Every dress has a story to tell, and the dresses designed by Oh My Honey! and worn by Victoria Ly tell a story of love and mystery. The elegance enveloped in each intricate detail adds to its beauty, while the rolling fog creeping its way into the frame adds a certain eeriness. In moments like these, when we cannot affect meaningful change to the conditions, I try to use them to my advantage. This ensures that the beauty of nature and garment are both encapsulated into one symbiotic image.
When working shoots like this, I usually choose to bring a variety of capture media with me; this way I am not running on complete autopilot. I enjoy the sudden shift in technical mechanics as a way to keep my mind open to different possible uses of the images we create together. During this day, I chose to bring out two cameras: my Canon 5D Mark 3 digital and a Polaroid ProPack using Fuji 100C instant film.
I shot the digital files using a variety of lenses, but without going too crazy on swapping them around. I used my 24-105 for a few shots, but I am not too fond of this lens. I hung out with my 70-200 f2.8 IS and my 50mm f1.4 mostly. I had my lights with me but opted to use the natural light that was softened by the incoming fog. This produced some really interesting lighting circumstances. I processed the digital files in Lightroom, making them bright and warm.
With the instant camera I processed the prints per the standard development suggestions which ranged from 90-120 seconds, depending on the guesstimated temperature, which I will admit, turned out to be about 1-1.5 stops underexposed Part of this was due to the fact that I was anchored to the sensitivity, and there is no exposure control. These were then scanned using my Epson V750 scanner and brightened and warmed up in Photoshop. These images have a much darker, even creepy quality to them. With the model wearing a white wedding dress, ominous clouds swirling around her, this was very prominent.
Before
After
I also kept the negatives from the instant film, and after the reagent, or “Polaroid Snot” as I like to call it, dried I processed negatives using a bleach clearing method so I could scan them and get a third, even more interesting and juxtaposed result. These images are far darker, and are reminiscent of horror films, especially within the context of this shoot.
