Monday, October 12, 2009

Behind the scenes with Ariell

I shot with Ariell about 20 minutes after I finished shooting with Joel, and we decided we’d try shooting completely in-studio rather than venturing outdoors.

Ariell had a little trouble loosening up his face, and I was worried that all of his facial expressions would end up looking exactly the same from shot to shot. I had Ariell do some excercises to loosen up his face, basically by going to extremes with his expressions every time the shutter clicked. As you can see, Ariell’s pretty good about making over-the-top expressions.

Ariell specifically wanted to do sexier shots in various stages of undress. He did bring this awesome fur hat which made for a really striking portrait when dramatically lit against a black background. We eventually did go outside of my apartment and shot a few pictures of him sitting on the sidewalk in front of my building on 155th Street.

I really appreciated Ariell’s concentration and his ability to take direction well. And yeah, that body of his is pretty nice, too.