This was an commissioned shoot of an advertising campaign for the german branch of FIVERR – a platform where freelancers can offer their creative services. The advertising agency did not want to use models but instead feature 2 people from the "real world". One client opposite of one creative freelancer. Jessica was an entrepreneur with a design business and Marcel was the copywriter who produced some text for her website. Both were picked by an inhouse producer at Fiverr.
The assignment was to replicate the look and feel of the already produced US ad campaign as close as possible so my creative choices concerning the lighting were rather limited. I received some BTS footage of the US shoot and re-built their set in a photo studio. The main light is a profoto strobe with a big softbox which I placed very close to the model because they wanted a very high contrast look.
Since I knew I was also assigned for the retouching job and they wanted a cutout of the models I photographed them in front of a grey background which was lit with 2 strobes. On the opposite side of the mainlight was a black polyboard to take control of the negative light.
I used a zoom lens instead of a fixed focal lens because I wanted to be a little bit flexible with my position in relation to the models. Since it was an advertising job which was gonna be printed on big billboards I retouched the images even more detailed than I normally would.