Credits

Photographer: Chloe Crespi
Wardrobe Stylist: Guillaume Boulez
Digital Imaging: Kristen Lotto at Gloss Studio.
Makeup Artist: Craig Honeycutt at Ford Artists for Dior Beauty
Hair Stylist: Anja Grassegger for L’Oréal Professionel at Factory Downtown
Model: Daniela Mirzac (Marilyn NY)
Studio: Metro Motion (New York)
Client: Ocean Drive Magazine

Comments from Guillaume and Chloe follow the images. Click on any image to see it larger.

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Comments from fashion and wardrobe stylist Guillaume Boulez:

Chloe contacted me one day to do a fashion story for Ocean Drive Magazine, based on visual references and ideas she had selected. We had just shot an editorial together, and we both really wanted to collaborate more! Chloe had found some really great inspiration pictures that I loved, and those images dictated the whole mood for the shoot. I tried to stay as close as possible to Chloe’s references, but also to still reflect my taste. So I pulled different garments that i really loved from the Spring/Summer collections. We wanted it to be a spring story, that’s why I kept the colors light and the mood fresh. I was sort of tired of all the black and darkness from the past Fall/Winter collections, and also all this layering that’s been going on for a while now. I wanted the look to be crisp, but have a playfulness to it. Soft, pretty and rough, a little more “disheveled”…but really, I mostly wanted to stay light! That’s probably why I ended up using those colors and showing a lot of skin. We had also decided to mix together fine jewelry and custom made jewelry, to keep a very modern feel to the looks. I was able to pull some really beautiful pieces, which I feel were the final touch to those looks. The looks were really quite simple, so those jewelry pieces that little extra punch!

Interview with fashion photographer Chloe Crespi:

We interviewed fashion photographer Chloe Crespi about her shoot for Ocean Drive Magazine, a Miami-based publication. This is Chloe’s fifth time shooting for the magazine, the first of which was in March of 2007.

The shoot concept was developed with the stylist, Guillaume, before approaching the magazine with the idea. Spring was coming, so an open, light feeling was the look they were after. Because she was thinking “spring”, she wanted a bright, natural daylight look…even though she planned on using strobes (more on that below).

Chloe told us that she works very closely with her retoucher, Kristen Lotto, both before and after the shoot. Rather than just being a post-production service provider, she views Kristen as a collaborator and creative partner, and will design the shoots with her to achieve the look they’re after. Kristen is also there at the shoot, watching the monitor as the images come across, and acts as a second pair of creative eyes.

Chloe’s advice to fashion photographers who are just starting out: hook up with a skilled retoucher from the very beginning. It is so much a part of Chloe’s style that she insists on using Kristen on every shoot. And only very reluctantly – and rarely – will she agree to use someone else instead. The collaborative nature of this partnership means that they can build off each other’s creativity, and build something larger than what either could do alone.

The model casting was straight forward: Chloe had four models come to a “go see” at her apartment. It was a toss-up between two of them, but Daniela was, in Chloe’s words “one hundred percent the right girl for the shoot”. The most important thing to Chloe is how a model moves. What she does when she’s in front of a camera. Does she freeze? Look awkward? Or does she immediately become a model and project herself into the lens? It’s not essential for Chloe to make a personal connection with the model, only that the model be a professional and good at what she does. The model must have a personal presence or energy that immediately comes across.

The shoot lasted eight or nine hours. Chloe used a Canon 5D for this shoot (the original model, but she has since acquired the Canon 5D Mark II). She doesn’t recall for sure which lens she used, but said that she has been using the 85mm f/1.2 lens a lot for fashion, and that’s a likely candidate for this shoot. She typically shoots with fixed lenses for fashion.

The lighting was designed to mimic daylight. Chloe loves daylight shooting, but she can’t get the required depth of field for fashion when using solely window light in a studio. So she simulated it by setting up a 12′ x 12′ silk as the main light, and fired four Profoto heads through it (powered by two packs). The model was bathed in big, soft light from camera-right, and a V-flat (aka a V-card) was set up camera-left to bounce back some light as fill. A couple more heads were used to light the background.

Ultimately there were about eight looks actually shot for the spread, two of which didn’t make it. Chloe said that when she had a chance to view the images after the shoot, she was pleased to find that there were two different ‘stories’ being told, and two different spreads were possible from the images. She selected images that were more avant garde, but the magazine ultimately chose a more classic set of images.

Which leaves us wondering: what would that other spread have looked like? We shall just have to keep wondering if a “director’s cut” might one day surface.

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