Inspiration (05/23/13)

Liz Trinnear is Forever Blonde.

by Steve Carty in Inspiration
12/03/10

I’m often asked about my creative process, how I think up shoots, where my ideas come from, and how I execute. I recently had the pleasure of shooting Liz Trinnear of MuchMusic. Let me give you a bit of insight as to how i got Liz Trinnear in front of my camera.

1st. The chance meeting. I exhibited this summer during bike week. Lifecycles was the show, MuchMusic showed us some love and Liz was our Host with the Most. The great people over at Much did a little segment and I knew i had to have Miss Trinnear in front of my camera. After she interviewed me, I said to her, “I have to take your picture.” As she gave me a little pose down in front of the gallery, I said, I would get a team together, makeup hair, styling and the runway was paved. I don’t think she expected a full team!

2nd. Scheduling a time. The Lifecycles exhibit was in June, from the week after our prints came down, I followed @liztrinnear on the twitter. We communicated through DM’s and @replies for the remainder of the summer. We got to the part where we had set a weekend to shoot. When Liz mentioned to MuchMusic that we were shooting together, they thought it was a great idea for a story. Our weekend session had became a weekday session, with specific days that were preferred. After a back and forth for a couple more weeks we had pinned down a day were Liz, Much and I could shoot. It was now October.

3rd. My Team. Once we had finally nailed down a day to shoot, it was all about getting the right team to work with me on this session. Enter Dee Daly (makeup / hair) and Dovovan Whyte (stylist) both from Judy Inc. I’ve done some amazing shoots with them individually, but it’s rare to get them both on set. This session was what you call, “Special”. Dee was on hold for our shoot day but got released so we were all good.

4th. The Inspiration. I met up with Donovan and we looked at some references. I came to the table with the idea for a modern day Marilyn Monroe. Donovan thought it was something he could bite into so that was the direction we moved forward with. When i filled Dee in on the story idea, she was more than ready to take that idea to the next level with her face and hair.

The shoot day. It was all camera’s, my team shooting BTS and Much’s crew shooting the entire thing. With my assistants & the Hermann & Audrey team all here it made for a busy day. We shot 6 looks switching between a natural light white set and my classic grey set up. Liz was just brilliant in front of the camera, she’s funny, she had fun with it and we all had an amazing day. I also shot short video clips at the end of each look which we cut together for a short 90 second film which you can see here.

The Edit. I shot hundreds of frames over the course of the day spread over those 6 looks. I shoot roughly 150 frames per look. After the shoot was done I started my first pass. I do what’s called a first edit. I brought 800 frames down to 200 and then i made a web gallery of those frames. After a sleep i like to do my second and third pass which brought this shoot down to the final 15 images i would retouch. The video got cut after my final images where selected.

The Final Goods. Here are a few of finals of my story, Forever Blonde. See the complete story over at SteveCarty.com. I’ll amend this post when the MuchMusic segment airs with the proper link. Enjoy.