I’ve been shooting with Melissa for around six years now and some of my favorite shots that I’ve taken have been from our past collaborations. So when she texted me a couple weeks ago to tell me that she and her boyfriend are relocating to New York, we made sure to get in one last hurrah. For the occasion I brought in my friend and wonderful makeup artist, Andi Summer. When she asked what I was going for I said bold. She responded, bold as in colorful eye makeup or bold as in body paint? Yes.

I suggested she do a red look, a yellow look, and a blue look. For her red look, I set up LED accent lights gelled blue, with a yellow strobe on the background. This completed a red-yellow-blue triad. Then as we changed colors of makeup, I swapped out color gels on the other lights to preserve the triad. I set up my exposure so that I had a shutter speed of half a second, which meant closing the window blinds in my studio to darken the room. Since I was handholding my camera and Melissa was moving a bit as she posed, a subtle element of movement was added to the images. When I capture the movement just right, there is a wonderful outline that traces her profile (I am forever pushing my photography towards more painterly results).

I’ve noticed that by restricting myself to following a rigid guideline in a shoot, such as using a specific color triad, I am mentally freed up to focus on how to get creative within the parameters.