Using a Mood Board for Fashion Shoots

In this video, Lindsay Adler walks through her pre-planning, shooting, and post-processing of a themed photo shoot and explains from start to finish how to recreate this image.

A lot of photographers skip over or do not give enough time to the pre-planning stages of a shoot. Lindsay mentions how she uses moodboards in the pre-planning stage to do two things: 1) Pitch concepts to magazines, or 2) Share and elicit ideas from her creative team. She shows how she uses Canva or Pinterest to save images and organize them to express the direction of the hairstyle, the makeup, the poses, the wardrobe, and the lighting that she is going to go for in her shoots.

In this shoot, she planned a shoot called "Fuchsia Fantasy" with saturated pink tones in the makeup, backdrop, and wardrobe. In setting up the lighting for the shoot, she explains step-by-step her choice for a key light, including which modifier she wants to use and the light placement. Next, she shows the importance of adding a fill light to bring out more of the tones in the wardrobe. And lastly, she shows how she gets the creative effect with the background to get a look that blends in perfectly with the wardrobe.

After the shoot, she walks through her post-processing in Capture One and Photoshop. The tips on color grading in Capture One are especially helpful.

Check out the entire video for a more detailed explanation of the planning and execution of this shoot.

Jeff Bennion's picture

Jeff Bennion is a San Diego-based portrait photographer specializing in boudoir and fashion photography. He owns Ignite Studio, the prettiest studio in the world. He is also an attorney licensed in California.

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