6 April 2009 - 3:12Alyssa & Abby in Alberta

What can i say,  these two rock!  Alyssa and Abby are best buddies and  think they had a ton of fun ‘playing’ together on this shoot.  I went on the road last year to shoot in my home town of Edmonton.  That week was anything but easy,  I forgot about the windstorms, dust storms,  sudden thunderstorms. . .oh and did I mention storms?  Well here’s the day that everything worked out,  including the sun!

The bottom right pic is them in front of a 1 million BTU burner. . . When i say it was hot in there with the door open,  that is an understatement!

It took a bit to get permission, but i managed to get into the concrete plant in Edmonton.  It helps when you don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.  When i shoot at locations like these,  Everyone including the models signs a ‘Liability Release’ . . . this makes it much easier to get on the properties with the owners knowing we won’t hold them liable if someone falls into the concrete shredder.

I was rather amused when the foreman starting cleaning up the shop for me. . . I picked this location specifically for the  dusty windows and abundance of grease.  He didn’t understand why i wanted a dirty shop to shoot in and kept trying to clean, so i gave him the hose and asked him to keep the girls misted for the photo. . . maybe a little over zealous or too excited, but he sprayed them in the face and almost ruined the makup!

The lighting from this image came mostly from an open garage door to the left and a silver blanket on the ground.  The light was a little strong from the bottom and i needed to retouch a little bit of shadow under their eyes,  but overall i think it worked rather well for all natural lighting.  Normally i would be adding an accent light to their bodies, but space was constricted and i liked the darker outline in this instance.

If you’re curious about the subtle look of this one,  I selected the highlights on the channels layer (Apple + click on RGB layer) Selected the inverse (shift +Apple+I),  clicked back on the layers pallet,  copied and pasted, and set the new layer to ‘overlay’.  Everything was then desaturated slightly.   The image was expanded with a white border, the outside edges were selected and the ‘chalk and charcoal’ effect was used.