The best advice I can ever give anyone is to just be prepared, and communicate heavily with your photographer; especially me. To me, a lack of constant communication is a recipe for disaster, and sometimes disrespectful, because it shows that you aren’t focused on your investment, but more importantly OUR time. As I stated in my last blog titled, “Leap Of Faith”, people tend to let fear overcome them, and I have to ensure that we achieve success.

With all that being said, I finally broke down and decided to open up my playbook on one of my all-time favorite photo shoots. As you can see from all of my previous blogs and postings on social media, I NEVER share my Behind The Scenes (BTS) material because I honestly don’t like being filmed, and I always believe that if someone wants to learn how you do things, they’d pay you for your time.

This photo shoot like many needed a lot of coordination because it involved more than just myself and my client. We had to have Body-painter Alisia Silliman (@a.vanlang_couture on Instagram) , and unlike a regular makeup artist, Alisia had to perform a miracle to transform Shannon into the “Disco Ball” concept we dreamt up.

If you look, I added videos, and I had to make them 18+ for YouTube because there may or may not be some nudity, and I’m not one for all the drama about a nipple showing, or you getting fired from your job because someone saw a glimpse of a sparkly vulva from my client.

Now I know a lot of you have seen, “body-paint” shoots before, as have I. Most of them I’ve seen have been pretty good. Some of the lighting and shooting techniques have been done, over and over again, and again, so I wanted to just have our shoot look like my own creative technique, and not shoot it with a shallow dept of field. Believe me, that was all in my first paragraph, of the first conversation I had with Shannon. Seeing everyone shooting the same style, or technique just gets lame, and I personally, and professionally do not desire to have my work look like someone/everyone else’s. Hopefully all of this creativity will inspire someone to make some art and remember to, “Go against the grain”.

As far as camera settings, they varied during this shoot, but here’s what I had them set at for a majority of the shoot:

Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: 85mm F/1.4
Settings for Lens: ISO: 100, 1/200 sec, F/14-16 (Varied during shoot to give it a little more mood.)