Scott G Trenorden

In the last few months – culminating in October 2009 – I have been extremely privileged to help bring to life the Graduation portfolio of Designer and Stylist Bek Timson, who I highlighted in my previous blog post.

Dozens (perhaps hundreds..?) of emails back and forward, hours upon hours of planning and several evening design chats between Elsie Tan, Bek and I (and a few too many TimTams) later, we found the day of shooting upon us.
It really is immense, the amount of time spent on such projects. From location scouting to assistant seeking, dress making and model booking, ordering specific makeup from overseas through to acquiring the right lighting gear for the job; it can easily become three months from concept meeting to the day of shooting.

Rachael Cross, Stephi McLean and Amanda MacDonald accepted our requests to model Bek’s dresses and Rachael’s mother, Tracie, joined us to provide her invaluable hair-styling and on-location assistance.
Jeremy Hall, Megan Henderson and Magdeline Lum answered the call to assist as photographer’s assistants on this ambitious undertaking and the day was set.

Bright and early, the girls gathered at Bek’s place to begin makeup, hair and dress fittings, while I ran around trying to find a small enough tension screw to fit a flash bracket… Bunnings to the rescue once again!
Delivering coffees, hot chocolates and muffins, I found a mellow house quietly a’bustle with pre-shoot preparations.

Elsie applies the finishing touches to Amanda’s makeup

The first half of the day belonged to Elsie and Bek (with hair styling assistance from Amanda and Tracie) with Elsie applying beautiful makeup to three models in record time (great work Elsie!).

Jeremy, Mags, Megan and I set to putting the softbox together, changing the flashes’ batteries and other pre-shoot tasks. The use of wigs meant that we didn’t need the assistance of a professional hairdresser which helped take some of the pressure off, time-wise.

Before we knew it we were piling into cars and heading south towards our pine-plantation location.

This shoot was the first in which I was able to utilise my new studio-style softbox and QikMount system (purchased from Image Melbourne) and I was excited to see what sort of light it was going to throw across the scene.

Megan was entrusted the job of moving the softbox around and adjusting the dual-flash outputs. I have greatly appreciated Meg’s help over the last few shoots I’ve done and she worked tirelessly yet again. Thanks Megs!
Utilising the extra flash mount bracket for the QikMount I was able to put both a Nikon SB-800 and Nikon SB-600 through the softbox.
Coupled with the softbox I used a YN-460 speedlight through a white shoot-through umbrella (controlled by Jeremy) and another YN-460 into a silver reflective umbrella (handled by Mags).

The softbox was positioned to the right of camera, between 20° and 50° in front of the model(s), shot depending.
The SB-800 was usually kept on full power, the SB-600 at 1/2 power.
The silver reflective umbrella was used for enhancement/hair lighting only and was usually positioned about 45° behind the model, camera left, shifting between 1/3 and 3/4 power.
The white shoot-through umbrella stayed between 20° and 50° in front of the model, camera left, supplying subtle fill light at all times, also shifting between 1/3 and 3/4 power.
All flashes were triggered via Cactus v4 triggers.

The general floor plan is seen in this graphic:

Big thanks to Nguyen Dinh for creating the base template for this layout: www.lightingdiagrams.com

The sun was getting low as we began to shoot, providing some good leading lines via shadows from the pine trees.
From the outset we wanted to give an element of weirdness to this shoot (as is pretty much essential with a Design school brief it seems!). Apart from the not-so-normal situation of photographing models in 18th Century styled gowns having a tea party in the middle of a pine forest at night, we wanted to add a dimension of ‘disruption’ (which is the title given to the whole project by Bek).
To do this we added in an Alice in Wonderland style clock to some shoots and gave the models elevation where suitable.

Elevation was achieved by having the models stand upon a small stool, as is seen in the above shot of the pine forest.

The following two shots highlight the general lighting setup and atmosphere of the setting. In this first scene, Stephi (solo) is modelling a long purple gown, while standing upon the stool and trying to act up while keeping her balance.
She did a sterling job, of course.

The end result can be seen in the final image slideshow at the bottom of this post.

I’ll include a few more ‘environmental’ shots for those interested in seeing how I went about setting things up.
The lighting was generally kept as per the diagram above to create uniformity between the different settings/scenes. The power ratios did not change a great deal.

As you can see from the next three shots, the dual flash softbox setup throws a lot of nice, warm light. This aspect of the lighting setup was crucial to the overall success of the shoot in my opinion; a lot better than what would have been achieved if I’d used the ‘reflective’ umbrella softbox that I used in previous shoots, what with its narrower and more washed out light.

In theory it is possible to put four speedlights through the softbox, though I’m not sure how I’d literally manage that as there’s not much space left when two large flashes are used. But technically, the light seen below could be greatly amplified.
My next experimentation will be to see whether I can fit the two Nikon flashes and two (wider but squatter) Olympus T32 flashes through the QikMount setup.

The unit itself is rather light yet sturdy when constructed (allow a good 20-30 mins to get it all set up on your first attempt!) and overall I’m very happy with the setup as a whole.

Elsie applying touch-ups to makeup in near darkness. You go girl!

All in all the day was a big success.
Packing up gear in darkness is never fun, nor is dealing with mosquitoes and ticks, but the effort was entirely worth it.

Congratulations to Bek Timson for designing and creating such stunning outfits and for styling the shoot so brilliantly!
Thank you to Elsie for your tireless makeup work, to the models for sticking with the tricky shoot and to Tracie and my three photography assistants for spending a long day helping out. It was all greatly appreciated!

The final images from the shoot can be seen in this slideshow:

Some higher quality images are available on my Flickr page, along with the option to leave feedback.
Larger images are viewable in the Fashion gallery on my website at www.scottgtrenorden.com.au.
Feel free to leave your comments at the bottom of this post.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you are interested in working out an estimate for an on-location shoot: scott@scottgtrenorden.com.au

‘Disrupted’ shoot info:
Clothing Designer & Shoot Stylist: Bek Timson
Makeup Artistry: Elsie Tan
Models: Rachael Cross, Stephi McLean & Amanda MacDonald
Assistants: Tracie Cross, Jeremy Hall, Megan Henderson & Magdeline Lum
Photographer: Scott G Trenorden
Shot on location in pine forests south-east of Armadale, Western Australia.