Our Luxe fashion section ran in certain editions of this week’s newspaper so I thought I would take some time to share before and after pictures to show how much went into producing the images. The storyline of the fashion photo shoot centered upon a heist from a bank vault, a chase scene, gambling with the riches and then getting caught.

Just so you guys know, there was absolutely no digital Photoshop manipulation in terms of adding or eliminating objects in any of the photos. That is not something we do or condone for anything outside of photo illustrations. So everything you see is done in-camera with exposure and lighting, only using Photoshop on a computer on the back end to adjust the brightness and color.

In the photo above, I found an alleyway in Soulard for our chase scene. To create the look we wanted, staff photographer Chris Lee, who helped me with the lighting for this and the other photo shoots, had two Calumet flash head units at the far end of the alleyway, just out of view of the camera. The lights were aimed at the back wall of the alleyway and adjusted to full power, thus creating the white-out effect. Staff photographer Emily Rasinski, who also helped out on a few of the photo shoots, donned a fedora and trench coat to play the role of the detective leaning around the corner while chasing our female model. The light on our female model in the foreground is a White Lightning X1600 flash head unit placed on a light stand about ten feet off the ground and angled down through a small window at the entrance to the alley (which is behind me, the photographer), thus creating the light falloff on the model due to the shape of the window and the use of a 10 degree spot grid diffuser on the flash unit. To add more mood to the photo we used a waterhose behind the building to spray the floor and walls of the alleyway.

For each of the fashion shoots, we figured out what we wanted from the situation in terms of mood, lighting and composition and spent the necessary time with adjusting flash units and camera angles. We spent just over an hour for the lighting set-up of each picture and another hour of actually taking pictures with the models. Check out the before and after pictures below.

A gambling table at Lumiere Place Casino.

An old holding cell at the downtown St. Louis Police Department.

The bank vault at City Musuem.

The tarmac at the Greater St. Louis Air and Space Museum in Cahokia, Illinois.