Behind the Scenes with Christa Meola

The week of February 6-12 I had the great honor to meet and work with one of my favorite photographers, Christa Meola, as she presented a boudoir photography workshop for creativeLIVE.

 

It all began on Monday night when Kim and I picked up Christa from the airport and brought her to Seattle. From there we did a couple of photo sessions in preparation for the workshop. These included the Mercedes Benz that you might have seen in my iphone blog post yesterday.

Christa Meola with stand-in model, Nikko

Thursday found us in a downtown Seattle hotel doing photo sessions for Celeste and Kenna. Sorry, no photos to show you of those sessions. We'll have to wait and see if Christa or one of the ladies posts their photos. I just helped out with lighting and set up and then ducked out of the room to help make them feel more comfortable. I do have some behind the scenes photos though...

Rachel, Celeste, Kenna, and Christa

Gray seamless gaffer taped to wall
with Westcott Apollo Orb soft box

Thursday afternoon Christa and I went over the notes and 5 or 6 photo setups for the workshop. I was pretty busy from here out and didn't get a lot of photos, but here are a few of the sets.

 

Students get their turns photographing

We finished up on Sunday with a fan dance performance and a few more photo sessions.

And that was a wrap. Makeup and hair was provided by Rachel Olson from Hollywood and Lindsey Watkins from Seattle. Set design and building was done by Kaleo Quenzer of Seattle.

Actual photos by Christa are available on her blog.

Some behind the scenes reflections from creativeLIVE students:
B Allan Stewart
Michelle Coppini

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For the gear folks, here is what we used over the week:
Canon 5D mkII camera
Canon 24-70 f/2.8L, Canon 50mm f/1.2L, Canon 85mm f/1.2L lenses
Pocket Wizard Multimax wireless triggers
Alien Bees AB800 strobe heads
SPSystems Excalibur 1600 strobe head
Westcott Apollo Orb soft box
Westcott 12x50 strip soft box
Chimera Medium soft box
Interfit 24x24 softbox (used without a diffuser as a hair light for the dancers)
Photek 60" Softlighter II
LitePanels 1x1 LED light
BlowItFans 3-speed fan

If you have questions about the gear used in the workshop you can post them in the creativeLIVE blog.