This image is made of 342 layers and took two months to finish it (from pre-production to exporting the file at Photoshop). My four year old laptop was really struggling with this image. At times I found myself waiting hours for it to apply a filter or merge a couple of layers together. There were moments when I felt like it is impossible to finish this image. But here I am. With a finished image.
In the beginning I wanted to go with a very basic lighting setup, a very flat type of light. However, a couple of days before the shoot I came up with a new, more interesting, setup and decided to go with it. I had a 120 cm octabox was the key light, which was on the camera left. On the opposite side there was a silver reflector filling the shadows. To the camera right, behind the subjects, there was a gridded 70x70 softbox giving them a rim light and finally there was a speedlite boomed above the male model giving him a hair light. Natural light of the room affected the exposure a bit aswell
You can find a blog post on how we made it here: http://kristjanjarv.com/2015/06/18/miseducated-behind-the-scenes/
So worth it!