Marie-Louise Cadosch Shoots Fashion In A Bus

Here is an interesting photoshoot where Marie-Louise Cadosch lights her model inside an old bus. Instead of trying to fit the lights inside, they decide to light through the glass and the results speak for themselves. Check out the final images and more info from this Fashion Breakdown shoot here and more on the toning of these images here.

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Lee Morris's picture

Lee Morris is a professional photographer based in Charleston SC, and is the co-owner of Fstoppers.com

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24 Comments

hey guys, do you know what strobe and softbox they used?

Not that the equipment really matters, but rather how you use it. It looked like she was using Hasselblad, but it's not like I'm going to go run out and buy one right now.

Really loved most of her effects, but I couldn't see the point of the smoke for more than half of her shots. The outside ones, yes. The inside ones, not so much. Awesome job overall tho.

Hi guys,
I used two Elinchrom Ranger RX, one with a long throw reflector on it to simulate hard sun light, one with a octa softbox for fill light. The smoke isn't always visible directly, but it changes the mood of the light even for inside shots.
Cheers
Marie-Louise

Well, I was actually curious because I want to get started using strobes. Thanks guys!

That is a sweet Bus.

The bus is indeed very sweet. It's from 1960 and it was used in Switzerland.

And yes, I use a Hasselblad cam, but I also would like to point out, that it's not only the cam and the photographer, that makes great pictures. There were around 15 people and 2 agencies who helped to make this happen. All of them worked for free (photographer included). Sometimes I can't believe that something like this is possible.

Good post Marie and the images are fab. Keep up the good work.

Very nice pictures Marie-Louise!

I'm dying to know how you got that reddish, retro tone so subtly without making the images look too edited. I just love it. Please help..... Thanks!

Nice work Marie-Louise. The makeup and styling were also fantastic and I love the concept and use of the old bus out in the middle of nowhere contrasting with the classically elegant models.

You are right about it being the photographer and the others involved creating the great picture and not the camera. I bet if you would have used a different camera that you were still comfortable with, the photos would have been just as magnificent.

Was this a personal project? Why did everyone work for free?

GQ

Awesome work! Love the lighting and composition. Were most the shots only one or two lights, with the high output reflector and the octa? Great post toning too. Man, I'd love to shoot something like that!

Awesome work Marie-Louise. I've just bought (waiting on delivery) a similar lighting setup, and if I ever get photos half as good as those, I'd be happy!

Wow Marie, how many years takes it to develop such an EYE for perspective, framing, lighting, color and everything else what is needed to take such great photographs?

I created a new folder called Marie-Louise Cadosch in my inspiration-collection.

Thank you for sharing this video.

Paul from Germany.

I never comment on things. I never hardly favorite a video on youtube. I'm doing both now because I love the look, composition, and over all mood of this shoot.

A+ on the coloring. It's gorgeous. Your models look wonderful and the hair, make up, wardrobe guys did excellent. I think most people underrate how important is to have a great picture to work with before you edit. These are phenomenal. I love seeing a vintage shoot done right. Vintage is not just a coloring.

How much post production went into these images? Hope you do some more BTS and maybe some editing BTS for us to be inspired even more.

Yo Lee! Any chance you could convey our plea for some post edit tutorial request to the very talented, Marie-Louise Cadosch? Please? We really love her work.

Whoa, I'm absolutely owerhelmed by the response to this post. I try to answer some of your questions and give some more infomation about the shoot.

The goal for this editorial is to get published (as it is for every editorial shot by any photographer). The reason is to get some publicity for your portfolio. The magazines won't pay a penny for it, so you always have to find other people working for free out of the same reason.

At first, I had to find the team. Furtunately, I could convince two agencies with the concept, which send us the three models and the hair stylists. The make-up artist is a good friend of me. For the luxury lingerie I talked to the very talented designers from Lyn Lingerie Zurich, which provided different stylings for each of the 3 models. All ohter people involved are family members.

Because we had to shoot the whole story in only one day, we planned every minute of the day in advance. The home base for the team was at a distance of about 1/2 mile and it was very cold outside. So the models hat to be transported by car between the scenes.

Concerning the picture style, there are two main parts: taking the pictures and editing. The light concept was also planned in advance. As we did not know what the weather was going to be, we had to be prepared for all situations. I love a mystic mood in my pictures with the sun shining through the fog. As it hasn't any fog on that day, we created it with a fog machine. And as the sun wasn't strong enough at that day, we used a strobe to imitate it. Someone said in a comment, that he doesn't see the point of using smoke for the indoor shots. I can't agree, because that's exactly the reason, why the pictures look so soft. The light's getting completely different shining through fog.

We used the same lighting setup throughout the whole shoot: 1 main light and the fill light and some influence of ambient light.

Of course, the editing is also very important. But, as you can see in the video at 1:42 and 2:00, the pictures are already in a good condition. A good lighting concept is crucial! But anyway, the editing took about 4-8 hours for each of the 20 pictures. Most of the time used was cleaning up the skin and hair. I don't use skin smoothing techniques with blur, because this looks unnatural. I use a lot of dodge and burning on pixel level to get a smooth skin. Probably you can't see the difference of the very fast technique with bluring and the very time consuming method with dodge and burn in the lowres web versions of the pictures. But you can see it clearly when printed at large format.

Concerning the color style, I always experiment with graduation curves for each color channel, play with the saturations and different color layers. In addition, I like to use some vignetting. The whole set of color adjustments is then applied on all of the pictures. An other important point is to form the bodies by painting with light and shadow.

So, I hope this answers most of the questions.

Cheers
Marie-Louise

It's nice to see some work from swiss photographers.

Classy! Nicely done and amazing images

Thanks for your post and follow-up comments, Marie-Louise! I too like your work very much. There's just something different in your style that grabs my attention and look at the images longer. Would you consider doing a Behind The Scene video of your post-edit workflow, just so we can see how you are changing the color tone of your images? I think, majority of us here know how to clean up an image without using any blurring effect to "soften" skin and mess up skin textures, but would you please show us how you changing the color tones of your image? I know that a lot of us here will greatly appreciate that. Keep up the good work! You are an amazing photographer! Thanks again for sharing your knowledge!

Okay, I will try to add some editing scenes into one of my next videos. But really, it's not more than just playing with curves (for each color channel) and hue/saturation.

Oh hecks yeah!!!!! Thanks Marie-Louise! I'm sure any droplet of knowledge from your mastery of the art will be nothing less than a treasure for those who do not have it... Like myself! I look forward to your next video! You reek of awesomeness!!!!!

Excellent work Marie-Louise, and thank you for the excellent insight into your thoughts and process.

As the color toning is the most answered question here, I have published an overview of my workflow on my blog:

http://blog.marcandlouis.com/2011/02/ask-the-photographer-part-2/