2008

The logistics of a professional photoshoot for a casino might surprise some of you. You might see a nice image like this one in an advertisement and think “oh, the photographer caught a nice moment”. For this image, we had a very tight shooting schedule and had a few images/angles/setups we needed to accomplish before the salon opened for the casino customers. We needed to photograph the inside areas first so we had a very early call time that morning. The last image at this location was this image.. the models exiting the salon as if they just had a wonderful time at the spa, pampered, happy and on their way.

Between the salon manager still needing to run the front desk (answer phones, etc) and setting up lighting against a very specular and reflective background (can we say marble facade, glass doors and glass waterfall feature), we had to act fast and we had to act well.

This final image is the culmination of my assistants sneakily hiding lights, moving lights in different areas for multiple exposures, having the hotel manager duck behind the desk while on the phone, the models moving 2 inches “pretending to walk” and give multiple facial expressions and looking at multiple exit locations, and finally blending the best of all of those scenarios in one.final.image. Sigh. Phew. And on to the next.

A solid take away… when choosing a professional photographer, don’t underestimate their working knowledge of tight shoot schedules, a great team, and pro knowledge of lighting for every scenario.