This modeling shoot took place in Hotel Rivington in New York City. The place was pretty much
opened up to me and we were granted access to shoot anywhere we chose. After getting a tour of the facilities, I couldn’t help but be drawn to the tremendous

 chandelier in the dining room on the 1st floor. Wasting no time,

 After canvassing the room for a moment, I figured out exactly how to accomplish this. The tables in the room could easily serve as a platform to elevate the chair.. and model to the perfect height allowing this massive lighting fixture into the shot! After checking with the management…it was time to put some muscle in and rearrange the tables into a makeshift platform. Now that I had the “stage” set, it was time to work out angles, choose a proper lens, and set about lighting the scene. Prior to any of this though an assessment of the stability of the platform was in order… so up went the chair and up went the photographer…. yep, it’d hold. Our model for the day was far lighter than me… and this platform was rock solid. The table tops are covered in leather, so we took precaution and padded the feet of the chair with stacks of napkins from the hotel bar, so as not to leave any divots in the table top. Worked like a charm.  The lighting for the image needed to be soft, yet slightly directional so as to show off the chair. I decided to erect a 4×6 foot panel, and shoot the strobes through the panel to soften the light perfectly. The back background was lit with a shoot through umbrella as I wanted some of the light to light the chandelier and the model. Lastly an edge light was added to the models right simply to add a little reflection on the leather jacket.

 

All the boring technical stuff aside… and it was time to work through some poses. I was fortunate enough to have an extremely experienced model, and she not only took direction well, but also worked through some poses that were difficult at best, and tore through them without batting an eye. In the end I went with a strong pose and a color image which you can see in my people portfolio However…I was initially inspired by the combination of this riveted chair.. and her riveted leggings.. it seemed as if it was synchronicity. Hence the image headlining this post. Such an elegant pair no?

~j.j.

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