paid for my time, something that I initially did not expect, but was more than happy to receive. I suppose this was my “professional debut” in a way. Very cool.