Annie Leibovitz photography research

Annie Leibovitz caught my eye whilst researching studio photography thanks to her AMAZING work with Disney for their Year of Million Dreams campaign. I love Disney and love photography, so my heart skipped a beat when I came across this little beauty!!!

                                                           
Queen Latifa as Ursula a character from The Little Mermaid

click here for Behind the scenes video

To create the soft illuminating light Annie used a large Octabank to the right of the camera, in front of this was a large scrim to diffuse the light thus creating a softer light.  Directly in front of Latifa on the ground were two large strip banks ( these to highlight the detailed underside of the tenticles). To the left of her were another two large octabanks held by assisitants, one to the left and one slightly overhead. One octabank boomed (lifted across) to direct light overhead. Underneath that a reflector to bounce the light back up. Last nut not least, an umbrella to light the background canvas.
WHAT A SET UP!!!

I think using the octaboxes instead of softboxes was the way forward in this kind of studio set up. With it being such a large area to cover in light the softboxes would have created too harsh a line where the light begins to diminish, with octabox the edges are much softer.

A great example of this is where Annie has chosen to use the strip boxes to light the underneath of tenticles. Perfect as the light from these is more direct than the octaboxes and the harder lines of light can start and finish exactly where the tentacles do too.

The reflector was placed to carefully direct the light back up off the ground where it was distributed from the above boomed octabank.

The Finished Masterpiece!

The overall effect the lighting produced was perfect, the soft light diffused onto Latifa herself helped her to stand out but also blend in with the shadows and moodiness of the scene. The strip boxes highlighted the tenticles perfectly.






Olivia Wilde as Snow White evil queen, Baldwin as the Mirror on the Wall........

Video of breakdown

A strobe light hit Olivia straight on through an umbrella, in the same locationand direction on the ground was a small head light to highlight the dry ice at her feet.

Alec was the dude in the mirror, obviously this was achieved with a little help from photoshop but the main image used was created like so.....

A beauty dish attached to a ring flash was located slightly above head height and to the right of the camera.
A strobe reflector was placed directly opposite with a slight tilt downward to create a rim light or halo on his hair. The final composition is perfect. The dark low key shadows add more mischief to the villainous (is that a word?) characters.

I want ALL these images in a calender, I don't think I will be allowed to have them hanging in my bedroom :( the OH  may protest!